Saint Birinus Orthodox Community: December 2017

+St. John Maximovitch

"Never, never, never let anyone tell you that, in order to be Orthodox, you must be Eastern. The West was fully Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies." +Saint John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco

You are the inheritors of a precious treasure: the authentic and Orthodox rites that nourished thousands now in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Orthodox Church thanks you for preserving this tradition all these years, so that it could be restored to her through Western Rite Orthodox parishes. +Bishop Basil, Bishop of Wichita and the Midwest of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

27 November 2017

December 2017

SCHEDULE OF SERVICES

DECEMBER 2017

3rd December: Feast of CHRIST The KING and Pilgrimage to Greensted Church: Western Rite Terce will not be sung but at 12:30 p.m. there will be a Mass celebrated by Father Thomas at Saint Andrew's church on the Feast of Saint Edmund by the old calendar.

The body of Saint Edmund, King of East Anglia, and England’s first patron saint martyred in 869AD (the Normans replaced him later with St. George) rested in this church in 1013 on its way to Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.


The spandral in the beam near the door shows St Edmund's head guarded by the wolf.

10th December: ADVENT I: 10:00 a.m. Western Rite Terce sung at the Saint Aldhelm Chapel in Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Saint Osmond's Road, Poole, BH14 9JG followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

17th December: ADVENT II: 10:00 a.m. Western Rite Terce sung at the Saint Aldhelm Chapel in Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Saint Osmond's Road, Poole, BH14 9JG followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

24th December: ADVENT III (Gaudete Sunday): 10:00 a.m. Western Rite Terce sung at the Saint Aldhelm Chapel in Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Saint Osmond's Road, Poole, BH14 9JG followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

31st December: ADVENT IV: 10:00 a.m. Western Rite Terce sung at the Saint Aldhelm Chapel in Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Saint Osmond's Road, Poole, BH14 9JG followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

A Prayer to Saint Aldhelm

Thou didst set the lamp of Orthodoxy alight amid the gloom of the dark night of thy times, O blessed Aldhelm, favourite of Christ; wherefore thou dwellest now in everlasting light, where thou prayest that our souls be saved.

Thy radiant and God-pleasing countenance sheddeth light on all the English lands, O blessed Aldhelm our father; for spurning thy royal rank and all worldly pursuits, thou didst eagerly seek the true knowledge of God, and having devoted thy life to prayer and the ascetic struggle, thou has been vouchsafed to behold the Unapproachable One. Him do thou ever beseech, O hierarch of Christ, that in His mercy He save our souls. Amen.

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