In addition to these Great Feasts, here at Brookwood in September we also kept the anniversary of the enshrinement of the Sacred Relics of our heavenly intercessor, St Edward the Martyr, on 3rd / 16th September. The relics were given into the custody of our church in 1984 on this day, and this year, in addition to the usual celebration, we are honoured to have the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, Mrs Sarah Goad JP, come to lay the foundation stone of the new monastic house. The Mayor of Woking, Cllr John Kingsbury, as well as our own county and borough councillors, Elizabeth Compton and Philip Goldenberg, have said they will be with us for the occasion.

 Among the saints whose memory we keep in September,we have:- The Holy New Martyr Polydorus celebrates on the same day as St Edward (3rd / 16th). He was a native of Cyprus, and later settled in Egypt where he worked as a merchant. On a certain day of celebration, he drank too much and became very drunk. In his drunken stupor, he was persuaded by some Muslim companions to deny his faith and submit to Islam. When he came to his senses, he realised the seriousness of his sin, and sought out various spiritual fathers to confess and receive spiritual direction. He went to the island of Chios and gave himself over to prayer, tears and fasting, living in a monastery there. His spiritual father in due time re-united him to the Church through the Mysterion of Chrismation and imparted the Holy Mysteries to him again. However, Polydorus was troubled by the thought that he had denied his Saviour before men and so would be denied before the angels of God. Therefore he received a blessing and went to New Ephesus, where he appeared before the Turkish judge and confessed that, having once been a Muslim, he had become a Christian. Although this was a capital offense, the judge was rather lackadaisical and told him to do as he wished! So the Saint repeated his confession, and demanded that action be taken. To quiet him, he was thrown into prison and kept in the stocks. The next day, he was brought before the judge again, and they tried to persuade him to rejoin the Muslim religion. He steadfastly refused, and so was, at the end, sentenced to be hanged. The sentence was carried out that same day, 3rd September, 1794, and his last words were, “Christian, Christian, I am a Christian!”

 The Holy New Hieromartyr Gorazd of Prague (4th/17th) was a convert to Holy Orthodoxy from Roman Catholicism. He was born in Moravia in 1879; his secular name was Matthew Pavlik. Later he became a Roman Catholic priest, and studied the missionary witness of the Holy Peers of the Apostles, Methodius and Cyril, the teachers of the Slavs, and therein he found inspiration for a movement of reform in the RC Church. When Czechoslovakia became an independent state, he was a member of a delegation sent to Rome, to ask autonomous status for his Church and that they might use Czech in their services. The request was refused, and consequently thousands of people turned to the Orthodox Church for spiritual nurture, Fr Matthew Pavlik among them. Bishop Dositheus of the Serbian Orthodox Church visited Prague in 1920, and the future saint was received into the Church. A year later he was consecrated by Patriarch Demetrije of Serbia as a bishop. Our own Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) took part in this consecration. The newly consecrated bishop was named after Saint Gorazd, one of the five immediate disciples of Sts Cyril and Methodius. Many of the converts in fact reverted to Catholicism, but Bishop Gorazd laboured tirelessly to to care for the flock entrusted to him and established Orthodox parishes in Bohemia and Moravia, as well as doing invaluable work in translating the Divine services. He was subjected to many trials, being the subject of false accusations and slanders, but he remained faithful to his course. During the Second World War, a representative of the Reich was assassinated in Prague, and seven members of the Czech resistance took refuge in the crypt of the Orthodox cathedral. They were nonetheless arrested and executed. The two priests of the cathedral were also arrested for offering them succour. To save them, Bishop Gorazd gave himself up to the Nazi authorities, and accepted responsibility for what they had done. He was arrested on 25th June, 1942, tortured, and shot on 4th September, and thus he laid down his life for his newly established flock, receiving the crown of martyrdom. ”