Slava
I took some photos at our Slava on Tuesday night, but they were very dark, so I thought at first that it was not worth writing about, but perhaps it is worth recording.
Two years ago we had quite a number of friends around, and a Serbian priest, Fr Pantelejmon. Since the Slava is a Serbian custom, it was good to have Fr Pantelejmon, to tall us whether we were doing it properly.
Last year we had no Slava, because my wife Val had been transferred to her firm's head office in Johannesburg, and the daily 3-4 hour commute meant that there was no time to prepare anything.
This time we had three monks and a non-functioning Anglican-Roman Catholic priest.
Father Pantelejmon came with Fr Naum, who came from Serbia just a month ago, and Brother Matthew, a South African who has been a novice for four years, mostly on his own, and has recently moved in to live with Fr Pantelejmon and Fr Naum.
Pete Beukes is an old friend, who was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, got married, later became an Anglican, then returned to the Roman Catholic Church. And only our younger son was with us, as the older one was working night shift, and our daughter is studying in Greece, so could only send us a Happy Slava message by SMS.
But with there only being a few of us, we had some interesting conversations, and talked quite a lot about the similarities and differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the communist regime in Yugoslavia where Fr Pantelejmon and Fr Naum grew up. Fr Pantelejmon was baptised at the age of 18, and Fr Naum at the age of 22. Pete Beukes's wife Isobel was not able to be with us, but I'd known her for even longer, and had helped to prepare her for baptism at the age of 19.
It was good to see that the seedling of the monastic life in South Africa is beginning to take root.
Two years ago we had quite a number of friends around, and a Serbian priest, Fr Pantelejmon. Since the Slava is a Serbian custom, it was good to have Fr Pantelejmon, to tall us whether we were doing it properly.
Last year we had no Slava, because my wife Val had been transferred to her firm's head office in Johannesburg, and the daily 3-4 hour commute meant that there was no time to prepare anything.
This time we had three monks and a non-functioning Anglican-Roman Catholic priest.
Father Pantelejmon came with Fr Naum, who came from Serbia just a month ago, and Brother Matthew, a South African who has been a novice for four years, mostly on his own, and has recently moved in to live with Fr Pantelejmon and Fr Naum.
Pete Beukes is an old friend, who was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, got married, later became an Anglican, then returned to the Roman Catholic Church. And only our younger son was with us, as the older one was working night shift, and our daughter is studying in Greece, so could only send us a Happy Slava message by SMS.
But with there only being a few of us, we had some interesting conversations, and talked quite a lot about the similarities and differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the communist regime in Yugoslavia where Fr Pantelejmon and Fr Naum grew up. Fr Pantelejmon was baptised at the age of 18, and Fr Naum at the age of 22. Pete Beukes's wife Isobel was not able to be with us, but I'd known her for even longer, and had helped to prepare her for baptism at the age of 19.
It was good to see that the seedling of the monastic life in South Africa is beginning to take root.