Orthodox parish Leuven - Chronicle-2006

Chronicle - 2006

January 22

Priest Serge Model (Brussels): "ORTHODOXY IN THE WEST: History of Orthodox Church in Belgium"

February 5

Michael Lomax (Brussels): "ORTHODOXY IN THE WEST: The Orthodox Church through the eyes of a Western Man".

March 5

Judith Hermans: "ORTHODOXY IN THE WEST: John (Maximovich), archbishop of Shanghai & San Francisco".

April 2

Victor Yudin gave the lecture: "Period of the Great Lent".

April 22

EASTER

In the night of 22 to 23 of April we celebrated the Easter vigils - Christ's Holy Resurrection, both with our parish and the entire Orthodox world. The vigils began with the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Right at the midnight the faithful lead by the clergy went downstairs in the Easter procession through the premises and the garden, carrying the cross, icon and candles. While singing the Easter Troparion we entered the church to hear the joy of "Christ is risen!" and to answer in unity "He is risen indeed!". As a sign of international significance, we had a unique occasion to hear the Gospel reading in 15 languages. Afterwards, our priest, fr. Alexander read aloud the powerful words of the Easter epistle by Saint John Chrysostom to the faithful of his time. More than one hundred people participated in the service, Matins and Liturgy. Many of them also stayed for the Agape meal. No wonder that the table was filled with delicacies, made especially for the occasion with love and care. By the end of the Divine Liturgy, there was a consecration of Easter bread, eggs and other food. Christ is risen indeed!

May 14

Victor Yudin gave the lecture: "Acathistus to the Mother of God".

May 28

"The Da Vinci Code: or on spiritual blindness"

On the 28th of May, V.Yudin, our parish reader gave a talk "Da Vinci Code: truth or fantasy" in our refectory downstairs. Since the majority of our parishioners neither saw the film, nor read the book, Victor first gave a detailed presentation of this "masterpiece" using slides in order to access the material. The second part of the talk was dedicated to the refutation of main statements of D.Brown's ideology. Victor focused on the historical research and its problematics. Not surprisingly, the controversial theme gave rise to some strong reactions on the part of the audience. We thank Paul Ivanoff for his effort to dеliver the finesses of interpreting into Dutch.