Our Annual Summer Conference sadly came to a close today.

It was held at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and was both a pilgrimage and a conference on the theme of Pilgrimage.

Here are some highlights from our Facebook Page

A full report, including many of the talks,  will appear in the next edition of Forerunner.
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Friday 3rd July:
Metropolitan Kallistos addresses the OFSJB conference on Sacred Space: the Presence of God in Thin Places

Saturday 4th July:

A really fascinating talk about Russian Pilgrimage to Mount Athos by Dr Nicholas Fennell  Watch out for the millennium celebrations of Russians on Athos in 2016!

Metropolitan Kallistos sprinkles the pilgrims at the Fellowship’s summer conference/

This was followed by a potted history of Orthodoxy in Walsingham by Fr Philip Steer.
An earlier written version of the talk can be found here [pdf]

Did you know that St Nikolai Velimirovic served the Liturgy here several times after being released from Dachau concentration camp? St Nikolai, pray to God for us!

In the afternoon, Fr Pancratios Sanders challenged us to go on more pilgrimages in the right spirit: to the Holy Land, to sites of martyrdom, to monasteries, wonder – working icons… and to sites associated with British Saints like Holywell.

The panel at the Fellowship summer conference: Fr Pancratios Sanders, Metropolitan Kallistos, Dr Nicholas Fennell and Fr Philip Steer. Led by our new Fellowship Chairman, Bede Gerrard.

Challenging questions on how much hardship a pilgrim should endure, expecting the unexpected and what their top tips would be for a Pilgrimage Survival Guide.

Sunday 5th July:

So the Fellowship summer conference came to a fitting end with the Divine Liturgy, where Metropolitan Kallistos reminded us that we are icons of the cherubim, participating in the eternal Divine Liturgy where Christ is both He that offers and He that is offered.

There was lots of time to make friends and meet new people too:

See you at our future events; stay tuned to our website! www.ofsjb.org.uk

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