Beautiful churches

[All4Christ]

Share photos of beautiful parishes here.


Some of our parishioners recently got married in St Mary’s in Cockeysville….beautiful!

 

[ArmyMatt]

nice!

 

[All4Christ]

This is from the St. Seraphim Orthodox Cathedral in Dallas

 

[E.C.]

Share photos of beautiful parishes here.


Some of our parishioners recently got married in St Mary’s in Cockeysville….beautiful!

Hold on, I'm in NOVA and go to St Nicholas in DC, but you're THAT close to me? Hi neighbor!

This is from April when the Sitka Icon of the Mother of God came to visit. It was still Lent so we had a Presanctified Liturgy that night and since the Holy Synod was meeting that week for their spring session, Metropolitan Tikhon celebrated the liturgy while the other bishops stood in the nave with the rest of us hence the orlets on the side (it's a small altar space, smart move)

 

[All4Christ]

Hold on, I'm in NOVA and go to St Nicholas in DC, but you're THAT close to me? Hi neighbor!

This is from April when the Sitka Icon of the Mother of God came to visit. It was still Lent so we had a Presanctified Liturgy that night and since the Holy Synod was meeting that week for their spring session, Metropolitan Tikhon celebrated the liturgy while the other bishops stood in the nave with the rest of us hence the orlets on the side (it's a small altar space, smart move)

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I actually am in Central, PA - they have family down that direction, so they had the wedding at the St Mary’s parish.

Your parish is really beautiful! I’m in DC for work frequently - if I end up needing to stay for the weekend sometime, I may check out that parish.

 

[All4Christ]

Hold on, I'm in NOVA and go to St Nicholas in DC, but you're THAT close to me? Hi neighbor!

This is from April when the Sitka Icon of the Mother of God came to visit. It was still Lent so we had a Presanctified Liturgy that night and since the Holy Synod was meeting that week for their spring session, Metropolitan Tikhon celebrated the liturgy while the other bishops stood in the nave with the rest of us hence the orlets on the side (it's a small altar space, smart move)

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This is from our parish when the Sitka icon of the Mother of God visited.

I’m also including a photo of our cemetery cross with the sunset - I took it a few weeks ago.

 

[E.C.]

This is from our parish when the Sitka icon of the Mother of God visited.

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I’m also including a photo of our cemetery cross with the sunset - I took it a few weeks ago.

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I was there for that! Fr Tim's parish.

 

[RileyG]

Thanks for posting!

 

[All4Christ]

St John the Baptist in Perth-Amboy

 

[The Liturgist]

St John the Baptist in Perth-Amboy

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Oh that’s a nice one.

 

[All4Christ]

This is one from Lucca, Italy - Parrocchia di Sant'Antonio il Grande (St. Anthony the Great) - an Orthodox parish from the Romanian Orthodox Diocese in Italy. The priest is very kind and is able to communicate in English if you ever visit Tuscany and go to one of the Orthodox parishes.

 

[The Liturgist]

This is one from Lucca, Italy - Parrocchia di Sant'Antonio il Grande (St. Anthony the Great) - an Orthodox parish from the Romanian Orthodox Diocese in Italy. The priest is very kind and is able to communicate in English if you ever visit Tuscany and go to one of the Orthodox parishes.

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Oh that is gorgeous! Beautiful! Exquisite! There are some Italian superlatives which come to mind, but i don’t know how to spell them…

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way, I really like an Orthodox church with a good ceiling. I feel that a beautifully decorated ceiling is an often underrated thing.

 

[All4Christ]

Oh that is gorgeous! Beautiful! Exquisite! There are some Italian superlatives which come to mind, but i don’t know how to spell them…

Bellissimo! Perfetto! Fantastico! (I love the Italian language.)

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

From St. Sava Temple, Belgrade where my family and I visited two summers ago. Still the greatest Orthodox temple I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. Can’t beat the Serbs!

 

[Uriah S]

Agia Sophia, Thessaloniki. Built in the 7th-8th Century on the site of an earlier church, though used as a mosque under the Ottomans, and restored after a fire in 1890.

 

[The Liturgist]

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Agia Sophia, Thessaloniki. Built in the 7th-8th Century on the site of an earlier church, though used as a mosque under the Ottomans, and restored after a fire in 1890.

Indeed, I love that church.

It is one of three places I definitely recall reading of the Cathedral Typikon being used. This was famously used at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople until the Venetian conquest in the “Fourth Crusade” in 1204, and has been reconstructed by Dr. Alexander Lingas in some recordings of Capella Romana.

 

[The Liturgist]

By the way, speaking of Hagia Sophia, I really love the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Sofia, Bulgaria, which is architecturally similiar to Hagia Sophia, albeit with an elongated nave. I particularly love the view of the cathedral from above:

The way in which the cathedral is situated is very elegant. Alas there is a need for more beautifaction as the city recovers from the communist era, and the patina on the copper roof needs a bit more time to form properly, but recently the main dome was re-surfaced in shining gold, which I absolutely love.

Here is the interior, which might be familiar to those who have acquired any of the excellent recordings of its choirs available through Apple Music and other sources, including the Sofia Patriarchal Cathedral Choir and the Sofia Boys’ Choir:

Viewers may notice that this cathedral and St. Sava’s Cathedral in Belgrade are both related in design to the Hagia Sophia, which even in its Turkish captivity continues to remain the quintessential expression of Orthodox architecture (and also was the basis for all of the mosques in Constantinople, which will be convenient for that happy day in the future when we might pray that through the intercession of the Theotokos and all the saints, the Turkish people will be converted unto Christ our Lord, and thus will have reason to change their mosques into cathedrals, monasteries, convents and parish churches. I pray to see the Blue Mosque become a convent dedicated to the Holy Dormition.

 

[Uriah S]

Thessaloniki definitely warrants a return visit just for touristing round the churches. I could have taken many more pictures, but that wasn't really appropriate, and a few places have signs up forbidding photography.

I can't think of a(n orthodox) church that I don’t find beautiful.

 

[The Liturgist]

I can't think of a(n orthodox) church that I don’t find beautiful.

Indeed. I also like most traditional Western churches of a liturgical design. What I don’t like is obvious iconoclasm. Iconoclasm, like what one sees at some megachurches, gives me nightmares. Also corrupt iconography, such as at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, with its Byzantine-imitation artwork depicting various heretics and non-Christians, including the Kangxi Emperor who actually banned Christianity in China.

There is also in Bucharest I think a heterodox church that has an iconostasis but with weird black and white illustrations instead of holy icons. I saw a photo of it on another site and it was ghastly.

Of course it does make sense that in predominantly Orthodox countries, you will see heterodox groups like the Georgian Evangelical Baptist Church imitating Orthodox worship, just as cults imitate the worship of Western Christians in North America and Europe.