Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat Training Center to Hold Thanksgiving Service Sunday November 21 at 130 pm

Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat & Training Center in Bovina, NY will hold a prayer service of thanksgiving on Sunday November 21 at 1:30 pm. All participants must RSVP by calling 607-326-0052 or emailing info@cbmountain.org. More information about Cloud-Bearing Mountain Christian Retreat & Training Center can be viewed at www.cbmountain.org.

The service will consist of the singing of an akathist hymn, an ancient form of prayer and praise practiced in the Orthodox Church. The Greek word "akathistos" means "not sitting," i.e., standing. Normally, all participants who are able stand while an akathist hymn is being prayed. Akathists are comprised of 24 stanzas, arranged in an acrostic following the Greek alphabet. The particular akathist that will be celebrated is called "Glory to God for All Things." It was found among the papers of Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov upon his death in a Soviet Communist concentration camp in 1940, a fact that makes this hymn of thanksgiving and praise all the more poignant.

Father James Krueger of Cloud-Bearing Mountain states, “Not only is this half-hour service of prayer beautiful and full of sublime poetry, but it gives voice to the full riches of Orthodox Christian theology as it pertains to our daily lives here in God’s creation.”