MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Swinging a burning censer, a priest in purple vestments walked through a throng of worshipers at Three Holy Hierarchs Church, conferring blessings.
Congregants stood observantly, facing the altar. Over the course of the morning, the growing audience began to spill into the entryway, toward an intricately carved set of doors. Harmony flowed from a choir in the alcove.
That scene, on a recent Sunday, came as the Romanian Orthodox congregation prepared to celebrate its first Easter in a new church. Some parishioners have kept busy for months straight finishing up stone, wood and metal work to give the church its distinctive spiritual and cultural accents.
“We still have a lot of things to do,” the Rev. Fr. Ioan Catana said.
Catana, like almost all members of the church, comes from the Puget Sound area’s Romanian community. The priest, who hails from Saschiz, a village in Romania’s Transylvania region, arrived in Western Washington in 1998. The congregation had begun just four years earlier with two dozen or so founding members.
These days, more than 150 people attend regularly.
Other than being conducted in Romanian, the services are the same as at Greek, Russian and other Orthodox churches.
Romanians celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection with the words, “Hristos a inviat!” — “Christ has risen!”
For the Orthodox, Easter falls on May 1 this year. Other Christians marked Easter on March 27.
A mass at Three Holy Hierarchs is set to begin shortly before midnight.
Until the new church opened in late October, the congregation met at St. Spiridon Orthodox Cathedral in Seattle. They found space at other churches to accommodate large Easter crowds.
“In our Orthodox tradition, Easter is our most important celebration. Easter is more important than Christmas,” said Adi Oltean, of Redmond, a 45-year-old member of the congregation. “Christmas is important, but Easter even more so.”
Ioana Danciu, 48, of Bellevue, started volunteering in 2006 on efforts to build the church. A decade later, more than 600 families have donated money and labor to get it done.
The white stucco building rises from a wooded ravine west of I-5 and a few blocks south of 220th Street SW in Mountlake Terrace. It wouldn’t look out of place in the Transylvanian countryside.
“It was very important to us that this project have the look of a traditional Romanian Orthodox church,” Danciu said. “In Romania, the architecture of an Orthodox church has spiritual meaning. There’s a lot of symbolism in the shape of a church.”
The sanctuary walls form a cross, with the top facing east. The bare, white interior eventually will be painted with icons. Off the south side of the church, there’s a fellowship hall, kitchen and other, secular functions.
Delia Moraru, of Bothell, attends the church with her husband and 4-year-old son.
“It’s part of our culture and a place where we can get together and offer our children a window into our spiritual life and our traditions,” Moraru said.
The congregation belongs to the Orthodox Church in America. Its name comes from Saints John, Basil and Gregory, known to Orthodox Christians as the Three Holy Hierarchs.
Emanoil Olt did the church’s masonry work. For the past four months, the Bellevue man has been at it from early morning into the night, usually by himself. The stacks of stones and tiles around the church attest to the work that remains.
Olt isn’t the only craftsman laboring away.
Parishioner Ionut Onutan owns Classic Foundry in Seattle, where the workshop has been focused on wood and metal aspects of the church. He cast five bronze crosses for the roof and handles for the entry doors. He carved the wooden doors, too, as well as the iconostasis, a wall of icons. Among his other contributions are laser-etched wooden panels in the fellowship hall depicting Romanian religious and cultural landmarks.
For Onutan, it’s been a labor of love.
“It has to be — otherwise, it’s hard to do it,” he said.
“It was a great joy.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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