Categories: orthodox-life, parish-life
Date: 08 October 2006 04:01:51
A beautiful sunny and warm Sydney day, though the wind seems to have whipped itself up: dust -- which shows how dry things are -- was blowing across the road almost the entire trip home from church. I managed to get all of the work I had finished by this morning: I got up at 5:30am today to finish it so that I could get to church: such dedication.
Today I visited another parish in our Archdiocese, St Nicholas, Bankstown. St Nicholas' is an interesting parish as it was once within ROCOR, was then an Orthodox Church in America parish in Australia, and is now within the Antiochian Archdiocese. Unlike the other parishes in our Archdiocese, which use either Arabic or English and are on the Revised Julian Calendar, St Nicholas' uses Slavonic and follows the Julian Calendar.
The parish priest is currently on holidays and the deacon who assists at our parish on Saturday nights for Great Vespers and Bible Study was leading the service, which was the Liturgy of the Presanctified -- presanctified as in the elements have been previously consecrated -- as only priests may say the Eucharistic Prayer in the Orthodox Church.
It was a true joy and blessing to worship with this parish community: we have not yet found a place to call home, we hire a hall each week, so it is always a blessing to worship in a dedicated church, with icons, and paintings, on every wall, candles burning brightly everywhere and the glorious iconostasis. As well, seeing how people from other backgrounds and traditions within Orthodoxy worship is always interesting and encouraging: the chant in Slavonic churches is very different to that I've experience in my parish and the Arabic-langauge parishes: the flow, the pitches, the melodies...all so very beautiful.
After the Liturgy I had a late breakfast (it was to be lunch, but the Lunch Menu didn't start to midday, and it was 11am) with the deacon and the priest's son at a local establishment. Very civilised. And now I'm ready for a sleep.