25th Anniversary of St. Basil the Great Church

My mother and I attended Sunday liturgy yesterday which was part of the special 3-day celebration commemorating the anniversary of the parish and honoring the Holy Protection of the Mother of God, and ending today with the observance of that feast. Bishop Gerald Dino was visiting the parish for the three days, and the local Roman bishop, Bishop Patrick McGrath was a guest at Sunday's liturgy.

At the reception, the parish's first pastor mentioned the local Orthodox church of the same patron. When the Ruthenian Catholic bishop of the time revealed his plans to establish a new parish in the area, he had asked the missionary priest who became the pastor to think of a name, one that was not taken by a RC church or by an Orthodox church. He thought St. Basil the Great was not taken, but it turns out that a Greek Orthodox community, with which he was familiar, had also been erected as a parish around the same time and their patron was St. Basil the Great as well.

He also mentioned that out of the 30 or so people in the original core group, only 2 remained. I don't know if the others passed on or if they moved out of the area.

My mother has attended Byzantine-rite liturgies before, but yesterday she mentioned that she was struck by the (beauty of?) the liturgy, so much so that she is thinking of going to Sunday liturgy more regularly.

Yesterday I was feeling that while I was hesitant about fully committing to changing rites, there seemed little reason for me to turn back (unless an Anglican-use parish came into being here, or if I moved closer to one).

The Byzantine-rite liturgy is certainly much more "traditional," even though it is in the vernacular (English), than the OF of the Roman rite in contemporary practice, and so it is more appealing to those who seek to ground their Christian identity and practice upon something that has been transmitted through time.

I've been to Our Lady of Fatima in SF; I would still like to visit St. Elias at least once, to see what the community is like. The Ukrainian Catholic Mission is too small and the liturgy is celebrated primarily in Ukrainian. The liturgies at Our Lady of Fatima and St. Basil the Great are mostly in English, and so they can have a broader appeal to those whose primary language is English. Can the Eastern rites in English be the foundation for the establishing of a distinctive Anglo-American liturgical rite? Could it be possible to adapt one of the Western [sacred] music forms to the Byzantine rite?