Worship

Celebrating the ancient Western Rite Orthodox Liturgy

Blessed to the Western Rite, we use the ancient Liturgy of Saint John the Divine which was used by the Orthodox Church in the British Isles throughout the first millennium, only ending with the Norman invasion.  This is the Liturgy of Saint Columcille of Iona and Saint Adamnan of Iona, it is the native Orthodox Liturgy of the British Isles.  We also use the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom.

The British church celebrated grace and nature as good gifts from God and recognised the sacredness of all creation. It had a love of mysticism and poetry. Celtic culture society was rural, hierarchical, family based and clannish in nature, with each clan having its own ruler. The Church took over this pattern, with the basic unit of organisation being the monastery.

Another important aspect within the development of Christianity in the fringes of Britain and Ireland was that of isolation. Following the example of the Desert Fathers of the East, the early Christian leaders sought isolation in the wild and desolate places, away from what they saw as the encroachment of the world upon their faith. They wanted to centre their thoughts and their lives totally upon God, to be as close as was spiritually possible to the Creator.

The early British Church saw itself as independent of the Roman church – as Bishop Diaothus’ reply to St. Augustine would seem to indicate;
“Be it known and declared that we all, individually and collectively, are in all humility prepared to defer to the Church of God, and to the Bishop in Rome, and to every sincere and Godly Christian, so far as to love everyone according to his degree, in perfect charity, and to assist them all by word and in deed in becoming the children of God. But as for any other obedience, we know of none that he, whom you term the Pope, or Bishop of Bishops, can demand. The deference we have mentioned we are ready to pay to him as to every other Christian, but in all other respects our obedience is due to the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cærleon, who is alone under God our ruler to keep us right in the way of salvation”.

Their Liturgy, we have in its entirety in the Stowe Missal, which, from its internal evidence, was used in both England, Ireland and Scotland, having both Latin and Old English writing in it.

In our former home, we had this tiny chapel in the grounds, dedicated to Saint Mary the Virgin.  Lit only by candles and without electricity it shows that a personal chapel with enough room to celebrate a liturgy is possible anywhere there is enough space to erect a single car garage.

The shrine in my previous hermitage with its reliquary of Saint John (Maximovitch) sometime hierarcy of ROCOR’s Archdiocese of Western Europe of which the United Kingdom was a part.  The flesh relic given us personally by Metropolitan Hilarion.

A fairly good example of a remaining Celtic/Anglo-Saxon church.  According to Bede, there was probably a wooden beam across the top of the arch with icons on it, and frescoes and icons on the side walls.  The remnants of the original frescoes can still be seen above the arch.