Ordination of Peter Farrington to the Diaconate

On the 1st February, 2009, Abba Seraphim ordained subdeacon Peter Theodore Farrington to the full Diaconate within the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate. Peter Theodore has served as a Reader and Subdeacon for many years within the community of St Alban and St Athanasius in Maidstone and now Chatham.

He will now serve as a Full Deacon for the period before his ordination as priest on the 22nd February.

Axios, Axios, Axios

‘God has heard your prayers’

Perhaps we can consider a few, brief thoughts on the Gospel for today. It is the account of the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Zacharias, and the message which came to him and to his wife, that though they were old in years, and their time of fruitfulness had passed according to all human wisdom, yet in the will of God all things were possible, and his wife was already with child, though advanced in years.

There are a great many things which we could reflect on, but in this short time together let us consider first of all the description of Zacharias and Elisabeth themselves which we find in the passage. St Luke says of them, that they were righteous before God, and walked blameless in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. These were good people. They were committed to serving God, and over many years they had prayed earnestly, asking that he would give them the desire of their hearts.
I know that in my own life, and in my service here at St Albans, we have often prayed for our little Orthodox community.  And like Zacharias and Elisabeth we have had to have faith that God will work out his will, in his way and in his own time. I hope that we are good people. I hope that we are committed to serving God. And we have certainly grown older in God’s service. Yet we have not seen the answers to our prayers, both here in our community, and in our own lives. And we wait, like Zacharias and Elisabeth. We do not give up. We trust in God, since it is his service we are committed to.

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Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul
29th June, 2008

I wonder if any of you here have been following the European Football Championships which have been taking place over the last few weeks, and which conclude today with a final in the Ernst Happel Stadion in Vienna this evening. A sweepstake was organised at work, and I drew Turkey, a team which seemed to have little chance of victory. More than that, I have never had much desire to visit Turkey, and so I lacked any enthusiasm at all for the team I had pulled out of a hat.

Now if you had seen me on Tuesday evening you might well have wondered which team I was watching play against Germany. I was shouting encouragement at the television screen and jumping up and down each time my team scored. And I was entirely disappointed when in the last minute Germany scored and their opponents were knocked out of the competition. Yet it was the Turkish team I was supporting so enthusiastically, even though just a couple of weeks earlier I could have wished to have chosen almost any other team in the competition.

What had happened to change my feelings towards the Turkish team? I think that what took place was a natural and universal human response to being associated, even very loosely, with a particular group of people or cause. A certain prejudice develops towards others, and slowly our own side becomes more important than anything else as we come to belong to one party rather than another.

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Memorandum from Abba Seraphim

The late Metropolitan Thomas Mar Makarios has been a long and good friend of the British Orthodox for some quarter of a century and our sorrow at his tragic death is something we share keenly with our Indian Orthodox brethren.

Father Abraham Thomas has asked me to extend an invitation to any of our British Orthodox clergy and flock who might wish to attend the funeral service, which will begin around 5.50 on Friday, 29 February and last until about 7.00 p.m. Read more ►

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