St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church
June 26, 2008 |
Every Thursday, a group of volunteers gather in the basement of St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church at the top of hill on St. Georges Avenue to make cabbage rolls and perogies. Many of the volunteers are actually not parishoners, they just come to help out. Father Jaroslaw Lazoryk - known as Father Jerry - leads the congregation at the church, he said, "Every week they make about 3000 perogies and 1800 cabbage rolls. This is done year round, except for a couple weeks near Christmas. It has been going on for about a dozen years now. The people here are from many local congregations. This is a lifeline for us, it pays the mortgage."
Father Jerry said, "The cook comes in at about 4:30 am, and is done with the cabbage rolls at about 7:00 am. Others then gather and make the perogies. They make about 12,000 perogies every month. Mostly I just manage."
"They are on sale during weekdays. People call in their orders earlier in the week, then come and pick them up every Friday. We have customers as far away as Oregon & Las Vegas. Some are in Windsor, Moncton, Barrie, Ottawa and other places."
St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church is a beautiful building, topped with a large golden dome in the centre, with four smaller ones at the corners. Father Jerry said, "It is built in the Byzantine tradition of architecture. The large main Dome symbolizes Jesus Christ with the other four symbolizing evangelists in the four corners. Other ways are to build in the shape of a ship, with three or more domes in the middle symbolizing the holy trinity. They all line up to point East because in our tradition we all journey towards the east. The east symbolizes life, because of the sunrise. We all search for life. Theologically this is Jesus. In these churches the people and the priest are constantly walk towards the east.
Click on the photos below to get larger images, with descriptions or names of the people in them.
Photos by Thomas E. Stephenson -
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