First Festival of Psalms Dedicated to Holy Virgin Held in UAOC Church in Lviv
A festival of psalms dedicated to Virgin Mary “Hail! Mary, Mother of God” was held in the ancient Orthodox brotherhood Church of Assumption in Lviv on September 2, 2012, with the participation of 8 choirs of Lviv Oblast representing churches of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC).
“Today, the Church of Assumption, which remembers Petro Mohyla, Meletii Smotrytskyi, Hetman Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyi, Patriarchs Mstyslav and Dymytrii united various towns, parishes and different denominations in order to glorify the Mother of God, our patroness with our joint prayer. In an effort to revive the old tradition of enlightenment, our Church has instituted a festival to be held on the first Sunday after the feast of Assumption to allow the residents and visitors of the City of Lions to pray with one soul as prayer always united the Ukrainian nation,” said the senior priest of the church, Fr. Ihor Burmylo, in his greeting address.
The event revived another tradition, the antiphon singing as the choirs performed psalms dedicated to the Holy Virgin.
“The main goal of the festival was to unite choirs of the Lviv Eparchy of UAOC. We have wonderful groups which the Lviv Stauropegion Brotherhood and I are trying to unite for Christmas carol singing. But annual meetings are not sufficient for the exchange of experience and professional development and, therefore, we decided to institute a festival dedicated to our patroness, the Holy Mother of God. In addition, this year, we invited also our neighbors, the choir Family of the Church of Transfiguration of UGCC,” said the head of the organizing committee, Yurii Fediv.
The whole parish including the priests, singers and believers participated in the organization of the festival. “Today, we were a real family. It is a great event for us as it is the first festival in our church building and the second one after the 'Farewell to Carols' for the community of the UAOC in Lviv in the 23 years of the existence of our church,” noted Fediv.
