Beheading of St. John the Baptist

In our Church calendar we commemorate today the Beheading of St. John the Baptist and Forerunner. This is a day of fasting.

The divine Baptist, the Prophet born of a Prophet, the seal of all the Prophets and beginning of the Apostles, the mediator between the Old and New Covenants, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, the God-sent Messenger of the incarnate Messiah, the forerunner of Christ's coming into the world (Esaias 40: 3; Mal. 3: 1); who by many miracles was both conceived and born; who was filled with the Holy Spirit while yet in his mother's womb; who came forth like another Elias the Zealot, whose life in the wilderness and divine zeal for God's Law he imitated: this divine Prophet, after he had preached the baptism of repentance according to God's command; had taught men of low rank and high how they must order their lives; had admonished those whom he baptized and had filled them with the fear of God, teaching them that no one is able to escape the wrath to come if he do not works worthy of repentance; had, through such preaching, prepared their hearts to receive the evangelical teachings of the Savior; and finally, after he had pointed out to the people the very Savior, and said, "Behold the Lamb of God, Which taketh away the sin of the world" (Luke 3:2-18; John 1: 29-36), after all this, John sealed with his own blood the truth of his words and was made a sacred victim for the divine Law at the hands of a transgressor.

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The works had stopped today. It was a really quite day. Having missed the noise of the pilling engines we thought of publishing a short video with some of yesterday’s pilling operation.

Pilling operation CFA

...this is how this process (which has just started) is called.

Therefore, the actual work on BUILDING and ERECTING our new Byzantine Church has began today from foundation level.

It obviously took 12 years to realise our Community sacred aim. But it was certainly worth it.

Many specialist engineers are working on our building site from today.

It will take about 3 weeks to finalise the pilling operation.

The little green mushroom cups have been placed for safety reasons on the pins, where the piles will go on the ground.

Pilling

The specialist pilling engines have been on site today.

The engineers have made their plans and marked the ground.

Little flags with numbers, signifying the actual number of the pile itself, have been placed on certain points on the ground.

The red lines on the ground show the points of the external walls of the new Church.

The actual concrete will be ordered from specialist factories and will start coming to our site as requested by the engineers.

Saint Phanourios Cakes

Saint Phanourios day today. We had a Divine Liturgy at our Church in commemoration of this Martyr of the Christian Faith.

Traditionally we bake cakes and bring them to Church on Saint Phanourios day. The Priest blesses them and then the cakes are distributed as a special blessing to our relatives, friends and neighbours.

Final ground preparations

Today the John Doyle people with the help of one engine had done the final preparations on the ground.

Tomorrow starts the pilling. A bit noisy but important work nevertheless.

Preparations...

Today there were intensive preparations on the ground for the pilling, which is to start the day after tomorrow.

These are very specialist works explained to us in detail by the project manager.

In any case this blog is not a specialist site. We only want to show in a general graphic way the progress of the works.

Photo of the week - 4

This is the fourth "photo of the week", which shows that all buildings have gone, according to the plan. The photo shows the final stage of clearing of the demolition materials.

Final demolition clearing

Today the demolotion company is working in order to finally clear all demolition materials from our site.

By tomorrow evening all demolition engines would be gone.

From Thursday this week we enter the first face of the actual building works, that is pilling (foundation system).

We shall offer some more details on this foundation system as the pilling works will progress.

New (temporary) Church

Since we have now demolished the old Church building, we needed to have a proper Church to serve well our liturgical needs.

It was beneficial to us that we had built three years ago the new Community building, which on the ground floor has quite a sizeable Hall. That Hall we’ve decided to transform into a Church. This is what we did during the week following our Patronal Festival of St. Panteleimon (27th July).

Many volunteers (about 25) had worked hard for about a week and the result is given now in these photos.

The new (though temporary) Church was blessed on Saturday 1st August and we had started using it as our place of worship from that day.

We hope and pray to be able to complete to construction of our new Byzantine Church soon, in order to move there permanently.

Old Church superstructure

Today we had experienced the end of an historical era, with the final and complete demolition of the old Church’s superstructure.

In about a week’s time the next face will start being developing, namely the pilling, which is the foundation system preferred for the building of the new Byzantine Church.

Dedication Stone

We jumped into history today, as we had taken away the original “dedication stone” of the old Church, which was placed there in 1932 by the Anglican founders of this Church. On the actual stone we read:

A.M. + D.G.

THIS DEDICATION STONE

WAS LAID ON JULY 2ND 1932 BY

MARY J. JOHNSON

Beneath the stone we discovered, as was reported in history, a little box with soil from the Holy Land and a letter by Fr. Frank Johnson, the first Anglican Priest of this Church of the Holy Spirit (as it was known in its Anglican period).

The exact contents of the letter are given below.

The Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady
July 2nd 1932


The Revd. F.R. Johnson

S. Leonard’s Clergy House,
Kenton,
Tel: Harrow 2914. Middlesex.

The soil in this box came from under the Olive Trees in the Garden of Gethsemane and was placed in the Wall of this Church of the Holy Spirit, with a bottle of Holy Water from the Holy Wells of our Lady at Walsingham, by Frank Reginald Johnson first Priest of this Parish of S. Leonard Kenton, Middlesex.

May the Holy and Undivided Trinity ever bless the work of Holy Church.

May our Lady Mary the Mother of Jesus our Lord ever pray for this parish where since the first Chapel was build in Kenton in 1324 in her honour she has been loved.

May Blessed Saint Leonard our Patron pray for his poor parishioners and watch over us with a loving father’s care.

Frank Reginald Johnson
Priest ordained by Arthur
Foley Bishop of London.

Mary Jane Johnson my dearest Mother
laid the Stone over these Relics.

We didn’t find though the bottle with Holy Water. It may still be there somewhere.

The Bell Tower [B’]

Demolition works had continued today.

The Bell Tower had eventually been brought down.

Photo of the week - 3

The third “photo of the week”, shows very clearly the progression of the works, in relation to the two previous ones.

Bricks from the old Church

The old Church (now almost gone) was built on 1932. It was part of the local Anglican Parish. Actually it was their second Church, in one corner of their Parish, and was named after the “Holy Spirit”.

On 1989 the Greek Community started sharing it with the local Anglicans. The truth is that the number of Anglicans who were worshiping at this Church was declining. Thus, in October 1993 St. Panteleimon Community had got the full use of the building and by January 1994 we purchased it.

Since then until a few weeks ago we had this Church building as our own Church and we were in many different ways emotionally attached to it.

Our Church Committee knowing and recognising this reality had requested from the demolition company to preserve 2000 bricks and 200 roof tiles in order to distribute to those of our Parishioners who would like to keep something, a “souvenir”, from their old Church.

The Sanctuary roof

...was removed today.

There was also general cleaning works, clearing demolition materials and taking them away.