Remie
So you can't just go to any parish?
Obviously if your Priest/Confessor/Spiritual Father tells you differently, then you should listen to him. Otherwise, it's pretty wide open (though of course some decisions are more beneficial to our souls than others... constant movement can be harmful). The "walk" that both my wife and I have had contained a lot of outside factors that made us move here and there, and so it's probably a pretty unique situation (though I think it might give comfort to those who move once or twice between Churches/Jurisdictions). I've moved between towns 5 times since I became a catechumen, and my wife has moved 4 times; we just made the best of the situation wherever we found ourselves.
The Churches I first attended were OCA, but after I moved to Altoona I settled down in the Antiochian Church for a while; I still sometimes attended two OCA Churches though (totally about 1/4 of the services in an average month). My wife (then fiancee) was OCA at the time.
Even after my wife (then fiancee) and I had already decided to move towards ROCOR, we couldn't attend a ROCOR Church. There were no ROCOR Churches around locally that I could attend, and my wife was close to one, but was forbidden by her self-appointed Spiritual Father from attending a ROCOR parish. So... we got married in an Antiochian parish, by an Antiochian Priest we both respected (in Greensburg).
After we were married, we attended an Antiochian parish (in Altoona) for a short while, and would have attended an OCA one had the priest not been so hard to contact and on a rotating schedule. We had basically made the decision by this time to become ROCOR, but there was no local ROCOR parish to attend, so we just made the best of the situation. Eventually we ceased participation at the Antiochian parish as well, but that's a story for a different thread.
When we move to Pittsburgh next week (another move, yay
), we'll start attending the ROCOR Church in Mckeesport, perhaps weekly or perhaps monthly, depending on where we end up in town. If it's to the south, we'll attend every service at the ROCOR Church. If we end up north of town, we'll probably attend the ROCOR Church once a month, and attend the services at the Romanian monastery (under the OCA) the other times (when they have services, though they don't have a permanent Priest, so they sometimes travel on Sunday to other Churches).
There is much to be said for consistency, and settling down into the life of one parish. I don't think you should go against your conscience or mind, however, if you feel like you should/need to move, whether it be to another Church, or another Jurisdiction. As the monk on Saint Herman's Island said: "I'm in Christ's Jurisdiction".
Justin
PS. As though all that wasn't bad enough, lol, I've also attended a Carpatho-Russian Church, a Greek Church, and a couple Greek monasteries. I wanted to attend a Serbian Church, but alas, that never worked out.
