The Saint Eanswythe Orthodox Mission

2010-09-27T21:10:00.089+01:00

To know more about Orthodox Western Rite in the UK, consult

www.westernriteorthodoxuk.org.uk

Schedule of Services for POOLE, Dorset

JANUARY 2012- APRIL 2012

The Western Rite Mattins are sung on most Sundays. The Bournemouth-Poole Orthodox Christian Foundation now owns the former Saint Osmond's church in Parkstone, Poole (St. Osmunds Rd. Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG). Father Chrysostom, the Parish Priest of Saint Dunstan's is kindly allowing us to sing our Western Rite Mattins in the little chapel behind Our Lady's Chapel; it can be accessed by the south side of the main Sanctuary: the new start time enables us to remain for the start of the Liturgy at 10:30 a.m. This web site is updated monthly. Please check regularly.

The Western Rite Altar at Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Poole

Courtesy of Father Chrysostom, Parish Priest.

Saint Eanswythe's Chapel where we hold our services is behind this altar and

can be accessed by the steps visible on the left side of this photo above.

Saint Eanswythe's Chapel

January 29th (Saint Gildas the Wise, new calendar), EPIPHANY II: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Litany to the Most Holy Trinity at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

February 5th, EPIPHANY III: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Litany to the Most Holy Trinity at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

February 12th, SEPTUAGESIMA: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Litany to the Most Holy Trinity at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

February 19th, SEXAGESIMA: No Western Rite Mattins today. 10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church at Athelhampton Church and 11:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Romanian Orthodox Church at Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Poole.

February 26th, QUINQUAGESIMA: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Litany to the Most Holy Trinity at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

February 29th, ASH WEDNESDAY

March 4th, QUADRAGESIMA, LENT I: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

March 11th, LENT II: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

March 18th, LENT III: No Western Rite Mattins today. 10:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church at Athelhampton Church and 11:00 a.m. Liturgy of the Romanian Orthodox Church at Saint Dunstan's Parish Church, Poole.

March 25th, LENT IV: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

April 1st, PASSION SUNDAY: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

April 8th, PALM SUNDAY: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

April 15th: EASTER SUNDAY: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

April 22nd: EASTER I: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

April 29th: EASTER II: 9:30 a.m. Mattins and the Great Litany at Saint Dunstan's, St Osmond's Road, Parkstone, Poole, BH14 9JG, followed at 10:30 by the Liturgy of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

2009-04-10T15:07:00.071+01:00

The Chapel at Jumpers Road, Christchurch

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NEWS

Ordinand Peter Beattie is finishing his theology degree next month and will hopefully be Ordained in the near future. Peter is 42 years old and works in the school system as a specialist in disabled children.

The Primate has given his permission for the Saint Eanswythe Western Rite Mission in the Bournemouth area.

Saint Eanswythe now has a North Devon Branch - Saint Nectan's. Check out what's happening there at http://saintnectan.blogspot.com

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MISSION NEWS

2008-01-04T05:55:00.039Z

Archbishop Hilarion creates Saint Eanswythe as a formal Western Rite Mission

Archbishop Hilarion has created Saint Eanswythe as a stavropigial mission under his personal control, during his visit to England. He has placed Fr. Michael in charge.

Archbishop Hilarion Visit

Archbishop Hilarion, Metropolitan of the Church Abroad, visited England in early November 2009. He met Fr. Michael and Fr. Nicholas in Chiswick, where they discussed the provision of Western Rite services in London and England. On Sunday the 15th, Archbishop Hilarion celebrated an Eastern Liturgy at the Cathedral in Harvard Road, Chiswick with Fr. Michael concelebrating along with other English clergy.

Fr. Michael Meets the Metropolitan

On Saturday the 11th of July, 2009 Fr. Michael and Brother Edward spent five days with Archbishop Hilarion (Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia) at his home. During this time, they discussed the whole subject of England and the Saint Eanswythe Society.

Fr. Michael Recovers

Fr. Michael was released from hospital on the on the 28th of May 2009, after a ten day stay following surgery to remove a benign pituitary tumour. The operation was a complete success.

October-November 2008
News of Members, Friends and People-that-we-like

Some people seem to regularly desert the sunny south for more exotic climes, so over the past month or so,
Gildas and Sandra have been in the sunny south of France; Photini has been in the sunny Holy Land; Fr. Michael has been halfway around the world, now Gildas is off to Normandy, and of course Michael M regularly luxuriates in sunny IOW.

On Tuesday July the 15th 2008, Fr. Michael flew to Sydney for a meeting with the Primate where, amongst other matters, the Saint Eanswythe Society was discussed and the Primate brought up to date.

.........Archbishop Hilarion ............... Fr. Michael

On Sunday March the 9th 2008, Fr. Michael blessed icons for members of the congregation of the Society Liturgy at Southbourne.

Some of the congregation with their icons after the Liturgy

On Friday and Saturday the 25th- 26th of February 2008, some members of the Society attended a series of lectures in London given by Fr. Andrew Louth who is Professor of Byzantine and Orthodox Studies at Durham University. The Lectures were organised by the Orthodox Fellowship of Saint John the Baptist and were spread over the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but we left on Saturday night. Bishop Kallistos (Ware) was present and took an active part in the discussions which followed each lecture. The subject was the Orthodox view of Saint Augustine of Hippo.

The participants in the London lecture weekend

The 2008 Society Retreat which had been scheduled for the weekend of the 3rd of February, was been cancelled due to the necessity of a change in venue.

June 3rd 2007 After serving for a year as our Secretary, Eadmund Dunstall resigned from the position in late 2007. Eadmund had done a very considerable job in that first period of the Society, culminating in his organising the 2007 Retreat and the Centenary Liturgy. Eadmund also used his considerable artistic talents on behalf of the Society, producing two remarkable icons and some notable Altar furniture.
Eadmund has been succeeded by Dr. Gildas Meal:

Dr. Gildas Méal

SERVICE AT CAPEL LE FERNE

2008-01-04T04:15:00.046Z

MEN'S RETREAT 2007

2007-12-31T04:23:00.006Z

The Society held a retreat for men on the weekend 2nd-5th of March 2007 at Hawkinge. A large and very well set up converted granary accommodated those who were staying during the weekend (some others booked into nearby pubs).

The Retreat was conducted by Fr. Michael, the Superior of Saint Petroc Monastery (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) assisted by Fr. Barry of the Monastery's Saint Stephen Mission in Launceston.

The theme of the Retreat was "Responding to God - Becoming at One With God's Will". As well as members from the Saint Eanswythe Orthodox Study Society, other retreatants came from as far as Manchester and America.

During the weekend, the Offices were done in a makeshift chapel in the Granary, with members marshalled into a choir ably directed by Mr. Michael Astley. The Divine Liturgy was celebrated on Saturday and Sunday at Saint Mary's Capel-le-Ferne, a small redundant church nearby which dates from about AD 1030.

The majority of the organising for the retreat was done by Mr. Eadmund Dunstall and as a result, the whole weekend went off very smoothly. The highlight was the Divine Liturgy on the Sunday which was a commemoration of the centenary of the decision of the Holy Synod of the Church of Russia to authorise the adaption of the services taken out of the Book of Common Prayer, for use by Orthodox people.

The Divine Liturgy was the "English Liturgy" which resulted from that decision. The Liturgy drew visitors from Manchester, London, Belgium, the USA and Australia. This was followed by lunch at a restaurant in the Alkham Valley and then a service of veneration of the relics of Saint Eanswythe at Folkestone Parish church.

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THE OLD AND THE NEW

The contrast between the Old and New Dispensations is clearly seen in the passages: II Corinthians 3:4 - 9 and Mark 7:31 - 37. Glorious as the Old Dispensation was both in its Divine origins and in its continuation down the centuries of the Chosen People, nevertheless, it was a ministration of condemnation. It had sacrifices of atonement, but it had no sacraments of life and hope. David sang of hope and of the New Dispensation, but all he could do was foreshadow, for there was yet no Messiah come to make the change.

The Incarnation of the Son of God, the Messiah, was the origin, and His presence in the Holy Mysteries, and as the Church, is an intensity and quality of continuation; a spiritual richness and hope such as the world had not known since the fall. Mankind, even the Jewish Church, had grown very deaf and could not hear the voice from Heaven as its leaders had heard it in the past. There was a great impediment in the speech of the Jewish Church, so that the word of God was not spoken abroad and there was a dearth of prophecy.

The Son of God came and created anew His Body, the Church which would be His continued presence here. He touched her by making Himself one with her. The sigh of His Passion was followed by the “Ephphatha” of the Resurrection and as soon as His work was perfected by the looking up to Heaven of His Ascension and seating at the right hand of God, the ears of the deaf were enabled to hear the inspiration of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the tongue of the dumb was enabled, so that they could speak the revealed word of God.

That same enabling, cleansing and strengthening touch of Christ, its communication of His grace in the Communion of His Body and Blood, is the continuing means by which His corporate body on earth, the Church, and every member of it is enlivened and sustained. His continued gift of spiritual ability to the Church and her clergy of this New Dispensation, makes the ministration of righteousness, even in the most out-of-the-way places of this world, exceed in glory, the ministration of Moses at the foot of Mount Sinai.

The section of the Epistle deals with the great hope of the ministration of the New Dispensation. “Who”, it is asked in the preceding chapter (2:16) “is sufficient for these things?” The question is answered in 3:4: the man who places his trust in God through His Messiah, the bringer of the New Dispensation. The servant of Christ, the minister of the righteousness of the new order, gives everything in his service, but his power is insufficient to the task: He is dependent upon God in the end.

The Old Dispensation was eventually powerless as a ministry of law, for law can only condemn, law has no mechanism for mercy beyond its letter. This flaw made it the ministry of condemnation which meant death, for all were imperfect before the law. Prevented by their standing condemnation under the law, no-one was sufficient to either approach, or to understand the means of approaching God, although it was possible.

The New Dispensation of Christ was however a bringing of the righteousness of the law inside the heart of the individual. Christ summarised the law into a law of the heart, a law that all could work with and not be condemned by, even though they fell short. In this Dispensation, God is present and accessible even in our sinful state, for He has been fully revealed for our needs by Christ. Our Dispensation of Jesus the Christ of God is more glorious and effective than any which preceded it and The Church thereby immediately established among men, lives still and expands to this day, in a continuity unbroken and unaltered through two millennia as the Holy Orthodox Church.

RECOVERING THE FAITH FOR A FAITHLESS NATION

Samuel Adams once said, "When people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders." This is a timely message given the increasing threat of foreign religions and efforts throughout society to remove the Christian faith from public life. We see this both nationally and internationally, in the EU and here at home.

This nation grew out of a thousand years of first millennium Orthodox Christianity and succeeding generations considered that it was necessary to maintain the Christian values for our Parliamentary democracy to succeed. Yet today, a thousand years after having abandoned the Orthodox Christian faith, we find the nation sinking under the weight of the indifference to Christianity, moral ignorance and debauched behaviour of all levels of our society - we are in trouble indeed, as a nation that is ever more publicly abandoning God.

The Saint Eanswythe Orthodox Study Society is a local initiative, under the guidance of a canonical Orthodox monastery, to start at the very basics and learn again the faith that built this country and which flourished in these islands for the first thousand years of the Christian era.

We believe that it is on this local scale that ordinary people can work. It is here, around our homes and in our local communities that the faith, and with it the faithful nation, can be rebuilt.

It seems to us pointless to try to continue with a watered down pseudo Christianity - such as is proving singularly useless to combat the secularisation of our society. We believe that the secular society will prove defenceless against the incursion of other far less peacable systems of belief and that the last state of the nation will be total spiritual disaster.

To that end, we have set up the Saint Eanswythe Orthodox Study Society as a means of beginning the education of people in the ancient faith of our fathers here in this land: The Orthodox Christian Faith. This is the uncompromising authentic, original Christian Way that our Lord Jesus Christ taught to His Apostles and which they in turn, committed to the Church. That Church has continued to this day, unchanged, with the original faith intact. Unlike the multitude of pseudo-Christian organisations around the world, Holy Orthodoxy has kept the entire faith intact through two millennia.

Orthodox Christianity came to the British Isles just a few years after the Crucifixion of Christ, brought by Saint Aristibule as our first Bishop, and those others who accompanied him. It remained intact and flourishing in these isles until the Norman invasion. It is now reintroduced to our country from abroad and we seek to recover the English expression of that faith, in communion with and under the direction of the worldwide Orthodox Christian Church.