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Sunday July 21, 2024
His Eminence, Metropolitan Nicholas, first Hierarch of the Russian Church outside Russia, will make his inaugural visit to Australia in July. He will serve Liturgy at Holy Protection Cathedral on Sunday July 21, which will be followed  with a luncheon in the hall afterwards. Tickets for the lunch can be bought from the candle kiosk at church.  
Adults $30, children 15 & under: $15
The cut-off date for bookings is Sunday July 7 (or earlier if all seats have been sold).

Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky) was born to Russian immigrant parents in New Jersey, US.  In 1998, he graduated from Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY, where he received a Bachelor of Theology Degree.   In 2000, he graduated from the State University of New York Technology School, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Information & Communications. In 2014, he received monastic tonsure and given the name "Nicholas" after the Holy Hierarch Nicholas of Japan, and was elevated to the rank of archimandrite two weeks later.  In 2022, following the repose of Metropolitan Hilarion, Archimandrite Nicholas was appointed acting ruling bishop of the Eastern American Diocese by decree of the Synod of Bishops.  A few months later, in September 2022, Bishop Nicholas was elected and confirmed First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) by the Council of Bishops and the holy Synod. 

Metropolitan Nicholas has been appointed as caretaker of the miracle-working Kursk-root icon of the Mother of God
'of the sign'  The icon dates back to the thirteenth century and is venerated for the many miracles and help given by the Mother of God.
In the year 1295, the icon was found by a hunter in Kursk, a province of Russia that had been recently devastated by the Tartar invasion and left in ruins. As the hunter picked up the icon, lying face down on the soil next to a tree root, the image straight away gushed with pure spring water.  Over time, a chapel was built at the site.  In 1383 the province was again invaded by Tartars who attempted unsuccessfully to burn the chapel containing the icon; they piled wood all around it but the chapel refused to burn.  Centuries later, in 1828, another group of anarchists tried to destroy the icon which was then housed in the Kursk Cathedral of the Sign.  They  placed a time bomb in the Cathedral which caused massive destruction.  However,  the holy icon remained intact and even the glass within the frame remained whole. Thinking to destroy the icon, the anarchists had, on the contrary, become the cause of its greater glorification.  There are many miraculous accounts of the icon which continued through the Bolshevik revolution to the present day.  You can read the full history of the icon here: eadiocese.org/kurskrooticon
It has long been the custom of the Synod that the Kursk-root icon be sent regularly to visit all the dicoeses of the ROCOR, being venerated in the Divine Services of their parishes and visiting the homes of the faithful. The icon also makes visits to other parts of the world, where the faithful often arrive in their tens of thousands to venerate it.

Friday, September 13, 2024. 7:30pm.  
​This concert is part of our 75th anniversary celebrations.

 Friday August 2, 2024, Melbourne Town Hall
 
Echoes of the Volga - A Night of Passion, Faith and Folklore!
Experience the mesmerising harmonies of the Russian Orthodox Male Choir of Australia (ROMCA) as the choir graces Melbourne with a soul-stirring and captivating concert for the very first time!
Following their triumphant tours across Sydney, Brisbane, Tasmania, Canberra, and their acclaimed performances overseas across Europe and the USA, this multi-award-winning ensemble brings their unparalleled artistry to the iconic Melbourne Town Hall on Friday 2nd August 2024.

​The annual event of our parish joining together with Geelong, Dandenong and Oakleigh parishes for a paschal celebration will happen again on the Friday after Pascha, May 10.  This year it is our parish who will host the event.  All parishioners are invited to the short Bright Friday Vespers at 6pm, followed by dinner in the hall.  
Please RSVP by Thursday May 4 to the head sister, Luba Cowall, to book your place.  [email protected].

The Feast of the Annunciation on April 7, 2024, marked the 43rd anniversary of our rector, Fr Nicholas Karipoff's ordination. That is no small milestone!  Our heartfelt thanks to Fr Nicholas for his remarkable years of pastoral work.  We also extend our thanks and congratulations to Fr Nicholas’ wife, Matushka Anna, and to his family, for their selfless years of support and work for the parish.  

We wish Fr Nicholas and his family  Many Years!   многая лета!

Our deacon Fr Alexander has just come back from a massive solo bike ride from Melbourne to Sydney. The trip took ten days, averaging over 110km per day. The aim? Fr Alex is raising money for the charity, The Fathering Project. This organisation is dedicated to helping fathers across Australia be the best they can, to prevent long-term social, emotional and cognitive difficulties and create the conditions for children to thrive. Healthy families are the building blocks of a healthy society.  Fr Alex has been working in the  community services field for over thirty years, and began work with this organisation three years ago. 

In 2022 Fr Alex took a group of  thirty-five men and climbed Mt Kosciuszko, the highest peak in Australia.  Having now completed his epic bike ride, we look forward with great interest to hearing about his next adventure...

We will be celebrating our 75th anniversary  Patronal Feast on October 20, 2024 with a luncheon held at church following the Liturgy.  

More information and ticket sales coming soon!

(The actual feast of the Protection of the Mother of God falls on Monday this year - October 14 - so the celebration will be held the following Sunday in order for parishioners to attend)

The camp took place in beautiful Mt Evelyn March 1 - 3, 2024.
Look out for the 2025 camp!

Our annual Parish Fete is a chance for the parish community and our neighbours to enjoy some family-friendly entertainment and some great food!  2024 marks the  75th anniversary of our parish, and  our Patronal Feast in October will be a grand celebration... so the fete might not happen this year!

Christ is risen!
It is with great sadness that we learnt that Metropolitan Hilarion, our diocesan ruling bishop since 1996 and later, first hierarch of the the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, passed away this morning (Australian time).
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We will serve a panikhida tonight after vespers.
Vespers at 6pm, panikhida at 6.45pm.

Memory eternal!

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Prayer for Ukraine

Lord Jesus Christ our God, look down with Thy merciful eye upon the sorrow and greatly painful cry of Thy children, abiding in the Ukrainian land.
Deliver Thy people from strife, make to cease the spilling of blood, and turn back the misfortunes set against them. Lead unto sanctuary those bereft of shelter, feed the hungry, comfort those who weep, and unite the divided.
Leave not Thine own flock, who abide in sorrows on account of their kinsmen, to diminish, but rather, as Thou art benevolent, give speedy reconciliation. Soften the hearts of the unmerciful and convert them to the knowledge of Thee.
Grant peace to Thy Church and to Her children, that with one heart and one mouth we may glorify Thee, our Lord and Saviour, unto the ages of ages.

Amen.

Metropolitan Onuphry of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine 

“Defending the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine, we appeal to the President of Russia and ask him to immediately stop the fratricidal war. The Ukrainian and Russian peoples came out of the Dnieper baptismal font, and the war between these peoples is a repetition of the sin of Cain, who out of envy killed his own brother. Such a war is not justified either by God or by people.”
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‘This is not right’: Melbourne’s Russians decry Putin’s invasion , The Age, 25 February 2022
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"Like many people of Russian descent living in Australia, Nicholas Karipoff, Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church in Melbourne, believes President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is both unexpected and deeply upsetting.
“We pray for the suffering land of Ukraine in our church,” he told The Age. “They are people who are very close to us. We have Ukrainian families in our church.” "

The Parish Council of Protection Cathedral  would like to publicly express the following:

1.     Our dismay at the war in Ukraine.
2.     Our acknowledgement of the anguish caused to our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, both there and here in Australia.
3.     Our wish that our churches locally, nationally and internationally will do all they can to urge the end of hostilities.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9)"

Sermon by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
Luke 10: 25 – 37  The Good Samaritan
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit
In today’s reading, the lawyer, a specialist in the law of Moses, asked Jesus Christ how one can obtain eternal life.  He had heard about Christ’s teaching, and he correctly answered the question about the Law posed to him by Christ -   that the Law, the way to eternal life, is about love of God and love of our neighbour.  However, what the lawyer did not understand was the nature of love. What is love? Therefore, he asked, ‘Who is my neighbour?’  In other words, who is worthy to be loved by me? Who is worthy of my love? 
 
In response, the Lord tells a very moving story, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Christ is the Good Samaritan.  Those Jews who did not believe in Him despised Samaritans.  Galilee was just north of Samaria, so they called him a Samaritan as an insult. Christ uses the word differently. He’s the Good Samaritan who came to heal us – who are the half-dead descendants of Adam – in a spiritual sense.  The parable, however, answers the lawyer’s questions in a very unexpected way.  Rather than explaining to us. together with the lawyer, who our neighbour is, Christ describes how to become a neighbour to everybody. Or, at the very least, how to become a neighbour to those people in need of healing who God sends to us. Yes, it begins with those who speak directly to our conscience.  And where does it end?
 
The saints, as we find out from their lives and their writings, were able to encompass the whole world with their love, with their prayer. Oh, how the world today needs this sort of love, this sort of prayer, and the healing that it brings!  Now patristic exegesis – which means interpretation of scripture – the exegesis of this parable tells us of the man descending from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Anyone who’s been to the Holy Land knows that Jerusalem is up in the high hills, in a mountainous area, and Jericho is in the lowest depression on earth, 400m below sea level.  It is a very steep descent between the two, over a short distance. The man who is walking from Jerusalem to Jericho represents the spiritual descent, on the way from closeness to God to disconnect from Him.  The man is beaten up, just as the whole of humanity is beaten up by the demons.  This happens historically, whenever there is this spiritual descent taking humanity from the high spiritual state of Jerusalem to the low spiritual state represented by Jericho.
 
I would venture to say that apart from Noah’s day, there has never been a time in spiritual terms as low as the times we are living in today.  Humanity is so badly beaten up with the current crisis. According to the Holy Fathers, the priest and the Levite who walked past the man, lying beaten up on the road, represent the law.  The law was unable to heal humanity.  The Good Samaritan, Christ, had to come. The law and its righteousness was futile and empty.  The modern world has also developed its own ideology that is full of religious fervour.  But the righteousness of today’s law also cannot heal humanity.  The Church is represented by the inn in the parable, to which the Good Samaritan took the beaten-up man.  Can the church continue to care for humanity? Can it continue its healing work?  Perhaps the invisible bandits have now turned on the church to give up humanity, to give up this beaten-up man, to destroy him completely.  Perhaps it is time for the Good Samaritan to come back as he promised the innkeeper, Look after him until I come back.  That’s of course, the Second Coming. 
 
These are questions not only for our time.  The Church in the early centuries was faced with the same questions. During the first and second centuries, and into the third century, it could not see a future for the world.  The Church could not see any future for the world. And it was looking forward to Christ’s Coming.  Yea Come O Lord Jesus.  That was the feeling within the Church.  And yet, the Church then overcame the world, just as Christ said to his disciples at the Mystical Supper; that in the world you will have sorrows but be of good cheer. Be daring. For I have vanquished, defeated, the world.  And the Church then defeated the world, and the world came to the Church.  The iron empire of the Romans became, well at least externally, a Christian empire.  It could happen again if we truly want it to happen.  It can only happen, however, if the Church - the physician - heals itself.  Let’s seriously seek healing from the Good Samaritan. He can do it! Amen.
 

 
Luke 8: 41 – 56 – Jairus’ daughter is raised, a woman is healed
Luke 10: 16 – 21 – the Apostles cast out demons
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today’s two readings enable a contemplation of the huge problem, which is called theodicy. This word was coined in 1710 by the great European scientist and religious philosopher, Leibniz.  This word, which he invented, means justification of God for why evil and suffering occur in the world.   The first reading today, the Sunday reading, gives us the story of the woman who had an issue of blood for twelve years, and Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, whose daughter was dying.  While Christ was on His way to heal the daughter, He was held up by the woman, and the daughter of Jairus died and was then raised by Jesus Christ. The second reading today was for St Michael the Archangel and the other Bodiless Powers in which we hear the apostles coming back joyfully from their missions, saying even the demons obeyed them, and Christ saying that He saw the fall of Satan from heaven. 
 
The problem of theodicy, or rather the failure to understand the problem as much as is possible with the mind and the heart, causes people to fall away from God.  They say, where is your God?  It’s best formulated, as I’ve said on occasion in the past, by Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky’s great novel (The Brothers Karamazov) when Ivan says, I give back to God my ticket to heaven if it has to be bought even with one teardrop of an innocent child.  Here’s the problem of theodicy stated in the most powerful way you could probably do it.  The origin of evil, the origin of pain and suffering is precisely caused by the falling away from God who is all goodness.  How can this happen, this falling away?
 
It happens because we’re given the tragic gift – this is how some of the philosophers of the 20th century call it – the tragic gift of free will which is given to the angels and to human beings.  The first was Lucifer, the greatest of the angels.  We celebrate the angels today, but he’s not celebrated of course, he fell away.  How did this happen?  He had thoughts something like this, I’m so great.  Surely, I don’t need God.  I am an independent god myself.  And then he teaches humanity to think the same, that we don’t need God.  And today the sentiment that we don’t need God is shared by millions and perhaps billions of people.  This falling away causes all the evil and all the pain and suffering, and that includes the current problem of the pandemic.  And everything that goes along with that pandemic.  How humanity thinks or rather is taught by Lucifer to think, is that the ultimate evil is free will, the freedom to choose, and therefore it must be destroyed to make us happy.  That all we need to be happy is bread and circuses – a purely materialistic life with entertainment, with a full stomach and we’re happy watching the box or anything else.  That’s Lucifer’s recipe for human happiness. 
 
But what is the real answer?  Well, Jesus Christ said, know the truth and the truth will make you free. Jesus Christ, you are the Way, the Truth and the Life.  Send St Michael and the Angels to protect us so that we too are not led into temptation.
Amen.