St. Louis, June 3, 2025
Photo: chicagodiocese.org
On Sunday May 18, the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the parish of St. Basil the Great in St. Louis, MO, of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia celebrated its 40th anniversary.
The parish was founded in 1985 under a group of Greek Old Calendarists, but in 1992 was accepted into ROCOR. It moved into its current church building in 2016.
The feast was marked with a pastoral visit from His Eminence Archbishop Gabriel of Montreal, the Locum Tenens of the Diocese of Chicago and Mid-America. The celebrations were also enhanced with guest clergy from several states and a number of ordinations, the diocese reports.
Photo: chicagodiocese.org
In addition to the clergy of St. Basil’s, priests and deacons from Texas, Kansas, Illinois, New York, and Louisiana were present for the feast.
At the 6th Hour, Seth Williams was tonsured a reader and ordained a subdeacon for the St. Justin Mission in Cape Girardeau, MO; after the Great Entrance, Deacon Stephen Zelesnik was ordained to the priesthood for the new mission in New Roads, LA; and after the Anaphora, Subdeacon Daniel Simpson was ordained to the diaconate to serve at St. Basil’s.
The diocese reports that the congregation was large enough that Holy Communion was served from three chalices.
Abp. Gabriel delivered a homily connecting the joy of Pascha with the Gospel reading about Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. He then recounted the tragic 1979 incident at the Orthodox Monastery of Jacob’s Well in Samaria, where an ultra-Orthodox Jewish extremist brutally murdered Archimandrite Philoumenos.
Photo: yelpcdn.com
At the end of the service, gramotas were presented to parish choir director Carol Surgant, and the entire parish community, highlighting the founder Archpriest Martin Swanson and his Matushka Katherine.
After the service, all were invited to a meal by the parish sisterhood, which was accompanied by Church and folk hymns sung in English, Georgian, and Russian.
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