Orthodox friendship

As the car was still in the garage being repaired, I had to take the bus into town and walk to St Germans for the 10.00 Mass. No school class there this week, so it was a quiet affair for the regulars in the Lady Chapel. After chatting in the day centre for a while, I caught the 45 bus from Newport Road back into town and was pleased to find it stopped outside the Westgate Hotel. Then I only had to cross the road wait a few minutes to board a 61 bus, to go home leave my bag, then get back on another bus into town to take me to St John's, where I'd arranged to meet for lunch with Dr Laura Ciobanu, making her annual visit to Cardiff from Bucharest, as she has done every year since we first met at St John's on Good Friday eleven years ago.

We discovered that a Eucharist was just about to start so we joined the congregation, all old friends from times past who greeted us warmly. Sarah invited me to join her at the alter to administer the chalice at Communion. Standing there in prayer with her, it was as if time had stood still, even though it's now six years last week since my farewell service at the same altar. St John's is still the place I feel I come home to in Cardiff and the place I go away from, on locum assignments near and far away. Not that I feel I define myself as being the ex-Vicar of St John's City Parish Church Cardiff, but rather that it represents the kind of open hearted catholic Anglican missionary spirit that runs in my blood.

We ate and chatted in the tea room for a two hours after the service. Laura brought me seven intricately decorated Easter eggs as a gift from home. She told me that her kindergarten teacher, now in her late eighties decorates these in the intricate traditional patterns of the region where she still lives in North West Romania, and set her a large batch to share, so I am blessed and delighted. This is Easter week in the Romanian Orthodox church so I enjoyed greeting her with Cristos inviat! Adevarat inviat!

When we parted company, I went to the office for a while before heading home. Father Mark emailed and asked if I'd like to celebrate the Ascension Day Eucharist at the other St John's (Canton), to which I readily agreed, as the St German's evening Eucharist is going to be covered by another priest, due to a mix up over my availability dates. It's getting a bit confusing now, as we're here for a while, then not here, then back again. I have to keep a close eye on the diary - I'm nowadays far more reliant on my digital Google calendar and its notifications on my phones than I ever was on a paper diary. It's a good thing really, as I'm less likely to miss appointments than I used to be.

  

Orthodox memories

I celebrated the Eucharist in honour of Saints Simon and Jude for the Wednesday congregation at St German's this morning. No school class present as it's half term this week. It aroused memories for me of starting work in the St Paul's Area in Bristol as Team Rector of St Agnes and St Simon with St Werburgh this autumn, forty years ago. This day was one specially observed in the Parish, as the benefice in post war years had absorbed the neighbouring parish of St Simon and there were still a few St Simon's people attending St Agnes. The redundant church had been given to Bristol's Greek Orthodox community, and I'd discovered this in my first year as a University student, as part of my ecumenical education. The impression made on me by taking part in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom for the first time was profound and lasting, a landmark moment in my spiritual journey. 

At that service I met Fr Nicholas Behr, newly ordained Russian Orthodox Deacon, just arrived in the city with a mission to grow a congregation among groups of Slavic speaking exiles. We became friends and over subsequent years the conversations we had about our different kinds of Christian tradition showed me how much I'd actually absorbed about Anglican Christianity, from attending church and listening to full content sermons from a priest who really cared. All part of my journey towards ordination.

Within years Fr Nicholas had acquired a church across the street from the University refectory and had grown a Russian Orthodox church congregation, which now has a couple of dozen nationalities among its members. The Greek church flourishes too, having survived the almost total devastation of its neighbourhood, due to the creation of a motorway junction right next to it. With its local parish population decimated, only an eclectic linguistic minority group was in a position to keep it open. The church spire lost its weather-vane and top section in the late eighties and was capped, giving it a distinctive profile in the town-scape, just south of the Ashley Road junction.

I rarely went to the Greek Church, even for social purposes, after I became Vicar, but I kept in touch with Fr. Nicholas and occasionally attended services and sang in his English liturgy choir. Once, I persuaded him to celebrate Vespers in St Agnes as part of our Unity Week observances. We had good relations with local Roman Catholics and local Methodists were partners with us in an Ecumencial Area of Experiment, as it was then called. We also had several afro-caribbean Christian groups in the area, and St Agnes occasionally offered them hospitality, also a tiny group of Latvian Lutherans, a legacy of wartime exiles in the city. It was a time of rich ecumenical and inter-faith experiences that was the richest of my entire ministry.