The Shepherd, September 2005
BROOKWOOD NEWS, 1
VISIT OF MOTHER VIKENTIA
AFTER JOURNEYING extensively through parts of Royal Berkshire and West Surrey, on 25th August, Mother Vikentia, the superior of the Convent of the Annunciation in Willesden, brought a small group of pilgrims from Palestine and Jordan to visit Saint Edward’s Church and see the site of the proposed monastery building.
BAPTISM AT SAINT EDWARD’S
EMILY, the infant daughter of Andrew Bradshaw and Sophia Ratnett of Keynsham, Somerset, was baptised by Fr Peter Baulk at St Edward’s on Sunday, 8th / 21st August, after Vespers. Vasilios and Evphemia Calcanteras stood as sponsors. On the following Sunday, Emily came to the Divine Liturgy to receive Holy Communion for the first time on her eighth day. Emily is named after St Emily, the mother of St Basil the Great, whose feastday falls on 8th / 21st May.
FEAST OF THE DORMITION AT BROOKWOOD
IT BEING THE LAST SUNDAY in August this year, when because of the Notting Hill Carnival it is impossible to approach the Serbian church in London, we were joined on the Great Feast of the Dormition by Protopresbyters-Stavrophore Milun Kostic and Radomir Acimovic of St Sava’s Serbian Orthodox Church. With them came a large number of their congregation, who after the Divine Liturgy went to the Serbian Cemetery, adjoining our own, to commemorate the faithful departed. Their being with us on the feast greatly boosted our usual congregation and added greatly to the joy of the festival.
TWO NOTEWORTHY FUNERALS
A FOUNDER MEMBER and Grand Chancellor of the Order of the Orthodox Hospitallers, which was inaugurated with the blessing of the late Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, Baron Sergei von Bennigsen reposed in the Lord on 1st / 14th August after suffering a stroke. The funeral service was held at Saint Edward’s Church on Tuesday 10th / 23rd August, the feast of St Laurence, and Sergei was laid to rest in the Orthodox cemetery here. At the mercy meal, provided by his family and loved ones, and held in the Brotherhood house, his brother, Pavel, gave a moving tribute to the baron’s memory and the charitable work that he had undertaken, mentioning his contacts with an earlier generation of Russian churchman and bishops, including St John of Shanghai. May the memory of the servant of God, Sergei, be eternal and his rest with the saints.
Anna Koulikoff, one of the older members of the “Russian” congregation in London reposed on the feast of St Mary Magdalene, 22nd July / 4th August. In fact, Anna was from a Jewish family from Berlin. When restrictions tightened in the 1930’s they moved to Jerusalem, where eventually Anna met a young Russian, Peter Koulikoff, whose father, A. P. Koulikoff, had served at the translation of the sacred relics of holy New Martyr Elizabeth the Grand Duchess of Russia to the Holy Land and had earlier been a member of the Sokolov Commission which investigated the martyrdom of the Grand Duchess and her companions at Alapaevsk. Under instruction from the then Archimandrite Antony (later Archbishop of Los Angeles) and Father Lazarus (Moore), an English convert to Orthodoxy, Anna became Orthodox, was baptised and married Peter. Their home church in Jerusalem was the beautiful Russian church of St Mary Magdalene in the Gethsemane Convent, and so appropriately did she die on that saint’s day while the Liturgy was being celebrated at the Convent here in London. Circumstances caused the young family to settle in East Africa, and in the mid-sixties they came to London. Anna’s funeral was held at the Convent of the Annunciation amid the sisters that she had known in Palestine during her first days in Orthodoxy, and it was attended by several of her Jewish relatives who came over from Germany and by her daughters who now live in South Africa and in Australia. She was laid to rest with her late husband in Chiswick cemetery. May Peter and Anna both find rest with the saints and Eternal Memory.
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