Recent Ordinations

On Sunday, 16 December, at St. Mark & St. Hubert’s Church at Cusworth, Doncaster, His Grace Bishop David ordained Reader Vladimir Sandis Roze to the Order of Subdeacon; and at the Church of Christ the Saviour, Winton, Bournemouth, Metropolitan Seraphim ordained Father James Maskery to the Order of Hegoumenos.

Funeral of Vanessa Tinker

Following a Requiem Liturgy held at Charlton on 25 November, the funeral service of the late Vanessa Tinker, the ikonographer of the British Orthodox Church, took place at St. Thomas’s, Charlton, on 17 December, being the fortieth day after her repose.  The service was conducted by Metropolitan Seraphim, assisted by Fr. James and Deacon Antony. The coffin was borne into a full church to the singing of ‘Dido’s Lament’ (from Henry Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas). The organ was played by Mr. John Dawson. Following the Prayer of Thanksgiving, the congregation  sang the hymn, ‘Now Thank we all our God’ and the lesson from 1 Corinthians XV: 12-022 was read by Father Dominic Pyle-Bridges. At the beginning of his address,  Abba Seraphim stated,

“Art is the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination. Through it we reflect the beauty of God, the Creator of all things, as the Book of Ecclesiastes says, ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time.’ Vanessa was a many-dimensional artist: as a painter she produced reflective still-life pictures of buildings, objects or scenery; impressive portraits of friends and bustling scenes of daily life; she was also a fine etcher, a potter, a keen photographer, a carpenter, an ikonographer, an interior designer, and a garden planner. Whatever she turned her hand to revealed the world around her from her own perspective, as Henry Ward Beecher claimed, ‘Every artist dips their brush into their own soul, and paints their own nature into their pictures’. The result was often to highlight the charm and uniqueness of persons and places, as George Sand wrote, ‘The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart’.”

Jim Kinsella then sang The Russian Kontakion of the Departed and the paschal theme of the funeral was emphasised by the congregation singing the hymn, ‘The Day of Resurrection’ composed by St. John of Damascus. Following the prayers, Absolution and Psali Adam, the coffin was borne out of the church to the singing of the hymn, ‘Thine be the glory’, sung to the tune from Judas Maccabeus by G.F.Handel, another of Vanessa’s favourite composers. The coffin was then accompanied to Eltham Crematorium by Deacon Antony, who presided over the Committal.