Christmas and Theophany 2010

On Christmas Eve, after we as a community celebrated the Vespers-Liturgy of St Basil the Great, just over 60 guests joined us for the Christmas Eve Sviat Vechir (Holy Meal) in our seminary hall. We have usually been blessed with the presence of the recent Papal Nuncio, Most Rev. Luigi Ventura. However, he had been called by the Holy Father to take up new responsibilities as the Papal Nuncio in France. The Nuncio’s cahrages d’affaires, Msgr. Luca Lorusso was able to aptly stand in his place and take a spoonful of the kutia and fling it to the ceiling. After the Holy Meal, we moved to the seminary chapel for the celebration of Great Complines – we were happy to welcome Most Rev. Terrence Prendergast, Archbishop of Ottawa, who was able to join us for this prayer. Finally, we travelled to St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Shrine for the midnight Divine Liturgy. In the days that followed, the seminarians went Christmas carolling to the homes of friends and local parishioners.

Below are some images of the recent feasts of the Nativity of Lord and the Theophany of our Lord.

For the Feast of the Theophany, we joined the celebrations at St. John the Baptist Shrine. Afterwards, we helped to build the 13-foot tall ice cross at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, in anticpation of the Great Blessing of the Water the next day. Unfortunately, a museum employee knocked down the ice cross in the morning thinking we had already had the celebration. Nevertheless, the Blessing happened on a beautiful winter day. You can see a video of highlights produced by the Metropolitan Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies.