Ordination of Bishop Jerome

On Wednesday 10 December 2008 I was standing near the Baltimore Travel Plaza at 2:30 AM as I waited for the Eastern "China bus" to New York. The bus was 15 minutes late and I became very concerned that maybe the bus will not come at all. It came.

I arrived in New York well before dawn, as can probably be seen in the three photos of the building which house theSynodal cathedral in Manhattan. I was at the building at 6:45. I was supposed to be there at 8:30.

Eventually somebody came and let me into the building and escorted me to the cathedral itself. In a few minutes one of the priests arrived and then other started arriving. A couple of people asked me, "Are you serving?" and I replied, "I don't know, but I hope so." Apparently it was basically up to Decon Nicholas.

Before he arrived, Bishop George arrived and the priest was reading the names for the Proskomedia and Bishop George asked me to help by reading names from the big stack of books. Every name was written in Russian, but I was able to read most of them. There was one book which I could not read and I handed it to the priest who said, "I also can't read it." But he could.

Deacon Nicholas gave me the choice of wearing my own vestments or finding a set of theirs that fit. I selected to wear my own. I know that they fit. It turned out that I was almost the only major clergy not wearing blue. But that's okay. I was still serving.

The whole service was in Church Slavonic, which is not my liturgical language, although I can do some Slavonic. I did the second Little Litany in Slavonic since the Little Litany is the only litany that I could do in Slavonic. I told Deacon Nicholas that I can do it with "a uniate accent" and he said that a little diversity does not hurt.

I was also asked to read the Entrance Prayers for Bishop George and when I finished, I was then asked to do the same for Bishop Peter. At the beginning of the service during the vesting I held a censer at one point and at the Gospel I carried an omofor. At the Great Entrance I held one of the censers and after the Anaphora I censed the Altar. I also did the censing after the Proskomede and before the Liturgy. Thus, I did have ample opportunities to serve despite the fact that I was the sixth deacon and the only deacon with a single orarion. The archdeacon has been a deacon over 50 years. I have been a deacon that many weeks, and not much longer.

After the Liturgy I commented to Bishop George that I had two dreams that were fulfilled today. He asked, "Were you sleeping?" The first dream was to meet Fr. John Shaw in person and serve with him. The second was to attend an ordination to the episcopacy. When I told Bishop George that this was my first one, he said, "I've been to a few, including my own."

Near the end of the service I heard one priest telling another, "Bishop Michael could not make it so they sent Michael Bishop." Another priest later said that my bishop did something non-canonical: he ordained a Bishop a deacon. But my bishop already told this one overe a year ago.

Besides meeting the former Fr. John Shaw, now Bishop Jerome, in person, I also met Peter Fekula and Andrew Komendantov for the first time. I also met several priests and deacons and others and what a blessing it was for me.

After the Liturgy we had a really nice luncheon. I sat across the table from Andrew and it was then that he learned who I am. Before going to the lunch, I met Peter. He introduced himself and I said that I hope that I did not throw the choir off and he said that I did not. I then asked him to repeat his name and when he did, I asked if he was the Peter on the Psalm list and at that point we both recognized each other.

After I left the cathedral, I went to B&H and purchased some items for my camera. I had to replace a filter for my 50mm f/1.8 lens and lens caps for the 28-80mm lens on my Nikon and the 18-55mm lens on my Canon. I am constantly losing those two lens caps. I wish that I could use the 18-55mm Canon lens on my Nikon.