This weekend, we were thankfully able to bless our cemetery, after having to postpone it week after week after week due to rain or excessive water. Following the Divine Liturgy a Trisagion for the departed was served starting at the graves of John and Sophie Barchyn, two pillars of our community that connected the pioneer past of our parish with a future of endless possibilities in the witness of the Gospel proclamation.
This annual tradition is truly a wonder that should not be lost on us today. Who of those founders (some of which were born in the 1840’s) would have ever thought that some 111 years later, that their names would be remembered by men, women, and children with no connection to them or their cultural heritage? Yet for all these differences, the witness of their faith, has bound them and us together in the love of God. Truly we are all their spiritual children regardless who we are, or where we have come from; making this tradition as natural as remembering our own departed parents, siblings, and grandparents.
May their memories be eternal in the risen and glorified Lord, and may we bear witness to the saving grace of God as they did; so that those who have no connection to us, might in the next hundred years, also remember us by name, and proclaim those blessed words “Christ is Risen!” “Христос воскрес!”
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