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OBITUARY OF HIERO-MONK DYFRIG HARRIS OSB, written by Sister Petra Clare

Monday, January 30, 2012 21:32

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Fr Dyfrig who died a week ago was one of my closest friends at Belmont. We both shared a deep interest and love for the Byzantine Liturgy and for the spirituality and theology of the Orthodox Church. He will be greatly missed by us, even if he will be fully occupied in the Liturgy of Heaven. More will be written after the funeral on Wednesday which will be attended by the monastic community, his family, old boys of the school, Ukrainian Greek Catholics from Gloucester, and friends from the Orthodox Church- David

source: EASTXWEST BLOG (click title)

27, 2012

On Monday, 23rd of January, on the feast of the Welsh saint Cadoc, Father Dyfrig Harris, a priest monk of Belmont Abbey and a native Welshman, died of a massive stroke, after a brief illness. Father Dyfrig was highly respected among Catholics and Orthodox in the UK , and was one of those rare western Christians with an innate understanding of the eastern liturgy, which eventually led to his becoming a bi-ritual priest, serving the liturgy in the Ukrainian church in Gloucester.

I first met Father Dyfrig when Sister Maximilian and I were searching for a base for Sancti Angeli Benedictine Skete. Soon afterwards I was invited to teach the icon at Belmont Abbey on an annual basis. During this time Father Dyfrig and I formed a team – I giving practical tuition and he contributing ever deeper and more illuminating studies on the relation of liturgy and the Bible. His great theme was Christ the Great High Priest. He understood, as a living reality, the development of the Aaronic priesthood, and it’s movement forward into the basis for the Christian priesthood.

He contributed some units to the Online Icon Course – although it was immensely hard to get him to write anything down! The interaction with people during a course sparked him off and a lecture rarely ended without some new point being developed – well beyond the original paper – but which was delivered with enthusiasm, erudition and sparkling vigour. People left his lectures enthused and ‘lit-up’ by a new understanding.

As well as learning to write the icon himself, he also made some of his own vestments, incorporating embroidered icon panels made in the Russian tradition by Kath Williams. His approach to the icon was painstaking and deep – never accepting payment, beyond materials, he made each work a profound and life changing spiritual journey. Technically, his life did not permit a full development of his potential, but he made up for this by profound integrity in each work he undertook. As it is spiritual integrity and spiritual honesty which gives the icon authenticity – a slick icon is a contradiction in terms! – the bold spiritual intensity outweighed occasional lack of technique.

He has been probably the single biggest influence on my own life, helping me to keep in tandem my own innate identification with the Orthodox tradition with my existence as a Catholic religious. We looked together – not for a facile Christian unity achieved by skirting over the deeper issues – but for a pre-schism perspective, seeking to see behind historical divergence to the unified root of the faith. This, as a work of prayer, and a work lived out in daily life – in him as a bi-ritual priest, and in me as a religious and iconographer – is a sharing in the Cross. It is a daily agony in which one holds the broken church in a broken heart. For him, this ministry was at the heart of his priesthood and his wonderful exposition of the ‘breaking of the bread’ in the eastern rite.

We had one conversation about our deaths. We both agreed we did not want a slow painful lingering over years, but to get on with it fast once it showed up. Father Dyfrig has had his wish – he took a quick look at death in a minor stroke about two months ago and his spirit decided it was time to shoot off to the next thing. I am sure he is exploring the Kingdom of Heaven with the same astonished pleasure I have seen on his face so many times when a new insight illumined him.

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