News
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Pilgrimage announcement 2020
10 January 2020
A pilgrimage to the Holy Land has always been, is and will be the greatest dream for every Orthodox Christian. To be able to venerate sites blessed by the presence of the Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, His Most Pure Mother, and the Holy Spirit Which descended on Sinai on Pentecost, is an honour and a gift from God.
The pilgrimage to the Holy Land for parishioners of the Canadian Diocese will take place from
MAY 15 – 30, 2020
(15 days/14 nights)
The Canadian Pilgrimage will be led by Archbishop Gabriel of Montreal and Canada.The group will fly non-stop Toronto to Tel Aviv roundtrip on Air Canada. Connecting flights from Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and other cities can be arranged with Air Canada. The group’s itinerary for the Holy Land is being planned by the nuns of the Gethsemane Convent, who have been organizing such visits for Orthodox pilgrims for many years. Participants will stay at the Mount of Olives Hotel, which is near the Convents of the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane.
THE COST OF THE TRIP IS US $3,225.00 AND INCLUDES:
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Roundtrip airfare from Toronto to Tel Aviv
Ground transportation throughout the Holy Land and Jordan
All scheduled visits to holy sites and services, accommodation and meals(Optional visit to St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt Sinai at the end of the Pilgrimage Program with return to Toronto on June 2, 2020 – add USD 370.00)
Parishioners interested in joining the pilgrimage are asked to contact Peter Antonoff (Toronto)
Mobile telephone – 416-407-1102 E-mail: pantonoff@rogers.com -
Nativity Epistle of His Eminence Hilarion, Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad .
6 January 2020
Eminent brother-archpastors, reverend fathers, dear brothers and sisters!
With a feeling of humble gratitude and love in the Lord, I greet you all with the “metropolis of all feasts,” as St. John Chrysostom named the day of Christ’s Nativity, which we now celebrate! May God’s grace, which shines upon us from an impoverished cave in Bethlehem, and which was revealed on the banks of the Jordan, never cease to be poured out upon us, warming our hearts, which bear the sorrowful legacy of Adam, with Heavenly consolation and peace, blessing our personal, familial, parochial, and monastic lives, our daily labors, and in every benevolent, social, and especially ecclesiastical work!
May this New Year become a time of God’s goodwill and His almighty aid; may He renew and strengthen our abilities to offer up thanksgiving to Him as is meet, and to commemorate our forebears in this jubilee year of the centennial of the Russian Church Abroad!
How was the Russian Church Abroad formed? In November 1920, though defeated, many Russian Orthodox people did not surrender, and left their beloved nation’s borders; hundreds of thousands of officers and soldiers, Cossacks and peasants, landowners and workers went into exile. Departing with them were the clergy who nourished them. The archpastors and clergymen did not depart in disarray: still in the homeland, with the blessing of the Holy Hierarch Tikhon, Patriarch and Confessor of All Russia, they formed the Provisional Supreme Ecclesiastical Authority of South-Eastern Russia.
Finding themselves abroad, what could these representatives of the Russian Church do? Guided by love for the persecuted Mother Church and Canon 39 of the 6th Ecumenical Council, which addresses a similar situation, when part of the population of Cyprus had to leave their country, having “been freed from heathen slavery,” the Russian hierarchs formed the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration Abroad. Moreover, after this, the Holy Hierarch Tikhon and the Holy Synod over which he presided sent the departed émigré masses the famous Directive №362, dated November 7/20, 1920, which proved to be God-inspired. The hierarchs abroad took the first steps of their unique service in Constantinople, having received a blessing from the Locum Tenens of the Ecumenical Throne, Metropolitan Dorotheos (Mammelis), who at the time respectfully wrote to Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev & Galicia: “the Patriarchate permits any undertaking under your direction, for the Patriarchate knows that Your Eminence will commit no uncanonical act.” Later, this Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration Abroad, reformed into the Russian Church Abroad, was transferred to Serbia, where it found itself under the truly fraternal aegis of the Serbian Orthodox Church, with whom we now share fathers and preceptors.
In 1924, when Patriarch Gregory VII of Constantinople declared his support for the Living Church schism and demanded that the Holy Hierarch and Confessor Tikhon “immediately depart from administration of the Church,” many understood the fervent desire of the hierarchs of the Russian Church living abroad not to merge into the existing Local Churches, but to strive in every way to preserve their living and organic ties to the persecuted Church in Russia. Since that time, the Russian Church Abroad has followed the life of the Church in the homeland with a keen, loving, and devoted eye, rejoicing in her successes, sorrowing in her tribulations, and loudly bearing witness to her sufferings, piously reverencing the ascetic and martyric struggles of those who fearlessly went to their deaths in the name of Christ.
Marking this glorious anniversary, which will continue with the celebration of the I All-Diaspora Council next year, we intend to celebrate neither the terrible events, as a result of which many Russian Orthodox people found themselves on foreign soil, nor the bitter division of the Mother Church, which had been subjected to persecutions. The primary goal of our celebration is to lift up thanksgiving to God, Who bountifully poured out upon us His abundant mercies, and to prayerfully honor our forebears, who in complex conditions abroad held aloft the standard of our Holy Russian Orthodoxy, and relayed to us a great inheritance. May the lamps on their graves never be extinguished! Moreover, every anniversary must cause each of us to once more take interest in our history, and consider the individual people whom we commemorate. Only this approach to the jubilee celebration, combined with prayer and a humble hope in God’s aid, will grant us a renewal of our hearts, of all of our strengths, and of all of the paths of our modest service to God and man.
May our holy fathers among the saints: John, Archbishop of Shanghai, Wonderworker of San Francisco; Jonah, Bishop of Hankou; the Holy Hierarch Seraphim (Sobolev) and the Martyr Alexander (Schmorell), as well as the multitude of “everyday saints” among our forebears, be our intercessors in this renewal! And may we ourselves, adoring the Divine Infant Christ, born today in Bethlehem, ask for this all-encompassing renewal. I greet you all with His Birth, sincerely wishing that we may spend these holy days, as well as this entire jubilee year, in joy in the Lord, with our families and friends, in prayer and in the life of the Church!
With love in Christ,+HILARION
Metropolitan of Eastern America & New York
First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad.Nativity of Christ 2019/2020 A.D.
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Nativity Epistle of Archbishop Gabriel .
3 January 2020
NATIVITY EPISTLE
To the clergy and God-saved flock of the Diocese of CanadaBeloved brothers and sisters in Christ!
“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16), as Apostle Paul already testified
near the dawn of Christianity in a letter to his beloved disciple Timothy. The Holy Gospel, describing the way this
greatest event in the history of mankind – God manifesting Himself in the flesh – has come about, says that the Angel,
announcing the Nativity of Christ to the Bethlehem shepherds, spoke thus: “I bring you good tidings of great joy
which will be to all people, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord… Glory
to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” (Lk. 2:10-11, 14). During solemn celebration of the
Feast of the Nativity of Christ, the Holy Church keeps reminding us of the compassion and love of Him, Who came
down from the unapproachable and Awesome Throne of His divine Glory and appeared on our sinful earth “for us
men and for our salvation”.
The joy of the Nativity of Christ, that joy, which the Angels announced to all mankind, is that the Almighty Maker of
all things appeared on earth, lived among men, freed us from sin, curse and death, and opened for us the gate to His
Heavenly Kingdom, giving us eternal joy of being in God and with God. God’s peace is indeed His precious gift to
each of us, despite all that we see around us on earth now. The Feast is coming – let every soul rejoice in these days!
Dear brothers and sisters! We are entering the historical one-hundredth year of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside
Russia. Its creation is related to a great historical tragedy, not only for Russia as a country, but for the entire Russian
Orthodox civilisation. Hundreds of thousands of Russians found themselves outside Russia in those sorrowful days.
Over 125 ships sailed from Crimea in late October 1919, and on 6/19 November came to anchor at the Constantinople
harbour. The same day, aboard the ship Grand Duke Alexandr Mikhailovich, the Temporary Higher Church
Administration in South-East Russia met for the first time since leaving the Motherland, and decided to extend its
operation as a Church entity in exile. That’s how our Russian Church Abroad was born. Among participants was evermemorable Metropolitan Anastasy (Gribanovsky), our second First Hierarch, the successor of Metropolitan Antony
(Khrapovitsky). As Vladyka Anastasy said later, “The wider and further we are scattered by destiny in the immense
expanses of the world, the stronger is our conviction that we are sent by Providence to the different and often the most
distant ends of the earth not only in order to preserve the treasure of our Orthodox culture, but also to spread this seed
everywhere”. By God’s will this has indeed happened: the Russian Church Abroad carried the Orthodox Faith
throughout the world. All our Dioceses are preparing for the commemoration of this historic anniversary.
We hope that the Canadian Diocese, too, will find a fitting way to celebrate such an important event in the history of
the Russian Church.
CHRIST IS BORN! GLORIFY HIM!
GABRIEL
Archbishop of Montreal and Canada
Nativity of Christ, 2019/2020
