Sunday, April 05, 2009

First Divine Liturgy

We finished hanging the icons on the iconostasis last night. These are the temporary icons on our "temporary iconostasis" made out of used doors, some pine boards and a few dollars worth of moldings. This is our Mission's patron, Saint John the Evangelist and Theologian.
We had a lot of visitors today even though we didn't announce our "grand opening". There were 60 people in the building and room for twice that, easily. This is Fr. Damian's first homily.

This is the choir's side of the nave.
This is a close up of the Theotokos icon after the lampada and festal icons were hung.
I'm uploading videos of vespers and the beginning of the Liturgy. They will be posted soon.

5 comments:

Sophocles said...

Great work, Steve! May our gracious Lord bless all of you in your new building!

Anonymous said...

You guys have done a fantastic job. It seems a little odd to look in to the vestment closet while venerating the Theotokos, but maybe that's really out of view to most parishioners.

James the Thickheaded said...

Great work, and a beautiful church! Thanks!

Steve Robinson said...

Hi vagueperson, The altar area is not completed yet, we're still working on configuring all the things needed to be put there because we don't have a sacristy. The vestment closet in the altar is one of the issues we had to accept when we re-oriented the entire Church's layout design. The original design was to put the altar in one of the "wings" where the chanter's stand is with the low ceiling and the choir would stand in the area where the altar is now. The low ceiling wing was wide enough to have a real sacristy closet. Fr. Damian REALLY wanted a closet but eventually we convinced him that a closet is not nearly as important as the integrity of a Church design and the beauty of having the high ceiling and dome etc. So for now we are hanging the vestments there and working on how to create a closet or something with that very narrow space. Ultimately it may be a sacrifice of function for beauty due to limited space.

Benedict Seraphim said...

Steve:

I have been intently following these construction updates (though as a laymen some of the constructino terms are just beyond me!). I am amazed and grateful to God for the work that has been done.

But I was really struck by these pictures with the building being "lived in." It really felt familiar and comfortable (as our parish mostly sits on the floor during the sermon, too!), and gave the "skeleton" of the building the joints and sindews and flesh and blood it needed. And how much more beautiful it made the work done to see all the saints there in worship and learning.

I cannot say enough: wonderful! Wow!