St. John Chrysostom Indian Orthodox Chapel

At the beginning of the academic year, the Seminary was so gracious to give us a chapel of our own, so we can maintain the prayer life according to our West Syriac Liturgical Tradition. The chapel originally was designated for the seminary students in the dormitory and set up according to the Eastern Orthodox Tradition. But the chapel still remains open to the whole community (and that will never change), we just adjusted the chapel according to our Liturgical Tradition. As Abey mentioned in the previous posting, we follow the Shimo Namaskaram - the day begins with matins along with 3rd hour, then noon prayer with 9th hour and finally vespers & compline.

We sometimes have our brothers from the Eastern Orthodox Church attend our prayers to get a taste of our Tradition. Sometimes throughout the semester we will attend services or the hours in the Monastery Church (absolutely beautiful church). We celebrated Holy Qurbana in our chapel once on the Feast of the Holy Cross by our teacher Joshua Achen aka Santhosh Achen. We often have our Achen lead us in prayer when he is at Seminary teaching us. We have also had the great blessing of having our beloved Barnabas Thirumeni and Nicholovos Thirumeni leading us in prayer on two separate occasions.

Aside from observing the hours in our chapel, it has become a place of peace, solace...a haven for us, where we can go and silently meditate. We are so grateful to St. Tikhon's Seminary, especially His Beatitude Metropolitan Herman, His Grace Bishop Tikhon and Fr. Michael for being so kind and giving us this chapel for our use. We are also indebted to Ted Brinegar for building our Altar or 'Thronos', and Dimitri who is currently in the process of writing 2 beautiful Icons of our beloved Saints, Mar Gregorios and Mar Dioynsius.

The patron saint of our Chapel is St. John Chrysostom, otherwise known as Mor Ivanios (commemorated in the 5th Thubden during Holy Qurbana). If you have any prayer requests, please email us!

Here's a picture of our Chapel...please keep us in your daily prayers!