The Shepherd, April 2008
SiR UK* NEWS
* Synod in Resistance Churches in the UK
EXHIBITION ROOM
IT HAS BECOME A CUSTOM that on the Day of Pascha, after the Agape Vespers, we have a little reception. Many of our non-Orthodox friends in particular like to come to the short Vespers services and experience something of our Easter celebration. This year on that day, Sunday 27th April n.s, we hope also to have the opening of the new Exhibition Room in the Old Mortuary building. The provision of this room was a requirement of our obtaining planning permission for the whole project, and the scheme was largely funded by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Over the past few weeks Mike Stonelake, a designer and illustrator who is also a parishioner at the Ennismore Gardens Russian Patriarchal Church in London, has been working on the project with Sophio Medoidze and Andy Gardiner. John Clarke, the historian of the cemetery and the Necropolis Railway, has also given invaluable help with the whole project. We hope that as many of you as possible will be able to join us on that occasion. The Vespers service in church will begin at 4 p.m. Afterwards we will come back to the Old Mortuary and have a short ceremony to open the Exhibition and allow everyone to see it, and then there will be refreshments and paschal foods to be enjoyed in the main hall.
NEW ICON
AN ICON, painted by the sisters of the Convent of St Elizabeth of Russia, Etna, California, has arrived from America. We commissioned it as a thanksgiving for having found “faithful hierarchs” after joining the Synod in Resistance. The icon depicts the heavenly patrons of the Monastery at Fili, where the President of the Synod in Resistance resides, the Holy Hieromartyr Cyprian and the Virgin Martyr Justina, flanked by Saint Glycherie of Romania, first Hierarch of the traditionalist hierarchy there for many years, and St Seraphim of Bulgaria, a confessor for traditionalism in that country, whose disciples, under Bishop Fotii, now form the traditionalist resistance there. We hope that, when they visit Brookwood on Sunday 6th April, Bishops Ambrose and Sofronie will bless the icon for us.
BUILDING FUND & PROGRESS
ALMOST MIRACULOUSLY, it seems, after so long, the building work on the new house and the renovation of the Old Mortuary are now nearing completion. The downstairs floors in the new house have been replaced, and we have been able to move back in again and start getting ourselves organized in the new accommodation. There is still work to be done on the grounds around the house and a few snagging jobs, but substantially we are near the end of a very long haul. When we have settled things, we will turn our attention to the re-roofing of St Edward’s Church. At the moment, 31st March 2008, the Building Fund stands at £661,008.94. This also is little, if anything, short of a miracle. Our thanks to all who have contributed and are still supporting our effort. God bless you with many mercies.
VISIT OF CHANTERS
TWO CHANTERS FROM GREECE, Nikos Polichros and Tasos Alexoudis, members of the St John Koukouzelos Choir, which had been invited to England by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Thyateira to give several concerts (see the Thyateira website), came to our church on Sunday 2nd March, being themselves members of a SiR parish in their homeland. They joined our choir and chanted for us, and very kindly left us some CDs of their beautiful chanting and treats from Greece.
AKATHIST APPROVED
A PARISHIONER at St Boniface Mission, Ryde, Isle of Wight, Martin Smith composed an Akathist to his patron saint, Saint Martin of Tours the Merciful. He sent it to Bishop Ambrose at Fili for his blessing and for him to check it, and the composition has received the approval for use of the Synod in Resistance. Martin also published the mission’s magazine, “The Herald.”
PRACTICAL TIP
APPROACH Pascha with great care. For Orthodox Christians it is the crown of the whole cycle of the year. It is a time of the greatest joy. This is proclaimed time and time again, by our greetings, in sermons and homilies and indeed through the Holy Spirit in the very services themselves. But often, it must be admitted, for true spiritual joy, that which should be the fruit of our lenten struggles and a blessing from the Risen Lord, we substitute a kind of festive jolliness. The celebration becomes a pantomime of what it should be. Therefore in the last weeks of the fast, let us strive to be particularly attentive to the content of the services and the commemorations which lead us to the feast. Let us strive and pray to approach the festival, and to celebrate it, with a measure of spiritual sobriety, which will permit us to experience not jollity but genuine, deep, lasting and quiet joy.
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