On Saturday 2 December and Sunday 3 December we had services for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the Forefeast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple, and in honour of Saint Gregory the Decapolite (+816 AD).  In his sermon at Divine Liturgy the parish rector spoke about the triumphant Holy Bishops' Council that had just taken place in Moscow, the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate in 1917, and the exhortation given in the appointed Epistle reading - to "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness" but rather to "walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time" (Ephesians 5:91-19).