On Saturday 22 January and Sunday 23 January we will have services for the Thirty-First Sunday after Pentecost and for the Sunday after Theophany.   Matins will be served at 6.00pm on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy with the Great Blessing of Water will be served at 9.00am on Sunday morning.  Following the blessing of water a moleben of thanksgiving will be served for the work of the former (1994-2009) Theophany parish in Mayfield, Newcastle, the remaining members of which joined our parish in 2009.  The NSW Government requirement that face masks be worn in indoor areas other than places of residence should be noted.

On Saturday 8 January and Sunday 9 January we had services for the Twenty-Ninth Sunday after Pentecost and the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ.  Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  At Divine Liturgy the Prayer in time of Devastating Epidemic was read.  In place of a sermon at Divine Liturgy, the parish rector read aloud Metropolitan Hilarion’s Nativity Epistle in both Russian and English.

This year, like 2020, was dominated by the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 and the public health measures implemented to manage it.  Our parish had no public services from Monday 2 August until Saturday 23 October – a period of almost three months! – and various other restrictions were in place for the entire year.  We had five baptisms including Gabriel Golovdovski and Lira Koster.  We laid to rest two long-serving and much loved members of the parish, Anna Morhun and Eugenia Thoroughgood (nee Kallaur).  Prayers were offered on the two-hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Emperor Paul I of Russia.  We acquired new blue and green vestments for the altar table and church, a new seven-branched lampstand for the sanctuary, and a new candle-stand for the church.  Together with the Gosford parish we provided an English-Russian wall calendar commemorating the centenary of the First All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.  Our website provided updated information to help with the planning of weddings and instructive material about Sunday commemorations and readings and certain Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church.  The renovation of our sacristy was almost completed and planning for further improvements to the church and grounds commenced.  Our parish rector made pastoral visits to the Mid North Coast of New South Wales in January and May.  All the news from 2021 can be read here.  Glory be to God for all things!

On Saturday 18 December and Sunday 19 December we had services for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker, archbishop of Myra in Lycia (+c.345 AD).  This summer feast-day of Saint Nicholas is the lesser patronal feast-day of our church.  All-night Vigil with the blessing of wheat, wine, oil and five loaves was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  At both services, our parish rector was assisted by Deacon Michel Matys.  Divine Liturgy was preceded by a blessing of water and followed by a moleben to Saint Nicholas with a procession around the church.  At the end of the moleben the parish rector offered congratulations to our Warden Nikolai Goura and Parish Council member Dean (Nicholas) Crawford, both of whom were celebrating their name-day.

On Saturday 18 December the parish rector baptised the infant Lira, the first child of James and Masha Koster.  Lira, who was baptised in honour of the Martyr Valeria of Caesarea, had as her godparents Victorya Atrahimovich and Craig Beck.  We warmly congratulate James, Masha, Victorya and Craig, and pray that God will grant His newly-baptised servant Valeria good health, every blessing from above, and many years!

On Sunday 12 December our parish held its 2021 Annual General Meeting.  The 2021 Annual Report was presented and accepted.  The path of parish life and plans for the future were discussed, following which Nikolai Goura was elected Warden for a sixth consecutive three-year term, and Irene Lupish, Olga Bogacheva, Lucea Szabunia, Anu Kinnunen and Dean (Nicholas) Crawford were elected to serve on the 2021-22 Parish Council.  

On Saturday 11 December and Sunday 12 December we had services for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of Martyr Paramon and 370 martyrs with him in Bithynia (+250 AD).  Matins was served on Saturday evening and Divine Liturgy was served on Sunday morning.  At both services, our parish rector was assisted by Deacon Michel Matys.  At Divine Liturgy the Prayer in time of Devastating Epidemic was read.  Following Divine Liturgy an announcement was made concerning the parish Annual General Meeting to be held that afternoon.

On Friday 19 November we learned with great sadness of the repose, early that morning, of Eugenia (“Zhenya”) Thoroughgood (née Kallaur, b.1938), a much-loved member of our parish.  Born in Belarus, Zhenya came to Australia via Poland, Germany, and Italy, arriving in October 1949.  After living for a time at the Greta Migrant Camp, Zhenya’s family became deeply involved in our parish, with her father Anton helping build our church and later serving as a trustee.  Zhenya, a humble and pious woman who rarely missed a service, for many years sang in the choir and helped with cleaning and the changing of the church vestments.  Her funeral was served on Friday 26 November; she was laid to rest in Sandgate Cemetery on Wednesday 8 December, her burial having been delayed by heavy rain.  We offer heartfelt condolences to Zhenya’s daughters Karen, Tania and Natalie, and to her grandchildren.  May God grant this good and faithful servant of our parish rest with the saints and make her memory to be eternal!

Our 2021 Annual Report, including the independently audited 2020-21 Financial Statements, is now available.  It includes information about the governance of our parish and gives a little parish history.  It also summarises the life and activity of the parish in 2020-21 and provides details of some future projects.  A copy of the report, which will be formally presented to our parish Annual General Meeting on Sunday 12 December 2021, is available here.  We encourage our parishioners and friends with questions or comments concerning our Annual Report to contact us.

Our parish often receives enquiries about the Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery of Monkerai and its founder, Father John MacPherson.  To help consistently answer such enquiries and to provide some history, to date, of an interesting episode in the history of Russian Orthodoxy in the Hunter Region, some information has been compiled here.

In conjunction with Saint Panteleimon Russian Orthodox Church, Gosford, our parish has developed and published an explanation of the reasons why weddings cannot be celebrated on certain days and dates and during certain seasons. It incorporates a list of Sundays and Fridays on which weddings can be celebrated that has now been updated to include Sundays and Fridays in 2023.  This information, which can be accessed either here or via our Baptisms, Weddings and Funerals page, has been prepared to help our parishioners and friends when planning weddings in parishes of the Australian-New Zealand Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. Should anyone have any questions about this information, please contact us.

The December 2021 issue of “Word of the Church” (“Церковное Слово”), the official journal of the Australian-New Zealand Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, is now available in our parishes. This edition continues the beautiful glossy colour format introduced in December 2021.  Content includes Metropolitan Hilarion’s 2021-22 Nativity Epistle in Russian; ‘Скорбней Юбилей’, a Russian-language article about the centenary of the 1922 Soviet decree confiscating church valuables; details of clergy movements and awards; a Russian-language list of living and departed Diocesan clergy for commemoration in church and in private prayer; ‘The Relationship Between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Australia in the period from 1950 until 1969’, the English-language text of a lecture presented to the ROCOR Centenary Conference; and more.  Copies are $5.00.