Theophany Parish News: 6/19 January 2025

Dear brothers and sisters, S prazdnikom! Happy feast!Where do we begin in expressing our joy and thanks for today’s wonderful feast of Theophany in Canton?

What a glorious celebration of the Lord’s baptism, and how wonderful it was to have so many people join us in St John’s, not only from South Wales and the West of England, but also from as far away as Oxford.

It was lovely to see St John’s so full, and to have so many confessions and people communing! We congratulate all who partook of the Most Pure and Holy Mysteries.

Many thanks to our dedicated readers and singers who energetically served for four and a half hours, and to our sisters for flowers, catering and practical organisation. Thanks also to the children who greatly enjoyed filling our vessels with over fifty litres of water for the Great Blessing.

As our time in St John’s draws to a close, it is good that today’s joyful celebration will be a happy memory to counter the sadness and negativity that overshadows our unexpected and undesired exodus from Canton. 

Let this feast and the consecration, not only of the waters but also of the place where have worshipped, be our offering and an imprint of holiness.

Please contact the clergy to arrange Theophany house blessings, and ensure you keep the eight days of the feast with joy and gladness!

The joy of today’s celebration came after a lovely celebration of the forefeast in Cheltenham, where we had a goodly sized congregation for our Gloucestershire mission, and were spiritually refreshed and blessed by our Liturgy, which is now celebrated by Father Mark the Younger, freeing me to sing with our little group of sisters.

This coming Tuesday will see another visit to hopefully sort arrangements for our future worship-place, so your prayers will be greatly appreciated.

Rather than rush between churches on Thursdays, we will now simply have our evening devotions and confessions in Nazareth House, allowing after work visits for our parishioners who are unable to attend in the daytime.

This week, we will have our newly established akathist devotions in. Nazareth House at 18:00, and this week we will chant the akathist to the Mother of God in honour of her icon “The Increase of Reason – Pribavlenie Uma”, with a short talk on the origin of this sacred icon.

We have very much enjoyed praying the akathists to St Nicholas and St Panteleimon in Nazareth House over the last few weeks, and agreed that we would like a weekly akathist between confessions. I will be available for confessions for an hour before the akathist, and hope that it will be possible for the Psalter, or other prayers to be offered at this time. Confessions will continue after the akathist.

We will meet as usual in the Oratory at 15:00 on Friday, and I would like this to be our weekly devotion to the Cross and Passion before the relic of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross. I will be available to hear confessions before and after.

As I stressed in Cheltenham, yesterday, please remember that the clergy are here to pray for your intentions seven days a week, so please communicate intercessions for the living and departed to us for services.

We ask your prayers for Alexander, Porphyrios, Valentina, Nataliya and Ludmilla, Lyubov who are unwell, and for the newly departed Dumitru.

Please also pray for Tara and Stefan as they sit mock O levels, and keep the students in your prayers: Ambrose, Henry, Kalina, Mark, Alexander, Nikolai, Valeria, Anastasia, Xenia, Christopher, Elizabeth and Lloyd.

We congratulate Lloyd on his formal entry into the catechumenate, conducted after the Great Blessing of the Waters: the feast being a wonderful day to formally begin the baptismal journey.

I look forward to us repeating the prayers and blessing the catechumenate of some of our other young people next week.

After having no reply regarding Saturday’s intended Llantwit pilgrimage, Father Luke and I have decided to make our own little local pilgrimage to St Anthony’s Well in Llansteffan at the mouth of the River Towe, South of Carmarthen. We do not expect Cardiff and Vale parishioners, but hope that ROCOR faithful in West Wales might be able to join us. We will meet in the carpark at Llansteffan beach for an 11:30 departure on the cliff path walk to the holy well.

Finally, next Sunday, 26th January is World Leprosy Day, and I very much hope that once again, members of our communities will support initiatives to continue the fight against this horrendous, cruel and debilitating disease.

In Odisha, in eastern India, the Leprosy Mission of England and Wales has located a leper colony with the most appalling conditions they have ever encountered, with a desperate need for water, sanitation, medical supplies, and footwear for leprous feet unable to feel pain and injury, in addition to educational and training needs.

Few of us can understand the terrible suffering, poverty and misery of those afflicted with leprosy, and I urgently urge you to support those seeking to alleviate suffering and poverty.

Any donations can be given at the end of Liturgy for the next two Sundays, and a short litia to St Lazarus, the patron saint of lepers. Will be chanted at the end of next Sunday’s Liturgy.“

Verily, I say to you, inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.”

Let us love the Lord through our mercy for those who suffer, that we might obtain mercy.

May God bless you.

In Christ – Hieromonk Mark

Posted in Newsletter, Parish News.