Posted on 12/17/2015 12:14:52 PM PST by marshmallow
On 27 November 2015, Orthodox Vesper service was celebrated for the first time in history at the Cologne Cathedral during the autumn session of the Orthodox Episcopal Conference in Germany. Over one thousand worshippers from the Orthodox communities of Cologne and the neighboring cities attended.
The Cologne Cathedral is unique church; its main sanctuary was consecrated in September 1322 on the site on which the believers used to gather for prayers even in the first centuries of Christianity. The celebration of an Orthodox service became possible thanks to friendly support by Dompropst Gerd Bachner and Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, Archbishop of Cologne.
Vesper service was celebrated by the Revd. Radomir Kolundic of the Serbian Orthodox Church together with hierodeacon Gregorios Sorovakos of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Bishop Sergije of Frankfurt and Germany (Serbian Patriarchate) delivered a sermon.
Singing at the service were choirs of the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Bonn (Ecumenical Patriarchate), of the parish of the Intercession in Dusseldorf (Moscow Patriarchate), and of the parish of All Saints in Cologne (Romanian Patriarchate).
(Excerpt) Read more at mospat.ru ...
Money to complete the construction of the cathedral came from a protestant.
At my parish we recently celebrated the Great Vespers for the Feast of St. Andrew, the First Called. The local Roman Catholics attended with their Monsignor, a monk and a Maronite deacon. We shared a fasting meal together afterwards. It was, frankly, wonderful. We will be celebrating the Feast of St. Peter with them in June.
That sounds wonderful - very prayerful, very much in the spirit of faith. I am always encouraged to hear of people uniting in acts of charity or worship, and always so disillusioned by hearing people being angry and sniping.
“Money to complete the construction of the cathedral came from a protestant.”
No. The Prussian Royal GOVERNMENT (which was Protestant) paid one third of the cost of finishing the project. The Cathedral was never completed actually finished according to the original plans, however. What stands today is little more than the Choir of the original with a great facade.
The new Protestant emperor of the Germans had a vested interest in finishing the building since, as Jonathan Sperber in his book Rhineland Radicals (1992) mentions (on page 114): “The Cologne cathedral, unfinished since the Middle Ages, was to be seen as a symbol of an unfinished German national unity...” Protestant piety apparently didn’t enter into it.
It should be noted the chances of this happening in reverse - say a Catholic vespers service being allowed to take place in a Russian Cathedral in Pskov or Rostov - is pretty much ZERO.
Catholics are just more generous.
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