Moving day at Our Lady of Fatima Greek Catholic Church

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5Loaves

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We had our first major move of boxes, boxes, and boxes :eek: and furniture yesterday to our new location 6 blocks away, the former convent of St. Monica’s Latin parish and School. Much work ahead, unpacking and getting set up. We will have our final services during Great and Holy week in our present location so our temple is in tact until after Pascha, April 14/15.

Here are a few pix from yesterday. The chapel picture is taken from the sanctuary. The loading is going in the back entrance. I have some pictures of the front but can’t find them at the moment… 🙂

Please continue to keep us in prayer. This is a big challenge for a little tiny parish but bodes well for us once we begin to get settled in. 👍
 
It’s lovely! Congratulations!

Don’t forget to protect your back! 🙂

I continue to pray for your parish during this exciting time.
 
That’s kinda neat. 🙂 Moving is always exciting. Remember, places always look bigger, then you get your furniture in and all that space disappears! 🙂

Our Lady deserves a nice church!
 
CDB1718 said:
It’s lovely! Congratulations!

Don’t forget to protect your back! 🙂

I continue to pray for your parish during this exciting time.
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LOL:) Remember to lift with your legs. Remember to bend at the knee!

…kinda like genuflecting 🙂
 
PatrickSanDiego said:
That’s kinda neat. 🙂 Moving is always exciting. Remember, **places always look bigger, **then you get your furniture in and all that space disappears! 🙂

Our Lady deserves a nice church!
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That photo of the chapel is deceptive. Here is the choir spontaneously singing in the chapel taken the day we first visited there in February. You get a better sense of the proportions with people in the shot. It’s smaller than our current temple. We have no pews but still we have a few benches and chairs for those who require them and we have to find a place for our memorial table.

Also the sanctuary area. The altar, crucifix and the statues are gone now. It will be some time before we figure out how and what sort of iconostasis we can build for the area which is narrow and shallow. We’re looking at different ideas, including what HRM has done in their new (former convent chapel) temple, tho their sanctuary appears both deeper and wider than ours.

(Hey, Fr Moses, I see you’ve uploaded a pic of you in your new kitchen, 👍 with your mixers, and maybe a canning kettle behind you on the floor. )

Also the two world class views from our roof. The first fabulous view when you exit onto the roof-- the onion domes of the glorious Holy Virgin Cathedral! Turn north and the Pacific Ocean. Golden Gate bridge, and the Marin Headlands and the Bay! Perhaps we’ll find a way to do readers Vespers on the roof. 😃
PatrickSanDiego said:
LOL:) Remember to lift with your legs. Remember to bend at the knee!

…kinda like genuflecting 🙂
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Was there genuflecting in 19th Century Russia? :eek: Is outrage! 😉
 
5Loaves,

Are you using the main church or some other building there?

St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church on Geary and 23rd
 
Vico said:
5Loaves,

Are you using the main church or some other building there?

St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church on Geary and 23rd
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Christos voskrese!

That picture you posted, Vico, is the Catholic Church. It’s a very lovely church.

We have been offered and are moving to the former convent building next door, 5920 Geary Blvd. Thus there will now be two separate parishes on this one “campus”, St Monica’s Catholic Church and Our Lady of Fatima Greek Catholic Church, in separate facilities.

You can see the convent peeking out on the far left in that shot you posted of St Monica’s Catholic Church. Here is one of the front of the convent,and the convent and the church. I don’t have a shot of the sanctuary area sans Latin altar, now gone. I’m including an interior I have of the St Monica’s Church, quick shot taken our first visit there. Give you an idea of their church, quite traditional and lovely.

A number of people have told me they heard rumors surrounding our move that we were becoming Orthodox, because of our apparent reputation as intending to be a parish truly faithful to our Orthodox lineage, and that many of us parishioners and clergy are often in Orthodox Churches worshiping. ECCs talk about ECCs being an outreach to the Latin Church with our Eastern spiritual liturgical world view and praxis. We are seeing how this move will increase our evangelization to the West. Also, we’d love to have closer relations with the other ECCs here. With easy parking and public transit access we may be able to offer more seminars etc that would possibly bring our ECCs together from time to time.

During our long break between afternoon Vesperal DL and night Pascha services a number of us in pairs or smaller groups went over to Holy Virgin Cathedral to venerate their Tomb of Christ, and St. John’s relics. I know I was praying for our future, that we may worthily carry on the tradition we have been handed. We are so tiny, but so filled with love of our Church.

I turned on Ancient Faith Radio and didn’t intend to get into the rest of the internet today. 🙂
 
Vico said:
5Loaves,

Are you using the main church or some other building there?

St. Monica’s Roman Catholic Church on Geary and 23rd
Click to expand...
Christos voskrese!

That picture you posted, Vico, is the Catholic Church. It’s a very lovely church.

We have been offered and are moving to the former convent building next door, 5920 Geary Blvd. Thus there will now be two separate parishes on this one “campus”, St Monica’s (Latin) Catholic Church and Our Lady of Fatima Greek Catholic Church, in separate facilities.

You can see the convent peeking out on the far left in that shot you posted of the Catholic Church. Here is one of the front of the convent,and the convent and the church. I don’t have a shot of the sanctuary area sans Latin altar, now gone. I’m including an interior I have of St Monica’s Catholic Church, quick shot taken our first visit there. Give you an idea of their church, quite traditional and lovely.

A number of people have told me they heard rumors because of our move that we were becoming Orthodox, because of our apparent reputation as intending to be a parish truly faithful to our Orthodox lineage, and that many of us parishioners and clergy are often in Orthodox Churches worshiping. ECCs talk about ECCs being an outreach to the Latin Church with our Eastern spiritual liturgical world view and praxis. We are seeing how this move will increase our evangelization to the West. Also, we’d love to have closer relations with the other ECCs here. With easy parking and public transit access we may be able to offer more seminars etc that would possibly bring our ECCs together from time to time.

During our long break between afternoon Vesperal DL and night Pascha services a number of us in pairs or smaller groups went over to Holy Virgin Cathedral to venerate their Tomb of Christ, and St. John’s relics. I know I was praying for our future, that we may worthily carry on the tradition we have been handed. We are so tiny, but so filled with love of our Church.

I turned on Ancient Faith Radio and didn’t intend to get into the rest of the internet today. 🙂
 
BTW, having had our final service at 20th and Lake, this week we now will be working hard to set up a very basic temple in our new space for our first DL there.

We have been totally focused on getting moved out and have moved about 90% of our stuff to the convent but we have done no unpacking here, another huge part of the move. We have a great deal of physical work ahead, and a lot of adjusting. **Please keep us in your prayers. **
 
Christos voskrese!

Having been a member of more than one mission parish in my lifetime, I can appreciate that this is a momentous and joyous occasion, despite the hard work involved.

BTW - next time you are on the ByzCath forum, either post of PM Irish Melkite (Neil) and have him update the directory listing for your blessed parish.

I also know a few people who were planning to visit next time they are in your area, so I will give them a “heads-up” on the move.

May God grant this parish and its faithful many happy, healthy and blessed years!
 
ByzCathCantor said:
Christos voskrese!

Having been a member of more than one mission parish in my lifetime, I can appreciate that this is a momentous and joyous occasion, despite the hard work involved.

BTW - next time you are on the ByzCath forum, either post of PM Irish Melkite (Neil) and have him update the directory listing for your blessed parish.

I also know a few people who were planning to visit next time they are in your area, so I will give them a “heads-up” on the move.

May God grant this parish and its faithful many happy, healthy and blessed years!
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I sent Neil the exterior shot a while back. I’m not sure I gave him the address: 5920 Geary Blvd. It will be some time before we figure out how we will make the temple space work as we want it to. How we can approach an authentic Russian space here remains to be seen. During this time of Pascha the Holy Doors and deacons doors are open anyway so we normally have more of a view of the clergy there. 🙂

There are now photos on our Facebook from our Holy Sat. Vesperal Liturgy and evening Acts and Pascha.

We had five wonderful priests with us for Pascha-- Fr. Vito our usual celebrant and Father, Fr. John Greene our pastor/administrator frequent celebrant/concelebrant, Fr. Kevin Kennedy a very frequent celebrant/concelebrant, Fr. Mark Ciccone, S.J., former pastor of OLF, and Fr. Joseph Homick, Abbot Emeritus of Holy Transfiguration who is currently residing locally. Our beloved deacon Fr Kyrill had his hands full with that crowd. 😉 They made it a truly joyous Pascha.
 
I remembered I took a shot at the empty chapel at our new location when I was vacuuming the rug about a week ago.
Off topic but a number of us walked the couple of blocks to Holy Virgin Cathedral after our St. Basil vesperal DL and before the Acts and Pascha DL at night to pray there. Here’s a shot there also. 🙂
 
5Loaves said:
It will be some time before we figure out how we will make the temple space work as we want it to. How we can approach an authentic Russian space here remains to be seen.
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I’m sure you will all figure it out, and it will be glorious!

FWIW- my home parish (growing up) was a church building donated by a growing Roman Catholic community, with strong Spanish heritage. The church building itself was in the shape of an extended Moorish Cross, and the interior was oddly shaped as a consequence. The Sanctuary was place East, however :), and the rest was a labor of love and exercise in Slavic creativity and adaptability which, over the course of a few year, produced some great results.

Likewise, in my current parish, we took over a building abandoned by a large Irish Catholic congregation. It is a beautiful little temple, with a wood framed roof and steeple - very Celtic in style and appearance, but it was well adapted over the years to take on more of the character of the traditional wood churches of the Carpathian Mountains.

We’ll look forward to visiting once things settle into place to see the splendorous results!
 
Christos voskrese!

Thank you all for your prayers! Please continue to pray for us.

We had a wonderful first Divine Liturgy and agape in our new space. We definitely filled the temple space.

We were all amazed by what a wonderful job our deacon and a couple of parishioners did at putting together the temple space from nothing except the carpet there Sat. morning. Likewise our agape and kitchen space which was a wild jumble of boxes on Saturday morning but transformed to usable space by some other dedicated parishioners.

We had a bit of drama when one of the toilets went berserk at the end of the work day on Sat. All of the water to the building had to be shot off leaving us without water, including toilets. But Fr. John’s amazing maintenance guy managed to get things where we could have water again by the end of Liturgy, 👍

There was a professional photographer there on Sunday so I’m sure there will be quality photos from the day at some point. There are a few more pictures on our Facebook now.

After Third Hour and Proskomedia our clergy, parishioners, and visitors processed to St. Monica’s next door where the clergy and people of that parish welcomed us to our new location next door to them. I stayed at OLF in case people showed up late, they did, so they wouldn’t find us locked up, and to mind the many burning candles in the temple and at our Fatima Icon in the hallway. After the welcoming next door OLF processed back to our temple for our St. Thomas Sunday Divine Liturgy.

I can’t really report well on all that happened over at St Monica’s except that I learnt from my husband after the day was over that the beautiful new vestment Fr Vito wore for our Liturgy had been presented to him over at St Monica’s by Fr. Greene and Msgr Tarantino as a gift from the clergy and parishioners of St Monica’s. They had had it made for Father in Russia! 🙂 We are so blest to have this wonderful Latin Church parish and their very special pastor, and ours, Fr. John, so enthusiastic to have us “in the neighborhood” next door to them now. Their kindness and concrete support (they also bought us very much needed new signage back in November) has made such a huge difference for us during all of this transition.

Here are shots of the temple while people were next door, so the candles are lit, Proskomedia completed but people gone, the holy icon of Our Lady of Fatima which was in our outdoor shrine at 20th Ave., and as such many people missed ever seeing it, one of the signs St. Monica’s purchased for us in Oct. now on our front gate. We are using our old Proskomedia table as the Holy Table. Our old Holy Table would not fit through the doors here.

During the clergy communion which you know is pretty time consuming, I was looking around the chapel ceiling. You can see one of the three ceiling beams in the temple photo. On these there are medallions painted, one on each end and one in the center, so nine all together. I couldn’t really see them that well but the one in the rear over the choir caught my eye. I confirmed after Liturgy that in fact it is the Holy Mandylion! This is traditionally the first holy icon a student writes/paints. As a imprint of the face of Christ miraculously created, it’s an icon of great significance for the Eastern Church. The rest of the medallions as far as I could tell were classic holy images of the Latin Church.
 
ByzCathCantor said:
BTW - next time you are on the ByzCath forum, either post of PM Irish Melkite (Neil) and have him update the directory listing for your blessed parish.
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Neil does have pictures and the new address but says it will be a couple of weeks before Byzcath directory entry for OLF can get updated. They’re doing some upgrades or whatever on the Byzcath site.
 
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