September
13, 2010 Washington,
DC: The First Hierarch of ROCOR led the divine services in St John the
Baptist Cathedral on the occasion of the patronal feast day
On September 11 (n.s.),
the Orthodox Church commemorates the Beheading of St. John the
Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord. On Friday the 10th and Saturday
the 11th of September, the First Hierarch of the Russian Church
Abroad, His Eminence Hilarion, Metropolitan of Eastern America and New
York, arrived in the capital of the United States and led the divine
services in St.
John the Baptist Cathedral in Washington, DC, on the occasion of
the patronal feast day. The Metropolitan was co-served by His Eminence
Justinian, Archbishop of Naro-Fominsk, Administrator of the
Patriarchal Parishes in the USA, His Grace George, Bishop of Mayfield,
and a multitude of clergy,
in the presence of a multitude of the faithful.
The divine services
proceeded under the grace-filled aegis of the myrrh-streaming icon of
the Mother of God "Softener of Evil Hearts." Over the course
of all the services, the priests confessed the many faithful who
wished to cleanse themselves from every defilement and soften their
hearts. Two choirs sang – the Slavonic, directed by Y.A. Petcherkin,
and the English, directed by Jared Brewer.
On Saturday
morning, His Excellency, Sergey I. Kislyak, Ambassador Plenipotentiary
of the Russian Federation, his spouse Natalya, and the Russian
Federation embassy’s Cultural Attaché, Dr. Vyacheslav V. Moshkalo,
joined the faithful in prayer in the packed church. During the Small
Entrance, Metropolitan Hilarion elevated parish cleric Priest Vasiliy
Raskovskiy to the rank of archpriest. After the Eucharistic Canon, His
Eminence ordained Subdeacon John Dean to the diaconate.
In his sermon
before Holy Communion, Archbishop Justinian delivered a sermon to the
parishioners in which he drew a parallel between the event in the
Gospel being that day commemorated and the recent history of our
Church, saying in part: "After John the Forerunner, pointing to
Christ, who came to be baptized by him in the Jordan, said, 'Behold
the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. He must
increase, but I must decrease,' many of his followers became disciples
of Christ. But there remained also those who did not listen to the
voice of their teacher, and wished as before to see in him instead the
promised Messiah. These people are well known in Church history as the
Johannite sect. Although the Johannites no longer exist today, there
are clergy and laymen akin to them, who did not heed the wise and
universal voice of the Church and of their hierarchy, and who to this
day do not recognize the reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church
Outside of Russian and the Mother Church. We are sincerely sorry for
them and pray for them, that they might recognize their error and
enter into union with the Fullness of the Russian Orthodox
Church."
Upon
completion of the procession, a memorial litiya was served for the
repose of the cathedral’s founders and benefactors, for all of those
who had laid down their lives for God and country, and for the victims
of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. After the procession,
before reentering the church, Metropolitan Hilarion performed the
blessing of a bronze memorial icon to St. John of Shanghai and San
Francisco, which had been fashioned by sculptor G.V. Pototsky.
