Sunday of St Gregory Palamas
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I pray this message finds you well as you visit our new online home. I wish you all a truly blessed and peaceful continuation of Great Lent. May we gently guide our hearts into the beautiful spirit of this holy season, walking together towards Holy Week.
Today is the Sunday of St Gregory Palamas, the wonderful second Sunday of Great Lent. It is a joyous day for our Church as we celebrate this great 14th-century saint, a devoted monk of Mount Athos who later became Archbishop of Thessalonica. St Gregory famously defended the spiritual tradition of hesychasm—the practice of deep, inner stillness and unceasing prayer of the heart, which guides us to a profound union with our Creator.
Through his life and writings, St Gregory beautifully articulated the reality of how we experience the Almighty. He taught the vital distinction between God’s essence and His energies. While God’s divine essence remains forever a mystery, entirely inaccessible and beyond our human comprehension, He does not remain distant from us. Instead, God reaches out and freely shares Himself with us through His divine energies—His uncreated grace, action, and light. It is through these active energies that we can experience and participate in God’s living presence.
As we reflect on these profound teachings today, we are also looking ahead to the coming week and the Third Sunday of Lent, where we will celebrate the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross. Placing the Cross at the very centre of our Lenten journey provides us with the spiritual strength and encouragement we need to continue our path towards the glorious Resurrection.
Please take note of our schedule and some important changes for the week ahead:
Catechism: Our catechism classes will take place this week as usual. We will discuss the Mother of God (Theotokos) and the Saints.
Thursday: I will be away attending a conference from Thursday through to Saturday. Consequently, there will be no Vespers service this Thursday.
Friday: We are incredibly grateful to Fr Andreas, who has kindly agreed to step in and serve the Salutations to the Theotokos in my absence.
Sunday: We will gather together for the beautiful services for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross.
Looking slightly further ahead, please make a note in your diaries for a special additional service on the 25th of March. We will be gathering in the evening from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm for Small Compline, which will include the reading of the full Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete. It is a profoundly moving service, and I encourage you to attend if you are able.
Finally, since you are reading this message here, I am so pleased to officially welcome you to our newly launched parish website at stanthonythegreat.org.uk! At the moment, our old website might still pop up in search engines for a little while as everything settles. We are working hard behind the scenes and plan to fully close the old site by the end of March. Please do let us know if you have any suggestions on how we can improve this space for our community over the coming weeks and months.
I hope to see as many of you as possible in church over these coming weeks as we walk through Lent together.
Sending you my warmest wishes for a spiritually fruitful and blessed week.
In Christ,
Fr Symeon