Welcome
Come and see
A small parish in Chicopee keeping the old calendar and the old services, in the form they were handed down.
Nothing is asked of a visitor. You may come, stand at the back, and watch. No one will approach you, no one will ask you to introduce yourself, and you are not expected to know what is happening. A great many people began exactly that way.
“Stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye were taught either by word or our epistle.”2 Thessalonians 2:15
Our Patron
Saint Philaret of New York
Metropolitan Philaret was born George Voznesensky in Kursk in 1903. After the revolution his family joined the Russian emigration to Harbin, in Manchuria, where he was educated, tonsured a monk, and ordained.
He served there for three decades through successive occupations, remaining after most of the clergy had gone. He left China in 1962 and two years later was elected First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, serving until his repose in 1985. When his grave was opened thirteen years later, his relics were found incorrupt.
In His Own Words
Sayings of Saint Philaret
A saying of the saint belongs here — the one the parish would most want a stranger to read first.To be added from his collected works
These are left empty on purpose. Words are not put into a canonised saint's mouth here unless they can be checked against a printed source — on his own parish's site that is the worst error to make. His two collected volumes are linked on his page. Send the passages with book and page and they will be set in properly, as many as you like.
Scripture
A verse for the week
The parish motto comes from Saint Paul, and it is the shortest statement of why this church exists.
“Stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye were taught either by word or our epistle.”
2 Thessalonians 2:15Divine Services
The weekly round
The parish keeps the Church calendar. Feasts and their vigils fall outside this pattern and are announced as they come.
These carry across from the parish's existing site. If any is wrong, say so once and it is corrected everywhere it appears — the bar at the top of every page, this table, and the search-engine listing all read from the same set.
Visiting