Saturday, December 6, 2014

Bp. Nikon Visits St. John Monastery

ROCA: ( humanly smoothed out machine translation)- Vl. Bishop Nikon Visits the Women's Monastery of St. John, in Egorovka, on the Feast of the Entry Into The Temple of The Mother Of God-

 article found on:http://internetsobor.org

ROCA: The arrival of Bishop Nikon in the St. John Monastery on the Feast of The Entry Into The Temple of the Virgin Mary, The Mother of God, Photos and videos

Author: Vera nun incl. December 5, 2014. Published in the ROCA (Views: 55)
November 21 / December 4, 2014  On the eve of the Feast of the Entry Into The Temple  of Mary Mother of God, at the  St. John Convent in Egorovka (Odessa Diocese of the ROCOR), Ukraine,  visited,  His Grace Nikon, Bishop of Ishim and Siberia.

His Eminence served the  ​​public worship, Vespers and Divine Liturgy, in the  priestly rank. The two  choirs sang, helping the worship. It was a joy to pray on  this holiday, together with the  bishop and we  felt prayerful, especially with the monastic atmosphere that was in the temple. After the Vigil,  Mother Abbess Alexandra dressed in a cassock/podrasnik  and a cover (shawl with the corners) the recently arrived at the monastery, a  sister from Canada - novice Anna Sauer.

During the Divine Liturgy almost all nuns and parishioners were partakers of Holy Communion. His Eminence gave his spoken word, on the occasion of the sermon.

After the Liturgy, Bishop Nikon and the sisters, with a triumphant spirit,  (carrying in front,  the main icon of the festal celebration and with singing) proceeded into the monastery refectory for a festive dinner. Then, with the ringing of the bells, the sisters accompanied His Grace to the monastery gates, and then Bishop Nikon departed from the monastery.
 
 


More Pictures: Picture Report found on Internet Sobor







RocorMP Abp. Kyrill Birthday Congratulations

A Digusted Sharing: (what was shared with me)- Western American Diocese - His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill Receives Congratulations on His 60th Birthday

Shared with me, by a fellow ROCA church member, both of us having once considered this man, born Boris Michael Dmitrieff , born and raised  in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., as our dearest friend, and he was also my diocesan ROCOR bishop....before he betrayed to the MP.
I knew him since he was about 17 or 18 years old.
He and I were close confidants and personal friends, for years and years....until he betrayed our church and America, his actual native land.
I now have nothing to say to him, nothing indeed.
When he became a party of the betrayal plot, [ for his love of money and the praise of men],  to submit our once free ROCOR under the control of the so-called, 'Mother Church', the communist founded false Russian Church, named the MP,- he betrayed the Holy Orthodox Faith of his pious Orthodox parents and family- dear people whom I knew very well, MEMORY ETERNAL! to them,   (who originally came from China, with Archbishop John Maximovitch), he betrayed the sacred cause of an eventual true freeing of Russia, and a restoration of a free genuine local Russian Church there, and he betrayed his native country, America too....our country which gave him EVERYTHING that his parents or himself ever received in their or his earthly lives.
Now he is but a virtual fifth-columnist de facto enemy agent, dressed as an Orthodox Archbishop, while residing in this country...which
Putin all the time. tells the entire  world is the number one evil enemy nation of his Russia,
in America, a mere dupe and an instrument, an obedient ever- eager-to -please and to be of service to his masters in Moscow,  a tool of the Kremlin KGB gangsters, and their ...captive MP 'church'...as is the  entire, based in America, [ America being Putin's 'enemy country'!],   ROCOR/MP organization.

Boris Michael Dmitrieff is a new Judas! SHAME ON HIM!...and may, somehow, he repent before he leaves this world. God grant this!
He used to be my best friend, and a fellow Orthodox brother, [ or so I had thought for many past years],  and I was truly his, -but that is over, forever.
He may fool many people here on earth,  as also does Hilarion Kapral and his  ROCOR/MP, but GOD IS NEVER FOOLED!
Now, no, I will not give him my 60th. birthday congratulations...together with his 'patriarch',
KGB special agent,   comrade Kyrill Gundaev!
I am simply not in the same exalted league with Mr. Gundaev...he outclasses little me.
His 'patriarchal' 60th.  birthday congratulations will have to suffice for Boris!
Rd. Daniel Everiss, in Oregon

From:
Subject: Western American Diocese - His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill Receives Congratulations on His 60th Birthday
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 20:13:41 -0500
To: oregdan@hotmail.com

Did you send your congratulations?


http://wadiocese.org/news_141127_3.html

His Eminence Archbishop Kyrill Receives Congratulations on His 60th Birthday

Letter From His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and all of Russia KIRIL
To His Eminence Kyrill, Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America:
 Your Eminence!
 I offer you my heart-felt congratulations upon the occasion of your 60th Birthday.
 From childhood, having chosen the path of service to Christ, you have fully devoted yourself to the Lord and His Holy Church. Having received the necessary theological education, you decisively handed yourself over to Divine Providence and took upon yourself monastic vows. Seeing your zeal and desire to serve Him in Spirit and Truth, God has called you to apostolic work.
 Over 20 years have passed since the archpastoral omophorion has been placed upon your shoulders. With humility and meekness all these years you have performed various archpastoral labors in the San Francisco diocese. While continuing the work of ever-memorable Vladyka Anthony you have witnessed to the beauty and truth of Orthodoxy and carry the light of the Gospel to those who dwell on the North American continent.
Bearing in mind your zealous archpastoral service and in connection with your 60th Birthday I bestow upon you a commemorative panagia.
I prayerfully wish you good health, unfailing joy in Christ Jesus and God’s speed in your further endeavors to the glory of the Holy Trinity and to the profit of Mother-Church.
With love in the Lord, +KIRIL, PATRIARCH OF MOSCOW AND ALL RUSSIA
Russian original here:
The original can be read  http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/305461.html  (in Russian).

Some Ukraine Hitory

A LENGTHY HISTORY: (Polish, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, Ukrainian, etc. intertwined history)- Some of the tortured twisted history of the region and people, known as 'Ukraine',


Comment: This indepth history, only one study among many,  of that tortured region of eastern and southern European history and its varied peoples, give ...one... small glimpse as to why there is today, there, still so many troubles and divisions-even before Putin's new added interventions and invasion and warfare.

 http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5cP%5cO%5cPoland.htm

*After reading just a small portion of this extremely complicated history, is it any wonder that today, this region is still a very very confused place on this earth!...even before Putin's current interventions.

Excerpt, in this study,  about the history of, 'The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church':


 The Polish Autocephalous Orthodox church (PAOC) emerged in the 1920s as a body serving the needs of the approximately four million Ukrainian, Belarusian, and (to a lesser extent) Russian and Polish adherents of Orthodoxy. The majority of them were located in the areas of interwar Poland that had been in the Russian Empire (notably the Kholm region). In the interwar era the PAOC maintained a strong Ukrainophile current, and during the Second World War PAOC bishops played an important role in the establishment of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church. Nevertheless a strong Russophile current existed within the church hierarchy. The Poles maintained their efforts to convert the Orthodox population to Catholicism, in some cases by force and in general through the launching of the neo-union [ i.e.  Uniatism, -joining to the Papacy], campaign.
After the Second World War the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox church, under pressure from the Soviet authorities, lost its independence. In 1945 Metropolitan Dionisii Valedinsky was removed from his post; it was filled in 1951 by a Russian Orthodox hierarch. More significant, the 1924 Tomos issued by the Patriarch of Constantinople, which provided the PAOC with its autocephaly, was revoked in 1948 by the Patriarch of Moscow, who now brought the church under his jurisdiction. Since then the Russian language has occupied a more prominent position in ecclesiastical affairs, and much of the Ukrainian character of the church has been muted. At present the PAOC has approx 500,000 faithful (primarily Ukrainians and Belarusians) and is centered in Podlaskie voivodeship, with smaller concentrations in the other voivodeships

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Putin AAH! or UGH!

for Thought and Information: AAH! or "UGH!"-?, More About the Man, Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin


Comment: Well, whatever anyone thinks about him, good or bad or somewhere in the middle, he is taking Russia backwards, to its dismal soviet era past, not forward. And all we hear from him, as to his rational for all that he is doing:
are the tired old sour big propaganda mass lies of the communist era....'the evil west', 'evil America', etc, are 'forcing him', to.. 'defend Russia', etc, etc, etc,.  ad nauseam.
But who are paying for his militaristic adventures? ...the common Russian people, [ and thus too, all the other non-Russian ethnicities, -which actually outnumber the ethnic Russians now,  living inside of his Russian Federation, ever expanding borders, too] especially the old and the poorer  uneducated classes, and the far-flung rural Russians, while, ignorant of factual history [ not the soviet lie version],  many of the current younger generation, [ poor deluded fools!], are mindlessly cheering him, as the old saying puts it so well: '"Everyone loves a parade!", [ just like the mindless hypnotized German throngs hailed their dear national savior, Adolph Hitler, not that long ago in history],
while many of the younger better educated ones, [ and those who have the  monetary means to do so,  which many poorer, barely making ends meet from day to day,  Russians do not have, i.e. they cannot afford to emigrate anywhere!, and who have learned a foreign language or two] are rapidly fleeing their beloved native land, seeing there, no good future for themselves or their children, and are going for refuge (once again!) to evil America and to the evil 'west', actually to....ANYWHERE!.... but.... Putin's captive neo-soviet Russia!
Most ethnic Russians too, who live in large numbers, in the bordering former soviet-satelite nations, want to stay there, where their lives are freer and generally better, and they do not want to move to Putin's Russia, except to visit their relatives from time to time.
How history seems to constantly repeat itself.
Rd. Daniel in Oregon
P.S. A hand held protest sign, in the official soviet Russian days,  from not that long ago:
"I would rather be dead,  in a 'capitalist hell', than alive, in a 'socialist workers' paradise'!"
Mr. Putin is struggling to restore that, 'socialist workers' paradise'.
GOD SAVE US ALL!









Wednesday, December 3, 2014

A short biography of ROCOR Bishop Constantine

(Jesensky or Essensky), born 1907 – died May 31, 1996, printed in 'Orthodox America'

Note: His body was just re-buried, by ROCOR/MP, on this December 1, 2014,  at Jordanville, from Blanco, Texas.




+May 18/31,1996
On May 31, 1996, Bishop Constantine (Jesensky, or Essensky)- departed this life. He was 89 years old. For the past five years he had been living in retirement at Christ of the Hills Monastery in Blanco, Texas, and it was there that his earthly remains were laid to rest, awaiting the General Resurrection. Emmanuel Jesensky, the future Bishop Constantine, was born in 1907 in St Petersburg, where his father worked in the Imperial Chancery. In the first year of the Revolution, the family moved to Riga, Latvia. Vladika's father was taken prisoner by the Bolsheviks and executed. His mother, on receiving this news, died of a heart attack, leaving eleven-year-old Emmanuel an orphan. He finished school and worked in a pharmacy. At the same time he studied iconography under the masterful Old Rite iconographer, Pimen Sofronov. In 1928 New Martyr Archbishop John of Riga blessed him to enter seminary. He graduated in 1930 and went to Paris, where he continued his studies and obtained his doctorate at the St Sergius Theological Academy. In 1932 Metropolitan Eulogius of Paris ordained him to the priesthood and sent him to Berlin, to the Church of Equal-to-the-Apostles Great Prince Vladimir, a distant ancestor. He served there for two years as second priest before being assigned rector of the Church of St Alexis Metropolitan of Moscow in Leipzig. During his four-year tenure there, he also served parishes in Kassel, Dresden and Einbeck.

      In 1938, Fr. Emmanuel and his parish left the Paris jurisdiction and joined the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. That same year he was sent as a delegate to the Second Pan-Diaspora Council. During the war he began to study medicine, completing four semesters at Berlin University. Due to ill health, he moved in 1945 to Bad-Hartzburg and was 'there during the American occupation.

      In 1949 Fr. Emmanuel emigrated to the United States. He served briefly in Washington DC and Trenton NJ before being assigned to Glen Cove NY, as rector of the Church of the Ascension. Fr Emmanuel had a particular love for the beauty of God's house, and, with his talent for iconography and his refined artistic sensibilities, he transformed the garage in which the church was located, into a lovely jewel, worthy of being God's temple. He had a great love for the Divine services, and his manner of serving was always dignified, never hurried, and deeply prayerful. One man, who had served as an acolyte under Vladika, said that when he served Liturgy, "his prayer was palpable. You could feel it!'
      It was evident to the church hierarchs that here was a suitable candidate for the episcopacy. In October 1967, Fr. Emmanuel was tonsured a monk by Archbishop Averky at Holy Trinity Monastery and given the name Constantine. Two months later, on the feast of the Kursk Icon of the Sign, he was consecrated Bishop of Brisbane. In the customary speech at his consecration, the new bishop described what had motivated him to dedicate himself to the service of the Church:

      "In answering this question, I cannot fail to recall the early years of my childhood, when my unforgettable nanny, who had also raised my father, placed in my receptive soul -- simply, but with love -- the first seeds of holy faith and piety. It was she who taught me to go to church and to love it. She often showed me a large Bible. I could scarcely tear myself away from it. It was also she who related to me Lives of the saints, and in such a lively and engaging manner. I would try to imitate them, denying myself many childish pleasures. God grant her the Kingdom of Heaven! Of course, my good parents also planted in my soul lofty impulses, teaching me to be a good Christian -- not just in word but in deed."

      In Australia, Bishop Constantine encountered many difficulties which finally compelled him to return to America. In 1978 he was made Vicar Bishop of Eastern America and New York. Three years later he was sent to shepherd the flock of Great Britain. His ascetic practices and the raw climate undermined his already poor health -- he suffered from pernicious anemia, a heart condition and bad arthritis --and in 1985 he returned to the United States to live in retirement. He spent summers at the Kursk Hermitage in Mahopac, New York, but the winters there were hard on his health, and in 1991 he moved to Christ of the Hills Monastery in Texas. Not only was the climate there suitable, but he was uplifted by the many visitors and pilgrims, and by the monks' readiness to learn from his monastic experience and his thorough knowledge of the services.

       Vladika Constantine was a true ascetic; he ate and slept very little. The monks noticed that the light in Vladika's cell would go on about 12:30 a.m., when he would get up to perform his rule of prayer. At about 2.'00 a.m. they regularly saw his bobbing flashlight as Vladika rnade the rounds of the monks' cells, praying and spreading God's blessing upon the sleeping occupants. In his last years, Vladika Constantine acquired the gift of compunction. He would often weep unaffectedly in receiving the Holy Mysteries.

       After a brief struggle with pneumonia, Bishop Constantine peacefully reposed as the monks around him read, at his request, the Prayers for the Departure of the Soul. His un-embalmed body lay in the church surrounded by Pentecost flowers for two days, without any sign of decomposition or rigor mortis. Those who had gathered for the occasion could not help but draw special significance from the Kneeling Prayers read on the eve of the funeral: "There is, therefore, no death for Thy servant, when we leave the body and come unto Thee, our God, but a translation from things most saddening unto things most beneficial and most delightful, and unto repose and joy." Bishop Constantine was buried after Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Holy Spirit, which this year coincided with the feast of Saints Constantine and Helen.
 
Sources: an Obituary prepared by the monks of Christ of the Hills Monastery, and a memorial article in Pravoslavnaya Rus', Jordanville: No. 14, 1996.


Orthodox America issue #141 July 1996
http://www.roca.org/OA/141/141ndx.htm

Re-burial of body of ROCOR Bishop Constantine (Essensky)

from Blanco, Texas, to Jordanville Cemetery-by ROCOR/MP, Dec. 1, 2014-  

Note: Originally, Bishop Constantine had been buried in the cemetery of the 'Christ of the Hills Monastery'  near Blanco, Texas, when it was in the old free pre-2007,  ROCOR, and before it ended up being closed, under very tragic and scandalous circumstances.

And, the entire property, including the graves there, was sold into private, non-Orthodox ownership, some years ago.

So, his body had to be moved, and reburied elsewhere.

from RocorMP website
 http://eadiocese.org/News/2014/dec/bpconstantine.en.htm

December 2, 2014
Jordanville, NY: First Hierarch of [RocorMP] leads Reburial of Bishop Constantine (Essensky)

On Monday, December 1, the reburial of His Grace, Bishop Constantine (Essensky), once vicar of the Eastern American Diocese, was held at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY. Bishop Constantine fell asleep in the Lord on May 31, 1996, at "Christ of the Hills" Monastery in Blanco, TX. All of the work in organizing the exhumation and transfer of the body to Holy Trinity Monastery, as well as preparing the reburial, was taken up by the monastery’s abbot, Archimandrite Luke (Murianka), along with the brethren. At 1:00 PM, the coffin with the hierarch’s body arrived at the cathedral, and was taken into the church to the peal of bells. Upon opening the casket, the gathered clergy, monastery brethren, seminarians, and faithful laity could see the hierarch’s incorrupt body, which was especially remarkable, explained Fr. Luke, considering that Bishop Constantine’s resting place had been entirely flooded, which had caused his former coffin and his vestments to be eaten away.

The panihida for the reposed bishop was led by His Eminence Hilarion, Metropolitan of Eastern America & New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad. His Eminence was co-served by Fr. Luke, Archpriest Victor Potapov (dean of the South, rector of St. John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, DC), Archpriest Serge Lukianov (Eastern American Diocesan secretary), Archpriest Michael Taratuchin (rector of St. John of Kronstadt Memorial Church in Utica, NY), Archpriest Alexis Duncan (rector of Nativity of the Mother of God Church in Albany, NY), Archpriest Alexandre Antchoutine (member of the Diocesan Council, rector of Holy Virgin Intercession Church in Glen Cove, NY), and monastery clerics Hieromonks Cyprian (Alexandrou) and Gabriel (Astrahankine), Hierodeacon Seraphim (Nikoloski), and Deacon Peter Markevich.

Before the start of the panihida, Metropolitan Hilarion, who knew Bishop Constantine personally, addressed those gathered with a brief sermon, in which he touched on the hierarch’s earthly journey. His Eminence noted the inclination of the hierarch’s soul to spiritual struggle, his prayerful attitude, and his love of fasting. But the reposed hierarch left memories of himself not only in the hearts of the clergy and parishioners, but also in the adornment of churches in the Russian Diaspora. Assigned to Holy Virgin Intercession Church in Glen Cove, Fr. Emmanuel Essensky, making use of his gifts as an iconographer and woodcarver, transformed the former garage into a marvelous church. Upon his consecration to the episcopacy, he labored much in Australia, America, and England. Prone to poor health, Bishop Constantine nevertheless augmented his spiritual labors throughout his entire life. Metropolitan Hilarion buried Bishop Constantine in 1996, when the former was still Bishop of Manhattan, and underscored that the remains being seen by those present are in the same condition today as they were at the time of the hierarch’s burial in 1996.

When the monastery in Texas was closed, the Synod of Bishops discussed several times the issue of reinterring Bishop Constantine’s remains in "a livelier place," where prayer was being offered regularly. His Eminence thanked Archimandrite Luke for his labors in unearthing the coffin and transferring the hierarch’s remains to Holy Trinity Monastery.

Upon completion of the panihida, Fr. Victor Potapov addressed the worshippers, calling the event "an historic one, about which we will tell our grandchildren and future generations." Fr. Victor reminded those gathered that the second rector to serve in the Washington community founded by St. John of Shanghai after the holy hierarch himself was Fr. Emmanuel Essensky; and, despite the fact that he did not serve there long, along with St. John he helped provide a righteous beginning for the future cathedral. Fr. Victor noted that, unfortunately, very few written records of Bishop Constantine’s life remain in existence, and called on those who were especially close to him to write down their impressions of the bishop, and called on all of us to pray for the repose of his soul and hope that "Bishop Constantine will answer us with active help, and in the future the will of God will be fulfilled and he will become a visible saint of the Russian Orthodox Church."

Gathered at the panihida were those who knew Bishop Constantine personally. Deacon George Temidis (member of the Diocesan Council, cleric of Nativity of the Mother of God Church at the New Kursk Root Hermitage in Mahopac, NY), remembers the ever-memorable hierarch when he was still a parish priest in Glen Cove: he baptized Fr. George as a child, and was his first confessor. Fr. George was four years old when he first served in the altar with Fr. Emmanuel, during Paschal Vespers, and from then on remembered him as a man "of emotion, very sensitive, an ascetic who ate barely anything; he concentrated on prayer, and at confession it felt as though he felt and bore our every sin, not only spiritually, but physically, as well."

For four years, Fr. Michael Taratuchin served as subdeacon to Bishop Constantine in London. With his blessing, Michael enrolled in Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville. Fr. Michael remembers Bishop Constantine as a humble hierarch, a man of prayer, who had the gift of tears, and would often weep during the Eucharistic Canon. Fr. Michael noted that Bishop Constantine would lead by example, and was always ready to help those in need wherever he was serving, across three continents.

Bishop Constantine was interred next to Bishop Alexander (Mileant) of Buenos-Aires & South America in the monastery cemetery behind the altar of Holy Trinity Cathedral, where many hierarchs of the Russian Church Abroad are buried, along with the monastery’s senior-most brethren. The most recent of the monastery’s inhabitants to be interred in this section of the monastery cemetery was the fellow laborer and concelebrant of the ever-memorable Metropolitan Laurus – Archimandrite Flor (Vanko), who reposed on September 4, 2012.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Orthodoxy in Germany


The Universal Orthodox Faith: Some German language Orthodox liturgical service


Below three videos: a small sampling of parts of...German language Orthodox worship:






Orthodox Morning Prayers, in German-