About Us
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Father Stephen
Some Information About Our Parish
We started in 1986 to serve the Orthodox Christians in the area and those interested in Orthodoxy. Initially the community was very small but has grown steadily ever since it started.
We bought our own church in 1994. In origin this church is very ancient dating to well before the Great Schism of 1054. It is therefore the first originally Orthodox church to be returned to Orthodoxy in Britain.
Our parish belongs to that part of the Church under the Patriarch of Constantinople - known as the OEcumenical Patriarchate. It is, and always has been, a multi-national part of the Church.
We are a mixed congregation of Greek, British, Romanian and Russian origins. Several of the members of our parish are converts to Orthodoxy. They come from a wide range of different Christian backgrounds, but increasingly now, no previous Christian origins at all.
The services are conducted in English and Greek.
The Orthodox Church does not fit into the Roman Catholic / Protestant scheme. It is much older and is fundamentally different in a number of important ways.
The Orthodox Church IS the Early Church. It has never deviated from the fundamental Faith of the Apostles.
The Orthodox Church is attractive to many people in the West because it preserves the fundamentals of the Apostolic Faith and morals, and because it does not change to conform with the latest fashions and whims of Society.
The Orthodox Church is said to be the only Episcopal Church that is growing in Britain today.
We welcome visitors who come with a genuine desire to find and worship God.
When you arrive you will probably find that something is already happening, light a candle and find a place to stand. Watch and listen. If you find standing for a length of time difficult please sit; but be prepared to stand for the censings, processions, reading of the Gospel and the singing of the Creed and Lord's Prayer.
The Orthodox Church does not give communion to non-Orthodox.
The Sunday Liturgy lasts about an hour and a quarter.
There is an opportunity for a cup of coffee and a chat at the end. Please join us!
Researching back through old copies of "The Spring", and the predecessing hand written postcards, has reminded me of
so many things in the life of our community. Things that now raise a chuckle,
or embarrassment, or amazement at what was achieved from such unpromising
beginnings. The very fact that our parish exists at all is as good a proof as
one can have for the existence of God and of His Blessing! I want to come back
to that in a moment but first I want to say something of the underlying
assumptions which we had when the community began in 1988.
The first assumption was about Orthodoxy: Orthodoxy is the original, pure, true form of Christianity in all
its fullness founded by Christ Himself and preserved in the lives of the
Martyrs, Saints, Fathers and all the faithful people of the Church to this
day. There are other forms of Christianity which range from the deeply
heretical extreme of the Jehovah's Witnesses to those which have in one way or
another "missed the mark" and gone off on a curving tangent away from the
Truth of Orthodoxy.
The second assumption arises directly
from the first which is that therefore. Orthodoxy, and membership of the
Orthodox Church is a gift of God and a privilege that is intended for ALL,
irrespective of race, culture or anything else. At the Liturgy we pray for ALL
and as a Church we exist to serve ALL. This means that we Orthodox are all
called to "preach the Gospel". Unfortunately this phrase in our age tends to
be associated with a particular kind of rather aggressive, and often
judgemental preaching of the Tele-evangelist type, which in my view is at the
best counter productive and at the worst positively harmful. It seems to
stress the "Goods in the Window" without much thought as to the "Goods in the
Shop". The best preaching is done without words and through the example of
unselfish, devout lives. So for us, preaching the Gospel has meant serving the
Liturgy and the other services and trying to learn and practise the Faith.
Doing this has had the remarkable effect that people have come to us. Some
have found God through what we have been doing and have joined the Church,
some stay, some to go on to other parishes in England. And those who have been
"born into the Faith" have discovered it anew and fresh. Not all have stayed,
not all have found God. But fundamentally that is a problem for God Himself
for, are we not told in St John's Gospel, "None shall come to me unless the
Father call him"?
The third assumption is that though
Orthodoxy is the ancient Faith of Britain it now has no authentic English
expression. It has authentic Greek, Russian, Serbian, Georgian, Romanian etc.
expressions but no English expression now, although once it did. I do not
believe that we can revive or recreate this old expression simply because we
are so far from it in time, culture and indeed ignorance - for we simply do
not know what it was like. There have been attempts to recreate these things
but they have been extremely unsuccessful and have quickly withered away. We
therefore have no choice but accept and embrace Orthodox in the form that it
comes to us. For our parish that has been primarily in a Greek expression, but
we do have, and value expressions from other backgrounds as well. One day,
probably in several generations time, there will be a true living English
expression of Orthodoxy. It will have developed from all the traditions that
now exist, it will be true to all of them, yet will be recognisably English.
We are not there yet and none of those who read what I am now writing will
live to see it. But what we now do and how our parish develops will have some
small bearing on the eventual outcome.
Accepting Orthodoxy in a cultural
package that is not one's own, can either be a huge difficulty or a wonderful
opportunity. I have always seen it as the latter and have found in Orthodoxy
and Greek Orthodoxy in particular a wonderful kaleidoscope of beauty, life and
friendship. I think we must all try hard to see it as an opportunity because
the alternative will mean an inward looking, self-conscious and clique ridden
kind of community which actually rejects those who do not seem "to fit". Sad
to say there are communities that are exactly like that.
Another important point related to
this theme is that those of us who come from a Western Christian background
have a very great deal to unlearn. Let me give a simple example. If you come
from the Church of England and are used to the Book of Common Prayer -the
Anglican book of services that was used by all Anglicans for 400 years, you
will find that the Resurrection of Christ is mentioned in the services
exactly once - on Easter Sunday morning (apart from in the Nicene Creed, recited every Sunday). There is however an immense stress on
the Cross and the sacrifice of Christ. Orthodoxy however not only mentions the
Resurrection repeatedly (and very little else) all through the period of the
Pentecostarion ie from Pascha to Pentecost, but also with two exceptions (Palm
Sunday and Pentecost) every Sunday is a commemoration of the Resurrection with
a Resurrection Gospel and reflections in the services about the Resurrection.
Now this is an enormous difference. To begin with, those of us from Western
backgrounds tend to interpret what we hear in a Western way. Eventually
however we realise that there is no Western interpretation and that in fact we
have to look at the whole matter entirely differently. It is like someone who
can only see in black and white suddenly being able to see in colour, or
someone who is blind suddenly being able to see.
So three assumptions:
Now let me return to the point I made at the beginning concerning the finding
of God through Orthodoxy. In the prayer that we say at the start of all
our worship - the Troparion of the Holy Spirit we say this:
"O Heavenly King O comforter, the Spirit of Truth, who art in all places and fittest all things come and abide in us."
He is present everywhere and fills
everything yet we do not realise this most of the time and indeed we have
separated ourselves from Him. So why is it that we suddenly become aware of
Him, yet so often He seems so far away. We do not know. This is something that
is known only to God. Yet for some reason, unbidden He makes Himself known to
us. We might say to others: "Can you not see Him upon His throne? Can you not
see the angels? Can you not hear them singing? Can you not smell the scent of
heaven?" And all they can say is "no" because they have not seen, or heard or
smelt these things. We have done so because God has allowed it and we have
done it with the inner senses of our spirits. When we first find God He can be
intensely real to us often for quite a long time. I can remember feeling His
presence so strongly that I was more or less unable to think about anything
else at all. It went on for about a fortnight. Yet after a while this presence
faded, and it faded for two reasons. The first is that God will not force
Himself on us, He reveals Himself and then gently slips back to allow us to
respond. Not just in a moment but in the whole way we live our lives. As we go
on in the spiritual life He gives us further fleeting glimpses guiding us and
calling us on. At some periods these come quite often. Sometime they do not
come for years and in those times we have to learn to persevere and to be
strong in our Faith. We are being tested with the words of the Lord to St
Peter. "Do you love me?"
However there are other times when we are the agents of the separation
because of sin. We should remember the vision of Isaiah when he saw the
Lord in the Temple.
"Woe is me, for I am pricked to the heart; for being
a man, and having unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people having
unclean lips: and I have seen with mine eyes the King, the Lord of Hosts."
(Is 6:5)
Isaiah was aware of the sin that separated him from God but so often we are not. It is unfashionable to talk of sin, yet we only have to pick up a newspaper to read of it. It is unfashionable to say that it has consequences yet it does. Every sin causes scars on the soul and serious sin, such as when we break one of the Ten Commandments causes grave scars which take a long time to heal. And if we follow a sinful path, if we seek our own selfish will then we have turned our back on God and not only will we not see Him but we should not expect to see Him.
So if we feel that separation from
God what should we do? Well, we should acknowledge that we are sinners and
should get on with our repenting; also we should have faith and be prepared
to persevere.
There is one temptation we should
avoid. If God has made Himself known to us in a particular circumstance - say
the Liturgy one Sunday or the Vigil we should avoid thinking that in order to
repeat the experience we must go and do this thing, or go to this place in
exactly the same way. Lightning, we are told, does not hit the same place
twice. Certainly the Holy Spirit does not. There is a reason for this. We are
not to think that the tangible things that we have around us are permanent.
Only one thing is permanent - God Himself. We live in a world and live lives
of constant motion and change. The stillness of God is found only fleetingly
in these things. His permanence is found through love, sacrifice and denial of
self. Newman said that to be a Christian is to change; to be a saint is to
have changed much.
Recently I was struck be reading some
instructions on a packet of sweet pea seeds. They said "The purpose of all
plants is to reproduce, sweet peas are no exception. If you let them set seed
they will stop flowering, so to keep them flowering all flowers must be
picked." What struck me as strange were the bold words "the purpose of all
plants is to reproduce" Of course in a sense this must be true but those words
do not account for the strangeness and wonder of plants, the beauty of their
flowers and foliage, the wonderful properties of their seeds, flowers, foliage
and roots. Surely there is more to it? It is that plants, as with all created
things like animals as well as the stars and a smooth pebble in the bed of a
stream, exist to give glory to their Creator. They do it by nature, unaware,
one assumes of what they do. What of us? I am reminded of Psalm 8:
"For I will regard the heavens, the work of thy fingers: the moon and stars, which thou hast established. What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou hast made him a little less than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour; and thou hast set him over the works of thy hands."
In a garden the gardener takes the
works of God's hands and with care, nurture and selection of seed and
propagation takes the glories of God and helps to make them yet more glorious.
A simple white rose becomes a glorious crimson double.
And surely that, in a sense, is the
purpose of our parish. It is a place where we may all learn of God and meet
Him. Where we may learn to love and be loved. Where we may learn to repent and
change. Where we learn to become our true selves so that by nature we are
constantly glorifying God in all that we do. So that like the most beautiful
of flowers we are found to be numbered amongst the saints.
O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is thy name in all the earth.
Father Stephen