Trinitarian Sobornost

(article from St Martin's magazine)

Priest: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

People: Amen.

We begin our eucharistic worship by invoking the Triune God as we make the sign of the cross. By this simple act we place our lives within the homeland of the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity exists for and from each other: three in one and one in three, and the cross is our way into this shared divine life.

Sobornost is the Russian word for unity. It is a word very familiar to those who follow an Eastern Christian spirituality. There is no sobornost without crucifixion. It is in pain that God gives the deep knopwledge that provides the foundation of sobornost, of unity. Sobornost is the manifestation of that unity that we might all be one...as you are in me and I am in you (John 17.12).

Sobornost is also the title of a journal published twice a year by the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius which was founded in 1928 by members of the Eastern Orthodox and Western Christian Churches to pray and work for unity. Over the years following the Russian Revolution of 1917 , large numbers of Orthodox Christians fled Russia and came to live in the countries of Western Europe as refugees. Membership in the Fellowship is open to any Christian who wishes to pray and work for the deeper understanding and closer cooperation between Christians of East and West and who is a communicant member of a recogniswed church (1 Canterbury Road, Oxford OX2 6LU, TEL: 01865 552991, gen-sec@sobornost.org  www.sobornost.org).

St Alban was a Roman soldier converted to Christianity by the example of a priest. He was the first British martyr, who gave his life for Christ probably at the beginning of the third century.

St Sergius of Radonezh played a decisive part in the revival of the Russian Church and people in the 14th century, founding the famous monastery of the Holy Trinity at the place now known as Sergiev Posad (formerly Zagorsk). He was instrumental in consolidating the Russian monastic tradition.

The Fellowshp Prayer

O Christ, who didst bind thine apostles in a union of love: unite us likewise, thy sinful but trusting servants, and bind us firmly to thee. Give us strength to fulfil thy commandments and truly to love one another, for thou livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.