I will be in Dallas on Tuesday through Friday, attending the annual Diocesan Assembly of the Diocese of the South (OCA). My great joy is to spend time with my Archbishop DMITRI. It is also on our agenda to elect Igumen Jonah Paffhausen of St. John Maximovitch Monastery in California as our Auxiliary Bishop. May God direct our hearts. I will post articles from Dallas as I am able, and ask your prayers for God’s grace. Many thanks!
Fr. Stephen is a retired Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America. He is also author of Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, and Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, as well as the Glory to God podcast series on Ancient Faith Radio.
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May the Holy Trinity be with you as you serve Him in fear and trembling. May He enlighten your path.
“And first of all remember thy Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which Thou hast purchased with Thy precious blood; confirm and strengthten it, enlarge and multiply it, keep it in peace, and preserve it unconquerable by the gates of hell for ever”
My weak prayers are with you, dear father. Please pray about me, too.
Do you ever go to St. Tikhon’s monastery in PA? if so, do you plan to be there this summer?
Father, bless,
Prayers indeed.
Hooray for Abba Jonah!
The first time I brought my parents to the Divine Liturgy happened to be a day when he was visiting the parish. As you might imagine, my parents’ experience with him was extremely positive. Send him my thanks, if you have an opportunity!
Have a blessed trip and may God guide you all in truth and joy. We’ll be eating a hot pepper in honor of Vladika Dmitri (I know he likes them, especially when they are unbearably hot). When he visited our small mission parish in NC 20 years ago to Chrismate my husband and I we presented him with a jar of the hottest peppers we could find and he was gracious enough to crack the jar at coffee hour and throw a few back. He even said they were not the hottest he had! What a blessed man! Espola eti Despota!
I’ll be a whopping 12 miles away (my parish is just down the road). Bring an extra bag for bookstore goodies. St. Seraphim’s bookstore is quite good as you probably already know. Will there be events the laity (OCA and non-OCA) can attend?
Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest,
And in our hearts take up Thy rest;
Come with Thy grace and heav’nly aid
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made,
To fill the hearts which Thou hast made.
–Rabanus Maurus
These lyrics of praise are as familiar to a great son of Texas, Vladika Dmitri, as they are to my childhood years in Northcentral Texas. Vladika Dmitri, a native son of the bluebonnet State, stands in a patch of bluebonnets in the photograph that Father Stephen attached.
The bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas, and associated in my earliest memories with Easter because it blooms only in spring.
“Named for its color and, it is said, the resemblance of its petal to a woman’s sunbonnet, the bluebonnet is the state flower of Texas. It blooms in the early spring and can be readily found in fields and along the roadsides throughout central and south Texas.
Scientifically named Lupinus texensis, the bluebonnet is also called buffalo clover, wolf flower, and (by the Mexicans) “el conejo.” It was adopted as the official state flower by the Texas Legislature in 1901″ (http://www.lsjunction.com/flower.htm)
I’d be there for the ordinations tomorrow during divine liturgy but, alas, my summer school classes started today, and it wouldn’t be good to leave them on the second day of class. Ah, well. Do enjoy your time here in the Lone Star State, Father, and may our God direct you all.
Father,
I shall be very cross with you if you take Fr. Jonah away from us.
ICXC
John (Merced CA)
I had opportunity to have dinner with him one evening this week. He truly is a gift to the Church. I can only pray God’s will be done. But if the Synod elects him, then the South will have been blessed. I pray God in His fullness will add to the riches of the West what he make take away and then some.
Of course, I’ve already given the Diocese of the West my first-born daughter and her husband who are now joined with their first-born son. What more can I give? 🙂
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