Sunday – the Feast of the All-Merciful Saviour and the Life-Giving Cross

Sunday 14 August: 11:00 Hours and Liturgy

St John’s Church, St Johns Crescent, Canton, Cardiff. CF5 1NX

Dear brothers and sisters

This Sunday, we will celebrate the feast of the All-Merciful Saviour and the Procession of the Life-Giving Cross, so although it is the beginning of the Dormition Fast, we start ‘Post’ with a feast on the very first day!

For some of our parishioners, this will be their first Dormition Fast, as we prepare for the Feast of the Dormition and Assumption of the Mother of God with fourteen days without meat, fish, eggs and dairy food (though we eat fish on the feast of the Transfiguration).

Sunday will be the first of August’s feasts of the Saviour, “Medoviy Spas”, with the blessing of honey at the end of the Liturgy. So… please remember to bring your honey or baked goods (honey cakes, poppy-seed cakes or biscuits etc.) for the blessing at the end of the Liturgy, after we have venerated the Life-Giving Cross and the icon of the All-Merciful Saviour.

We wil lalso venerate the relics of St Panteleimon, whose feast fell on Tuesday, this week.

As always, I encourage you to support your LOCAL beekeepers. Pay extra and buy a jar of local honey! 

Help our LOCAL bees by supporting our LOCAL beekeepers.

“This feast was instituted by a mutual agreement of the Greeks and Russians at the time of the Greek Emperor Manuel and the Russian Prince Andrew in commemoration of the simultaneous victories of the Russians over the Bulgarians and the Greeks over the Saracens [in 1164]. In both of these battles, crosses were carried by the armies from which heavenly rays shone. It was therefore instituted that, on August 1, the Cross be carried first to the middle of the Church of the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) and after that, along the streets for the people to venerate as a commemoration of the miraculous help of the Cross in previous battles. This was not an ordinary cross but the true Honorable Cross which was kept in the church of the imperial court. On July 31, the Honorable Cross was carried from the imperial court to the Church of the Holy Wisdom of God and from there it was carried along the streets for the consecration of the earth and the air. Finally, on August 14, it was again returned to the church of the imperial palace.”

St Nikolai Velimirovic in the Prologue from Ochrid

May God bless you all!

In Christ – Fr Mark