On Sunday, June 14, with the blessing of Archbishop Mark, the adult education ministry at Christ the Saviour Orthodox Church "virtually" welcomed His Beatitude Metropolitan Tikhon as the guest presenter for their discussion of his 2018 work - "Of What Life Do We Speak?" Four Pillars for the Fulfillment of the Apostolic Work of the Church. Our parish book club, dedicated to St. Jerome, meets quarterly for a moderated discussion of works - both "old" and "new". We had hoped to welcome His Beatitude personally, but due to the pandemic the book discussion was held virtually for all participants. Metropolitan Tikhon opened by sharing the inspiration for writing the booklet, as well as some of his further reflections based upon the current events in our society. He keyed in on two topics that he hopes we as a Church can further reflect upon - friendship and loneliness. After his introductory remark's participants spent time in break-out rooms to have small group discussions, which were later shared with the whole group by our facilitators. We are thankful that His Beatitude made himself available, and that he so graciously invited us to "the table" to discuss the Four Pillars (Spiritual Life, Stewardship, Relations with Others, and Evangelism), and how we can cooperatively fulfill the Apostolic work as Orthodox Christians!

At the conclusion of our time together our book discussion moderator Joseph McClure introduced our next book - Orthodox Christians in North America (1794 - 1994), which is available via this link. Discussion date TBD.