Posts Tagged ‘liturgy’

Saint King Boris feast and a Holy Liturgy in the Great Basilica of Pliska – 2nd of May 2018

Thursday, May 3rd, 2018

Pliska-Great-Basilica-air-view-biggest-medieval-church-Europe

Pliska is the first capital of Bulgaira and an ancient city that traces its roots back to the Baptizmal of Bulgaria by Saint King Boris (The Baptizer of Bulgarian lands and Slavonic People) the feast is of a great importance for Bulgaria to be pressent on the map of Europe over the last XV centuries since Bulgaria's establishment in 681 A.D. 

 

Pliska which is an enormous architectural complex dated from IX / X century hsa played a pivotal role for the Baptizmal process of Bulgarian nation as it was King Boris's palace at that time and the Christianization of Bulgarians and Slavonic (natioons) people started exactly in the newly built so called Great Basilica of Pliska  which was an archibishop seat and a central Monastery and Palace Church of Bulgaria, the building was completed approximately in 875 A.D. and was the biggest Cathedral church in Europe for about 1000 years onwards with the gigantic area of 2,920 square meters (31, 400 ft).

Old_Basilica_in_Pliska-walls-reconstruction

20 century reconsturction of the Church walls based on descriptions from history annals 

The Basillica was build on top of ruins of older Bulgar pagan temple and has martyrium (a place dedicated to a martyr who has been martyred there) as many of the ancient Churches had. It is believed that the martyrium may be Saint (Boyan) Enravota – the first Bulgarian saint (circa 833). The basillica has a form of a Cross shaped mausuleum.

 

Old_Basilica_in_Pliska-left-part-of-the-alter

Reconstruction of walls left part of the Altar


The archibishop residence was north and south of the basillica on the northern yard there was a residential building with a bath which included hypocaust (an ancient water warming system). Building south of the cathedral was used as school and scriptorium. Nearby the basillica are situated necropolis (most likely monk graves).

Old_Basilica_in_Pliska_Sarcophagus-near-altar

Pliska Sarcophagus near the Great Basillica Church altar

As with every basilica of that time there is a special allocated place of the Church for nobles. Yard northside was used as a kitchen and a dining room and accomodated other monsatic buildings.


The Old Basilica reconstruciton original model should have looked something similar to below picture which is found in the Museum (which holds a little part of the artefacts found) situated about 1.5 kilometer from the Basilica.

Old_Basilica_in_Pliska_Reconstruction-model

A presumable reconstruction model of the Old Basilica

On 2nd of May KIng Boris Feast in 2015 for a first time since many centuries in memoriam of 1150 years since Christianization of Bulgaria in the Great Basilica was served an Eastern Orthodox Christian (an open air) Holy Liturgy headed by the Bulgarian Patriarch Neofit with many Metropolitans guests from other Eastern Orthodox national Churches where the ex-president Rosen Plevneliev and the Living ancestor King Simeon the III-rd was present.

1150-years-baptismal-of-bulgaria-feast-patriarch-Neofit-Pliska-Great-Basilica

Patriarch Neofit Patriarch and head of Bulgarian Orthodox Church blessing in Great Basilica y. – 2018

The event in 2015 was continued with the idea to become an yearly event on the feast of Saint King Boris each 2nd of May yesterday in 2018 by the Metropolitan of Varna and Veliko Preslav his eminence Metropoltian Ioan (John).

metropolitan-holy-liturgy-Preslav-2018

Orthodox Christian Believers in the Great Basilica Preslav 2018 (People gathered being transported by free of charge buses organized by the Eparchy from Dobrich, Varna, Shumen, Targovishte 

holy-liturgy-2018-Preslav-1-fr-Peter-reading-Apostle

Fr. Peter reading The Apostle readings

his-eminence-Metropolitan-of-Varna-and-Veliki-Preslav_Ioan

Metropolitan Ioan (John) of Varna and Veliki Preslav Blessing in Holy Liturgy 2018

Holy-Sacraments-in_Great-Basilica-2018-metropolitan-Ioan-and-his-deacon

The Holy Altar with the Holy Sacraments in Pliska Basilica in 2018 (Metropolitan Ioan and his deacon)

The Church service was a big gathering for the region (if we take the fact that the current town Pliska has about 900 citizens and is in practice a village), the overall present people were perhaps about 200 to 250. More than 1/3 of the priests (38 priests) from the whole Eparchy served the service together with the Bishop. The weather before the service was rainy but just after the service and onwards, it came sunny again just like it was saint King Boris with all the Christian saints rejoiced to see so many Christians gather together just like the times when Christianity started to spread from this same place over the lands of Bulgaria country and later during the golden age throughout the territories of Bulgarian Empire and all the Slavonic borderlines such as nowadays Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and Russia. 

The whole set of pictures from saint King Boris feast in Pliska can be seen on the official  website of Varna and Veliko Preslav eparchy here

A Holy Liturgy Tsarevo – Church on a sea rocks

Sunday, August 19th, 2012

Tsarevo sea resort sky view

Its 5th day since I’m in Tsarevo . Its my first time in Tzarevo but hope not my last time. The place is absolutely charming !
There are more than 15 beaches in the region, plenty of beautiful rocks, a little sea port and 2 beautiful Churches – one located on the tiny little city street as well as the second ancient Church located on a sea rocks nearby the sea coast.

Carevo helicopter view

The whole main city (old) part is concentrated near 3 main streets one of which can be considered central. Once one walk the central street you pass by a little park (sea garden – as we call them in bulgaria) located on right. Continuing straight in the main street in the eyesight of the viewer is a strange beautiful looking natural water carved rocks.

Once you walk towards the rocky shore mixed with sand at one’s sight view is a large cross:

Carevo end of Central Street rocks and Christ Cross

Tsarevo is a place for people who like rocky places as there are too many of rocks all around the town.
Most of the beaches here are a mixture of rocks and sand, so probably people who prefer luxurious beaches won’t like it, but for “wild souls” like me it is perfect 🙂

Here is a picture of the central Tsarevo beach.

Central beach Tzarevo picture

Today in morning for the usual Sunday holy liturgy we went to the rock located Church Dormition of Virgin Mary with Galin and his little kid.
The Church history is ancient and originally the most ancient Christian Church that was there is probably from 5th or 6th century as in many other places in Bulgaria. The current Church (stone) building is from 1895 before the liberating war for Bulgaria with Ottoman Turkish.

Dormition of Virgin Mary Church is one of the important “landmarks” of Tsarevo.Though the church is on such a “desert” place it is fully functional; Holy Liturgy is served on each big Church feast and any tourist Christian can go during day hours 09:00 – 20:00 h for short prayer or supplication.

After the Holy Liturgy, I spend some time staring at the sea view from the rock on the back of the Church building. The panorama one get from the rock eminence behind the church is amazing beautiful (purely inspirational) …

Here are some pictures of the Church, I don’t hold copyright over the pictures, so the pictures belong to the respective persons who took them.

Dormition of Virgin Mary (Theotokos) - town Carevo Tsrevo church on Rocks

Tsarevo Rock Church view

Dormition_of_virgin_Mary_long_view_picture

Tsarevo Cliff Church Uspenie Bogorodichno Dormition of Theotokos

Water Dunes Dormition of Theotokos Church on rocks view

1984 Church entrance Tsarevo Church on Sea rocks picture

Church and Bell Tower in Tsarevo town

The Weekend

Monday, November 26th, 2007

In Saturday we had a Training day at Design.BG. It wasn’t too interesting the Boss spoke a lot about a new hierarchy being implanting into the corporation. Big mouths were said “how we should not anymore say that we make sites in the office or out if it.” He said: “We doesn’t make sites! We make projects and solutions for the client” :). Mitko has come back in Dobrich in Saturday (For the weekend) and Sunday and we went out twice. I haven’t touched computers much this weekend :).In the morning in Sunday I went to Liturgy and after that we had a small walk with Stoyan. After that I watched the 3 seriesof “From Dusk till Dawn” nice vampire story btw 🙂 And yes I like the style of Tarantino.

At some time I feeled very alone like nobody cares about me. I called Lily and we spend some good time together :).

END—–

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

Yesterday I spend a lot of time outside with Lily. We went to the fountain we watched film at home. The film was called”Wild Hogs” it was supposed to be a fun commedy (only supposed to be). This week is going to be a taugh one.We have to present a project at Marketing Research.

I have to write a 600 words resume about International Enterprice,also we have to make a presentation in Culture. Today in the morning i was on a Liturgy again. God’s grace ishere ! The week passed without serious server issues (Thanks God). Today I checked some logs of one of the serversand I observed oddities there. I checked the crontab and I realized it’s because of a crontab. The dumped databaseis a HUGE one 2.6G (bzipped).

I asked in irc.freenode.net #mysql, and the guys there pointed me to a similar issuewhich was supposed to be an MySQL bug when dumping large database. Since the dumping databases were of a type MyISAMI ofcourse could have used mysqlhotcopy.

But in the end the solution to the problem was removing “–opt” option fromthe backup opts of mysqldump and passing “–skip-opt” to it (I suspect this would slow the dumping process a lot).But I don’t care it is much better (a slow dumping), than hanging the whole Webserver and interrupting the site’s visibilityover the Internet.

Btw I started playing Quake 2, it’s cool but a little annoying there are too many tunnels and veryoften after I kill most of the bad guys I spend a lot of time searching for keys and stuff .. :).END—–

The week

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008

After 10 minutes I’ll have Deutcsh lessons anyways I’ve caught some winter virus :)I’m having snots coughing and stuff. In Sunday I was on a Liturgy in the Church as usual.Yesterday was a quiet and peaceful day. Static came home and we installed Windows. NowI have Windows,Linux,FreeBSD on one machine. I’m surprised how well is Windows working.I’m eating a lot of garlic recently to stimulate my immune system. Yesterday I playedsome Warcraft III. Having Windows now gives me the opportunity to play some gameswhich weren’t working in wine. Well that’s most of how my day passed. I went to seemy grandma and she made me tea as always (her tea is awesome!). :)END—–

My pleasent time back home in Bulgaria

Sunday, January 4th, 2009

I experienced mostly a great time in Bulgaria. Refreshing days went to Kavarna with Nomen to confess my sins in front of a priest. I purposely has selected Kavarna’s Church and father “Vasilii” because I liked him as a priest. I’ve been on a liturgy once during the summer in the church where he takes care for. After the Liturgy I drived Mitko’s Audi A3 towards Dobrich. I’m a new driver so I need to practice. I drived during this days few more times. We went several times for a coffees and pubs with Nomen and Alex. We also went out with Nicki Mitko’s brother a couple of times and we had a great time together coffee-ing. I also went to a dentist. It seems that I had caries and they had to fix my teeth. The caries was in the last stage that it could be so the dentist had to kill and remove my nerve and he did so, the nerve was killed (with arsenic fluid) and removed and the tooth was filled in. I also went out for a drink 3 times with Lily. I went to liturgy 2 times. I met a nice priest (Father Veliko). In Varna when I came back from the Netherlands I met Order and had a great time with him. A lot of other things that I can hardly remember. The Christmas this year. My whole family was there except my grandma who had to be in the hospital (however the Christmas was just perfect!) Thanks to God! I and my family gathered together and had a nice talk and dinner even we said the Lord’s prayer before we started eating it was so nice … The New Year eve was a nice one as well. Even my grandma was there. If we don’t count few minor downfalls like a small quarrel with my sis all went well. I was home with my family until 1.30 in the morning and afterwards went to Denica’s who is a close friend of Nomen, Pavlin was there as well he is an old friend from the metal days of my past. I drinked a couple of glasses of beer and wine. In the morning I had a little hang-over as as a consequence from the drinking. The 13 days I was in Bulgaria has passed so quickly. I shared with my grandma and mother that I feel bad physically, emotionally and mentally. During my stay I also have been aguest in my aunt a couple of times, so nice time there as well.The food in Bulgaria is so great I was very, very happy to eat the delicios food there. The food here in the Netherlands is completely terrible compared to the one at home! In short that was how my days passed there. And I’m so happy about them! I’m looking forward to go home as fast as possible I realize my place is not abroad. When I firstly came here I thoiught that maybe my place is somewhere in some of the developed countries like here in The Netherlands. Now I think differently. It’s quite interesting that after I went out of Bulgaria I became much more a patriot. When I was living there I always has praised the developed countries way of living and thinking. Now it’s a completely different story I sometimes even like the bad things in Bulgaria. I wonder if other people who went out of Bulgaria to work or study has experienced the same.Anyways thanks to the Lord I had a safe journey from Bulgaria to the Netherlands. And here I’m here in the dorm again. I’m gonna tell in short my experiences from the trip back from Bulgaria to the Netherlands in a different post in a minute.END—–

God’s Grace

Monday, March 5th, 2007

God was graceful to Habib and it looks like he hear our prayers. UK Visa was granted to Habib for the maximum period of 6 months. Praise be to God for this! Also ORDER’s tuition fee seems to stay the same as in the news in the universite website is said “By The Grace of God .. etc.” :]Also great thing it is there is peace in my home. Today I was on church and on the way for the church I met Bonchev, he was drunk and carrying accordion. He wanted to go to the Church in that state.But in the end I was able to convince him not to come to the Liturgy (It would be fun if he entered the church drunk hardly staying on his feets. I had some spiritual problems during the day mainly the Python Spirit is trying to attack me, that’s awful spirit in the name of Jesus Christ I command you to go in hell where your place is! Amen. I played today some MAME games, watched Cartoon Network,I was out on a coffee with Lily. Mitko and Habib come in the end from Sofia.

Sunday

Monday, July 9th, 2007

The day went faster than normal other days. I wake up in the morning went to Church on Liturgy.Then I went home watched some Cartoon Network. Later I decided going to my uncle to read himthe bible for some time, but he was not home I take a watermelon from the local market for mygrandmother. It’s nice to see somebody being happy about something :]. Later i went to my uncle.It’s sad to see someone like in his condition :[. I really want he to get better I read himfrom the Bible The Holy Evangelic text of Luka, I hope at least he has understood somethingfrom the Evangelical Text. Habib called home from London later, this was a real joyHabib is such a nice guy i really want God to bless him in everyhing for he desirves.We spake a lot about the life in England. The bad conditions there, the low paid job,how hard he is living there. About how we miss as friends, about some close friends.After the conversation I decided to go out. I first went to the Mino’s coffee. There weresome people there but I got angry at the non-sense conversations and decided to go to theFountain actually there was almost the same. Later I Toto and Mitko drinked beer in thecity park. And I went home … After the usual Evening Orthodox Prayers I will go to bed in 20 or 30 minutes.END—–

Weekend with a lot of friends

Monday, April 7th, 2008

I spend the weekend with a lot of friends. God has prepared another great time for me. In Friday I was out with Alex, and we had a long discussion for who is God, because he thinks he can know the Lord without our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ which is completely wrong and impossible like it’s written how our Lord says “I and the Father are one” and again “Noone comes to the Father except through me“. At friday I was out with Static a friend and brother in Christ 🙂 We went to the school where he lives “Dimitar Talev”. This is the second time when I visit this school but it’s so colourful and I like it so much that I wished for a second to be pupil again :). In Sunday I went to Liturgy as often I went to bed very late in Saturday so I wasn’t able to wake in the morning and I went to the Church service somewhere around 9:30. The Priest’s preach was about the gospel’s where our Lord Jesus freed and healed a boy who was very often abused by wicked spirits, he also mentioned how some of the ppl fasts only abstaining from food and how this ain’t fast at all. He gave us interesting example how the animals who ate meet are cruel and animals who eat grass are very meek and pure. For example he said look into the fox, wolf they eat meet and they’re fierce animals whether animals like sheeps and rabbits eat only grass and are mostly good. He also mentioned that the st. Ioan Zlatoust(John / James the Goldenmouth) said that the fasting gives wings to the soul. In the church I saw Stelio the man who introduced me to the Orthodox Faith and after the Service we spend some great time in the park talking about the past during the communist regime here in Bulgaria, also the current state in the country etc. etc. In 12:30 we had previously arranged meeting with two of my colleagues from the College. We had to make the SPSS project which we have to complete and pass to the teacher today. Thanks God everything just went smoothly. And we had to make just a little text to the project in order to complete it. In 09:00 we went to the Fountain with Vlado (hellpain), because he was here for the weekend. Now just after I came home I prayed I take a shower. And I intend to read a bit from the bible and go to sleep.

END—–

What’s goin on recently

Sunday, June 15th, 2008

At Saturday I had my first driving license. The instructor let me drive on the road for Balchik. Happily the driving went smoothly of course I made a lot of mistakes which is pretty normal for a first time driving. In the afternoon we went out for a walk with Niki. We just went out when Vlado (Hellpain) called, he came back to Dobrich for a day, we met for a coffee after which we stayed for 2 hours in the central park. Today as usual I attended the liturgy at the orthodox Church. Today it’s a big Christian Orthodox holiday, it’s the day in which the Our Lord Jesus Christ send the Holy Spirit to the early Church fathers (the apostles). The apostles heard a great noise and they see the Holy Spirit descending from heaven in a form of burning tongues, each tongue coming above the head of each of the apostles and the rest of the first believers in our Lord and Saviour Jesus. I’m still in doubt should I decide to go or not to the Netherlands. I applied for a room there through http://vivare.nl yesterday. But still haven’t received a confirmation for approval and I haven’t send a deposit for a room. I made research about the Arnhem Business School (ABS) and talked and I’m talking with a friend who went to study in Holland the last year. In the afternoon I watched an old russian movie which is marked as a SCI-FI genre (Kin Dza Dza), I got the title from the top 20 in IMDB. Yeah I can say that the movie was pretty freaky :). Vladi did call me again and said one of the servers in the office had crashed I spoke with of my colleagues with a request to go to the office and restart the box but it seems the box isn’t booting. Tomorrow I’ll catch an early bus for Varna and went to the office to see what’s wrong with the machine (hope it’s not a serious hardware problem). That’s most of it. To be honest although God grants me a lot of his divine grace I still feel a bit of lost and pathless and struggle to fight my lack of faith, and bad habits. I’m praying everyday for a physical healing but I still haven’t completely recovered from my sickness. I have sinned badly in my past and I deserve to have that sickness but still I honestly I’m repenting day after day for my bad life in the past and the near present … Another think I should say is that a friend of mine has died I saw his obituary hanging on a tree 🙁 , His name was Alexander (Sashe) known among us by the nickname (Saketo), he was a drug addict and that killed him I hope he is with God know peace be upon him. END—–