SIGNIFICANT JUBILEE FOR WINDSOR’S GRAČANICA

The Serbian Orthodox community gathered around Windsor’s Gracanica is celebrating 75 years of its existence this year. Due to the current epidemiological situation in our province, we have made an effort to share some fond memories of the beginnings of the community, as well as some preserved details from the life and development of the community on our official Facebook page.

Click here: https://www.facebook.com/gracanicawindsor

On the anniversary itself, December 29, a memorial service will be held for all clergy, founders, contributors, benefactors and all parishioners of the Gracanica church, which will be broadcast live via the church’s official Facebook page.

May the Lord give rest to the souls of all those who selflessly labored around His Church and may He crown them with imperishable crowns in His Kingdom, and may God compensate all those who continue good deeds in His Church today with spiritual and physical strength and mutual love so that our deeds may be deeds of love towards God first, but also towards others.

***

“Holiness is proper to Your house, O Lord,

Unto length of days.” Psalm 92(93):5

 Dear parishioners gathered around the Gracanica Serbian Orthodox Church – the Church of Christ,

Dear brothers and sisters,

Filled with joy in my heart, I address you, congratulating you on the great jubilee, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the existence of the Serbian Orthodox community around Windsor’s Gracanica.

Together with us on this jubilee, dear brothers and sisters, which is actually an expression of your fidelity to the Church that rests upon the faith of Saint Sava, rejoice all the holy martyrs of Kosovo and Metohija and all the saints of our nation whom God glorified as saints. God shown them as luminaries because they, among many other great deeds under very difficult historical circumstances, chose the Christian Orthodox Church and faith, Christian Orthodox culture and civilization, at a time when it seemed that it had been defeated and was disappearing from the historical scene.

Today, also rejoice those who built this wonderful church here in Windsor with love for God, and by building it, they were actually building the living Church of Christ, with the hope that future generations, as the living Church, will proudly keep and pass on the faith of their ancestors. Had there be no awareness of the unity of the Church and the people through generations, and of the peculiarities of the Serbian Orthodox Christianity, culture and way of life, there would be no such beautiful church here in Windsor today, which is not only named after ancient Gracanica in Kosovo and Metohia, but was even built after it.

A priest very dear to me noted his wise thought somewhere, saying to himself first and then to all people of faith: You are just one link in the chain, and the sooner you understand that, the easier it will be for you to become a link between those before and after you. And if we are a link, since we are surrounded by so many clouds of witnesses – the Saints (Hebrews 12:1), because our ancestors are holy, from St. King John Vladimir, St. Sava and the holy lineage of Nemanjić, until today, than let us try not to be a weak link, because future generations will look at us, as we look with gratitude today at those who entrusted us with this shrine.

I take this opportunity to ask forgiveness from all my parishioners, not least from those who are spatially distant, but prayerfully close, if I have caused anger or sadness in you, either in word or in deed, especially in these days when we are preparing our souls and bodies for the Nativity of the Christ.

With these thoughts, with prayerful wishes that the celebration of the great jubilee in health, love and unity, will be an incentive for our future common struggle, I greet you in the love of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Rev. Vladimir Vranic