To this day, I have prayed here, in an expanse I am visiting, in three churches that are affiliated to our diocese in North America. It is such a precious tradition that we make a pilgrimage to the local saints in whatever city we happen to be in. I have been told about churches here that are affiliated to other patriarchates. I pray that I get to pray in them as well. It is not appropriate, on visiting any city, to go to friends, from expanses you know, not the first of whom are mutual friends, that is, the saints of the local churches. After the Churches of Saint George and Saint Mary, I participated yesterday in the Divine Liturgy in Saint John the Baptist Church. Brethren, some of whom I know from Lebanon and Syria, have joined the Church, which is pastored by its tenant, Father Elie Touma. In the Church, my attention was caught that the faithful conclude the service by meeting in the hall. My friend Bernard Mansour told me that, once a month, starting in September, they serve an agape meal. Nothing enhances our lives in Christ like living as brethren in life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
To this day, I have prayed here, in an expanse I am visiting, in three churches that are affiliated to our diocese in North America. It is such a precious tradition that we make a pilgrimage to the local saints in whatever city we happen to be in. I have been told about churches here ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[2121,1708,2122,1443,2120],"class_list":["post-8760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-agape-meal","tag-antiochian-church","tag-brethren-in-christ","tag-divine-liturgy","tag-orthodox-pilgrimage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8760"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8839,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8760\/revisions\/8839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}