"I am the door. By me if any man enter in he shall be saved, and shall go in and out and find pasture." - John 10:9 At every parish where I have had the pleasure of attending services, there is always a small group of people who find their way all the way up to the church building but don't actually attend services. At one parish it was a group of male gypsies who talked on cellphones or smoked cigarettes. At another it was a few Protestant husbands who, though they never attended services, opened the parish doors for people as they filed in. At yet another parish the men stood in the narthex and chatted until it was time to receive and then got in line. Latin or Greek Catholic, Eastern or Oriental Orthodox I see the same small throng of men standing next to the front door, but not standing, sitting, or kneeling amongst the people. If it were me (and I can only speak for myself here) this option would be an unsavory one. The boredom would be immediate. The anxiety of som...
Admittedly, I've been blessed to meet both Bishop BENJAMIN and Father Eric, but this was an absolutely fascinating article to read. Thank you very much for posting the link.
ReplyDeleteJosephus, your headline is slightly inaccurate: they visited the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia (which is a single autocephalous church), but did not visit Slovakia. It would be akin to saying "Delegation Visited the United States, Canada and Mexico" when they just went to New York.
ReplyDeleteA point worth making. Odd, considering the make up of the Metropolia that they didn't visit the land where many of their people came from.
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