BLESSING

OF THE NEW MONASTIC HOUSE

AT BROOKWOOD BY HIS GRACE,

BISHOP AMBROSE OF METHONI

 

ONE WEEK before the feast day of St Edward the Martyr this year, on Sunday 27th August / 9th September, an important milestone in our community’s history was passed, when His Grace Bishop Ambrose of Methoni visited and blessed the New Monastic House at Brookwood.  Among the many people present were some who remembered our early days when we lived in the caravan and had no running water, - even the first Divine Services were celebrated in the caravan.  When we had better established ourselves, we were able to convert and move into the Old Mortuary Chapel, and over the past twenty years the conditions and facilities there were gradually improved.  Now, however, with the growth of the Brotherhood and of the parish community here, it became imperative to provide proper accommodation for the monastics, and thus also to free up the Mortuary building to provide better parish facilities.

 

Bishop Ambrose kindly volunteered to come over from Greece and bless the new house on its completion, and with the blessing of Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili, he arrived in England on Thursday, 6th September.  Having a commitment in Oxford on the Saturday, the bishop stayed for a day with his mother in London, while the photographer who accompanied him, Anastasios Vasilopoulos, came to stay with us at Brookwood.

 

On the Saturday afternoon, we arranged to meet His Grace in Oxford, and we brought him back to the Brotherhood.  En route, we stopped off at the village church at Chieveley, where, at the graves of George (Gerald) Palmer and his sister Elizabeth, the Bishop chanted a memorial service for their repose.  George Palmer is the G.E.H. Palmer who was co-translator with E. Kadloubovsky of the English version of the “Philokalia,” published by Faber & Faber.  He was also an accomplished iconographer, and he and his sister were for many years parishioners at the Convent of the Annunciation in London, where many of the icons are by his hand.

 

On arrival at Brookwood, Bishop Ambrose inspected the new building, and then joined us for our evening meal.  During the Vigil Service later that evening, His Grace prayed within the altar, coming out to bless the faithful individually when they came up to kiss the Gospel Book.  As not everything is spin-and-span in the new house yet, Nikolai and Tatiana Yellachich kindly took him to their home at Old Windsor for the night.

 

On the Sunday morning, His Grace was greeted at the church door with the traditional bread-and-salt by Benjamin Waterhouse, one of our most prominent parishioners.  While he vested in the altar the choir chanted the appropriate hymns, before we began the reading of the Hours and the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, at which His Grace was a assisted by Fr Alexis and Fr Stephen Fretwell, with Hierodeacon Sabbas. 

 

After the Gospel, Bishop Ambrose preached about Christian love of God and of our neighbour, something which he showed us much more eloquently by his coming to visit us and by his obvious concern for all the people.  He also spoke about the blessing of the building and said a little about the Holy Martyr Phanourios the Newly-Appeared of Rhodes, who, along with the great monastic father, Pœmen the Great, was celebrated that day.