The feast of the Meeting of the Lord is a wonderful, great feast which happens just before the solemnity of the beginning of Great Lent.  Its afterfeast’s length depends on when Lent commences.  This year, we have a full afterfeast, since Pascha is relatively late this year.

The feast’s rubrics are very complicated but interesting, depending on when the feast falls in relation to the preparatory period before Great Lent.  It also has a combination of features of a great feast of the Lord and also of the Mother of God.  In the Russian Church, it is considered a feast of the Mother of God, and therefore the vestments are blue.  Nevertheless, there is a special verse for the Small Entrance during the Divine Liturgy, which is typical of great feasts of the Lord.

His Grace, Bishop Luke, presided at the divine services.  During the Matins part of the All-Night Vigil, the special and unique hymn of the Irmos was chanted as well as later at the Divine Liturgy, “O Theotokos Virgin…”

A few days later, the newly ordained Priest, Nicholas Lochmatow, came to the monastery from Chicago, where he was ordained on the feast of the Three Hierarchs, to practice serving.  We congratulate Fr. Nicholas, a graduate of our seminary, as well as his parents.  His father, Protodeacon Victor, is a long-time worker in our monastery as well as the seminary.  For many years Fr. Victor was the right-hand aid of the ever-memorable Metropolitan Laurus and also teacher in the seminary.