Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
May the Lord bless you!
This weekend services for the glorification of St. Mardary are being held in Chicago. The Serbian Patriarch and many other bishops, including our Archbishop Peter, are attending. Among the bishops present is Bishop Vasilije, the Serbian bishop of the diocese of Srem, the same diocese which in the 1920s became the residence of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) as well as other Russian clergy and laity who had fled the communist revolution. Bishop Vasilije is seeking funds to aid in the building of a small church in his diocese in honor of the White Russian Orthodox Christians who were guests of the King of Yugoslavia following the Russian Civil War. This church will be modeled after the beautiful temple in Darmstadt, Germany.
Though some of our parishioners do not have any particular Russian ethnicity, nonetheless, without the White Movement there would not be a Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Further, the first First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), the great educator and theologian who was so influential on the Orthodox world of the pre- and post-Revolutionary period, was a guest of the Patriarch of Serbia at the Patriarchal palace in Sremski Karlovci – first of Patriarch Demetrius, later of Patriarch Barnabas. In other words, this is a worthy cause and one which we really should support.
We will take a special collection on Sunday after liturgy for this cause.
Services are as usual this weekend: Confession at 5:30 p.m., followed by Vigil at 6 p.m. on Saturday. Divine Liturgy on Sunday begins at 10 a.m.
Sincerely in Christ,
priest Daniel