On Saturday 24 December and Sunday 25 December we had services for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost and in honour of the Holy Forefathers - the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh - and Venerable Herman of Alaska (+1836 AD).  As Sunday was also the day of commemoration of Saint Spyridon, Wonderworker of Tremithus (+348 AD), a greatly revered hierarch of the Orthodox Church, his icon was placed in the centre of the church for veneration and his magnification was sung at All-night vigil on Saturday evening.  Prior to All-night vigil on Saturday evening and after Divine Liturgy on Sunday morning prayers were offered for the repose of the soul of Andrei Gennadyevich Karlov, the Russian Ambassador to Turkey brutally murdered in Ankara on 19 December by an Islamist extremist.