This Sunday will be the last of the Church year, with the new ecclesiastical year beginning next Tuesday on 1/14 September.
To mark this transition, we will be holding a General Parish Meeting after Sunday’s Liturgy, looking back over the last year and a half as the rector (Hieromonk Mark), parish administrator (Deacon Mark), and treasurer report on various aspects of parish life.
Much has happened since our last parish meeting, with the geographical area in which our parishioners live expanding across the Severn, from where loyal new parishioners now make weekly journeys. Given the distances involved, not everyone will be able to be in church on Sunday, but we nevertheless encourage those unable to attend to raise any subjects they wish to be discussed on the agenda.
We encourage you all to attend the meeting and to give your views and opinions on the matters we need to discuss. It is your parish, and your voice, ideas and opinions count.
We hope that you will be with us on Sunday, when we will have a bring-and-share lunch after Liturgy, and then hold our meeting. So, bring-and-share will obviously mean bringing something to share!
We especially look forward to welcoming more parishioners back from their travels, new friends who have been in touch with us over the past month or two, and hopefully some of our faithful who have not been with us for a while.
Dear brothers, sisters and friends of our Cardiff and Cheltenham parishes,
The Liturgy in Cardiff today was greatly blessed by the addition of Father Luke to the celebrating clergy, much to the joy of those who have not seen him for a considerable time, with parishioners from deepest Wiltshire thinking they might drive all the way to West Wales to see him.
Father Luke was a very great help today, given parishioners had travelled from Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Swansea, and all required confession.
We congratulate all who partook of the Holy Mysteries on this Leave-Taking of the feast of the Dormition, when at the end of Liturgy, after the chanting of the encomia and velichanie for the Dormition, the plashchanitsa of the Mother of God was returned to the sanctuary.
Sunday was also the feast of St Irenaeus of Lyons and Bishop Irenei was greeted for his nameday by telephone yesterday evening, as he was leaving church after the vigil in our parish in Lyons. After the dismissal today’s Liturgy, we chanted Mnogaya Leta for our bishop, with an icon of St Irenaeus, written within the parish, being blessed before presentation to His Grace when the clergy visit the cathedral for its altar-feast: the Nativity of the Mother of God.
I was also very pleased to bless an icon of St Andrei Ufimsky by the hand of the same iconographer, and will be cherishing this in my cell.
The parish received a wonderful blessing this week, as our Chancellor, Archpriest Paul, commended the old candlestands from ROCOR‘s former Bradford parish the care of our community, and we were able to put them into use, knowing that these humble stands had been used in the worship of the Russian Church Outside of Russia since 1946. We sincerely hope they will still be in use in another seventy-five years.
In addition to visiting Wallasey and the Parish of St Elizabeth this week, Father Deacon Mark and I have also had the pleasure of visiting Vladika Irenei in London and the Cheltenham parish yesterday, so it has been a very busy week with significant mileage. To add to this, Deacon Mark is driving to Heathrow to meet matushka Alla and Yuriy who are on their return journey from Crimea at this very moment.
Though matushka and Yuriy are still in transit, other parishioners have arrived home, and it was lovely to have faithful back from Ukraine and Russia and to celebrate the Liturgy and the end of our ‘Summer Pascha’ with them.
As I explained at Liturgy, a very difficult work rota for me will make confessions a challenge this week, but I hope that it will be possible to hear confessions on Thursday. Given the challenges of the week, may I ask all requiring confession, and who are able to do so on Thursday to contact me by Wednesday lunchtime (indicating any time that you would NOT be available that day), so that I may endeavour to make arrangements: otetzmark@hotmail.com
Given that next Sunday’s Liturgy is followed by a General Parish Meeting, it will only be possible to hear a few confessions before Liturgy, and there will be no possibility to hear either long confessions, or confessions after Liturgy. I am sorry, but on top of my work rota, the meeting makes this unavoidable. Also, there will be no Saturday evening service.
As always, our thanks go to everyone who made our celebrations in Cardiff and Cheltenham possible this weekend, particularly our servers and singers, and our sisters who prepared the food enjoyed by our hungry and appreciative faithful.
It was – as always – a great joy to gather today for the Divine Liturgy, followed by the veneration of the Precious Cross and the blessing of honey.
Though yesterday was the feast of the Procession of the Life-Giving Cross and the All-Merciful Saviour, we were unable to have Liturgy, so we ‘caught up’ with August’s first feast of the Saviour at compline yesterday evening and today, after Liturgy.
Thank you all who contributed to today’s Liturgy, and a joyful celebration of the feast of St Seraphim, and thank you to our parishioners who sent greetings from their holidays in Russia and Ukraine!Continue reading →
Greetings as we celebrate Pentecost-Trinity, and sincere thanks to all who worked very hard to ensure such a joyful and festive Troitsa at St John’s, where we celebrated the Liturgy before a lunchbreak outside and the return to church for the Kneeling Vespers.
This coming weekend we will celebrate Troitsa – Trinity-Pentecost – with vespers at 16:30 on Saturday and the Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning at 11:00.Continue reading →
Today has been a very busy day in the chaplaincy, both for the Oratorians and I, as we prepare for the end of the academic year, the end of Father Sebastian’s tenure as Catholic chaplain to the University and a period in which Newman Hall has been my base in our parish life in the city.Continue reading →
