Daily prayers in Ordinary Time with USPG: (53) 20 July 2023

The Greek Church (Biserica Grecilor or simply Greci), a Romanian Orthodox Church in Brașov, is dedicated to the Holy Trinity

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (16 July 2023).

Today (20 July 2023), the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship celebrates the lives of Margaret of Antioch, Martyr, 4th century, and Bartolomé de las Casas, Apostle to the Indies, 1566.

Before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning for prayer, reading and reflection.

Over these weeks after Trinity Sunday, I have been reflecting each morning in these ways:

1, Looking at relevant images or stained glass windows in a church, chapel or cathedral I know;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

An image of the Trinity above the entrance porch of the Greek Church in Brașov

Holy Trinity Church (Biserica Grecilor), Brașov, Romania:

For some years, I was a regular visitor to Romania, for family reasons, working as a journalist with The Irish Times, and then working in partnership with Church of Ireland and Romanian Orthodox parish churches on projects in Bucharest and Brașov.

Brașov in Transylvania has a population of almost 250,000 and is the sixth most populous city in Romania. Brașov is in central Romania, surrounded by the Southern Carpathians and about 166 km north of Bucharest and 380 km from the Black Sea.

Historically, the city was the centre of the Burzenland (Țara Bârsei), once dominated by the Transylvanian Saxons. It was a significant commercial hub on the trade roads between Austria and Turkey (then Ottoman Empire). It is also where the Romanian national anthem was first sung.

The landmark church in Brașov is the Black Church (Biserica Neagră or Die Schwarze Kirche), a Gothic church dating from 1477. Some accounts claim it is the largest Gothic church in south-east Europe. It got its name after being blackened by smoke in a great fire in 1689.

Bran Castle, close to Brașov, is a major tourist attraction, said (incorrectly) to have been the home of Vlad the Impaler, often identified with Dracula.

Brașov is 48 km north of Sinaia, where King Carol I of Romania built Peleș Castle, his summer residence, in the late 19th century. The Sinaia Monastery, which gives its name to the town, was founded by Prince Mihail Cantacuzino in 1695 and named after the Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. Today, the monastery has about a dozen Orthodox monks.

In the past, I have worked closely with the Greek Church (Biserica Grecilor or simply Greci) on Gheorghe Barițiu Street in Brașov. The church is formally dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

The church was built in 1787 by Orthodox guild members and merchants of various nationalities: Romanians, Greeks, Aromanians or Vlachs, Serbs and Bulgarians, all living in Brașov. The first parish priest, Father Macarie, came from Sinaia Monastery in 1788. A church school was built in 1799.

This was a wealthy church, and from the 1780s competing language and cultural groups in Brașov disputed the control of both the church and school. Initially, the vying ‘Greek’ and ‘Romanian’ parties were split along socio-economic lines, with Greeks and Romanians in both parties. Eventually, they acquired an ethnic character and relations between the two communities were poisoned.

The Greek faction was successful in the courts, and the language of both church and school continued to be Greek under Austro-Hungarian rule.

However, the local Greek community in Brașov declined numerically and economically in the late 19th century, and in 1892 Xeropotamou Monastery on Mount Athos refused to send a new priest to the church, citing the church’s poor condition. By then, most Greek speakers in Brașov seem to have adopted a modern Romanian identity.

Due to a shortage of students, the Greek school closed in 1908. The last Greek priest, Father Neofitos Stamatiades, left the parish for Greece in 1946. The church reopened in 1956. The Revd Professor Nicolae Moșoiu has been the parish priest since 1999.

The church is 20.5 metres long, 8.5 meters wide and 11 meters high. The walls are of stone and brick. It is shaped like a ship, with arches and lengthy semicircular windows. The baroque façade is richly ornamented with stucco plants and flowers.

The interior of the church was painted with floral motifs in 1859 by the painter Guliemievici who also gilded the iconostasis. The icons of Christ the Pantocrator and the Mother of God with the Christ Child on the vault of the nave have a special beauty.

Over time, the church has seen many changes. A small entrance porch was added in 1958, and an inscription in Romanian in 1977 translated the original inscription in Greek from 1787. The interior painting was last restored in 1987 to mark the 200th anniversary of the church, when Father Zenofie Moşoiu was the parish priest (1972-1999).

A tower, known as the Bastion Gate Tower or the Powder Tower, forms part of the citadel wall and adjoins the church wall. The tower is 12-15 metres high, and includes bells and a semantron. It leads into the cemetery, where the burials include Dositei Filitti, Bishop of Wallachia, who died in 1826 and Panaiot Hagi Nica (1709-1796), the principal founder of the church and school. A number of royal figures are buried in the Brâncoveanu family crypt.

The Romanian Orthodox Parish of the Holy Trinity has over 600 families of parishioners. The church is open daily from 7 am to 7 pm. The church and the cemetery are listed as a historic monuments by Romania’s Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs.

Inside the Greek Church (Biserica Grecilor or simply Greci) in Brașov

Matthew 11: 28-30 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 28 ‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

The interior of the church was decorated in 1859 by the painter Guliemiev

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Abundant life – A human right.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (20 July 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Help us remember Lord, in all that we do, that we are all your children. We are all equal.

Collect:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water:
refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

the Greek Church in Brașov has over 600 families of parishioners

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

The entrance to the Greek Church on Gheorghe Barițiu Street in Brașov

A Romanian centenary and a reminder of cultural riches

An icon corner from a Romanian home, recreated in the ‘Experience Romania,’ exhibition in Limerick this week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

On my way back from Dublin yesterday [7 December 2018], I stopped in Limerick to visit ‘Experience Romania,’ an exhibition in the Hunt Museum celebrating the centenary of the ‘Great Union’ that marked the unification of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina with Romania on 1 December 1918.

This exhibition, organised by Eiro, the Irish Romanian Cultural and Business Association, is a celebration of Romanian culture and tradition through taste, sound, touch, scent and the visual, with moments of Romanian traditional music.

I have joyful family links with Romania, and have travelled throughout the country, working in Bucharest, Brasov and other parts of the country, to celebrate family connections, but also reporting on the general election in 1996 for The Irish Times, working on church projects with the Orthodox Church in Bucharest and Brașov, and also preaching in the Anglican Church of the Resurrection in Bucharest.

Those visits brought me to many parts of Wallachia, Moldova and Transylvania, and always included visits to monasteries, museums, art galleries and historic sites, from the Museums in the centre of Bucharest to Bran Castle and Sinaia Monastery, the Monastery of Stavropoleos and Cretulescu Church in Bucharest, and Holy Trinity Church in Brașov, known as the Greek Church.

However, it is some years since I was back in Romania, and this exhibition brought back many happy memories, as well as reminding me of places I must return to visit, particularly the ‘Painted Monasteries of Bucovina.’

Voroneț Monastery, one of the ‘Painted Monasteries’ of Bucovina … a photograph in the exhibition (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Bukovina is on the slopes of the Carpathian mountains, and was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire from 1774 until 1918, when it was united with Romania. The northern half of Bukovina was seized by the Soviet Union and is now part of Ukraine.

Voroneț Monastery is one of the many famous ‘Painted Monasteries’ of southern Bucovina, in Suceava County. The monastery was built by Stephen the Great in 1488 over a period of three months and three weeks to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Vaslui. Often known as the ‘Sistine Chapel of the East,’ the frescoes at Voroneț feature an intense shade of blue known as ‘Voroneț Blue.’

One side room is set up to look like a traditional country house, with the corner settle bed, the icon corner, and kitchen ware. There are photographs, textiles, pottery, icons, traditional clothes and furniture, and a small selection of books.

Easter eggs with traditional Romanian dyes and colours (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

There are reminders too of the Romanian tradition of dying Easter eggs in different colours. This is done by boiling the egg in natural substances, such as onion peel for brown, oak, alder bark or walnut nutshell for black, beet juice for pink.

On Easter Day, young children, family members or friends would face each other, declaring ‘Christ is Risen,’ ‘He is Risen indeed,’ and hitting each other’s eggs. The person whose egg did not crack or break believed they had received a special blessing for the year that followed.

The centre of Brașov … a photograph in the exhibition in Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Brașov was once known as Kronstadt, and in the brief interlude of post-war madness it was given the blood-chilling name of Stalingrad (Orasul Stalin). Today, it is the most visited city of Romania, with its charm and popularity leading one guidebook to describe it as ‘the Prague of Romania, the Krakow of Transylvania.’

With its cobbled streets, castellated towers and ornate churches and townhouses, it is no wonder the legend grew up that when the Pied Piper charmed the children away from Hamelin, they emerged from the Carpathian Mountains in the town square of Brașov in 1284.

Bran Castle, 28 km south of Brașov, has prospered by convincing tourists that Bran Castle is Dracula’s Castle.

A traditional Roman glass icon in the exhibition in the Hunt Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Other photographs in the exhibition include the Romanian Athenaeum, the national concert hall and a landmark building in the centre of Bucharest. The ornate, domed circular building opened in 1888 and is a symbol of Romanian culture.

There are reminders throughout of the rich cultural heritage of Romania, where Iași, the Moldavian capital and the country’s second city, is known as the cultural capital of Romania, and Timișoara, the country’s third city, has been selected as European of Culture for 2021.

The exhibition in Limerick closed this afternoon, but at a time when borders are going up again throughout Europe, exhibitions and cultural exchanges like this are important reminders of variety and diversity in our shared European cultural heritage.

A cosy corner in a Romanian home … recreated in this week’s exhibition in the Hunt Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)