Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
This coming Saturday, March 22, is the final Lenten Saturday of Souls for 2025. The very last Saturday of Souls for the year will be on June 7. Our goal is to attend at least one of these services to remember our departed loved ones and friends. So, if you haven’t yet been able to participate, please look for the memorial prayer binder on the narthex table, and list your departed loved ones (first names) so that they can be prayed for during the service you will attend.
Our Calendar
Fasting Days
During Great Lent, the full fast calls on us to go without meat, dairy products, fish with backbones, oil, wine, and hard liquor. There is a blessing for fish, wine, and oil on certain feast days (the Annunciation, for example). Women who are pregnant or nursing, children who are still growing, and folks who have specific medial requirements are not expected or encouraged to keep the full fast, but all of us can fast in some way. Please check with your sponsor or spiritual father if you need to adjust the fast.
Daily Services
Monday, March 17-Friday, March 21: Orthros 5am; Vespers 5pm (but please note there will not be daily vespers on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday; it’s always a good idea to check the day before and make sure nothing has come up to change the regular schedule).
However, Fr. Andrew, Seth Hart, and many other folks continue to broadcast daily readings from spiritual books online. They are now reading “The Orthodox Faith” by St John of Damascus. The schedule is as follows: M-F at 12pm.
In addition to the daily Synaxarion readings posted in the #synaxarion channel on Discord, the online team is now posting daily Bible Readings that will allow you to read through the Bible in a year. These readings are posted in the #bible-365 channel.
Monday, March 17
Great Compline 7pm
Tuesday March 18
Inquirer’s 101 7pm; you can also access the group on Discord
Wednesday, March 19
The Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Thursday, March 20
The Bible Study, Old Testament Edition 7pm; you can access this group on Discord
Friday, March 21
The Akathist Hymn 7pm
Saturday, March 22
Saturday of Souls
Orthros 6am
Divine Liturgy 8am
St Thomas School 4pm
Great Vespers 6pm
Sunday, March 23
The Sunday of the Cross
Orthros 8am
Divine Liturgy 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
Monday, March 24
Great Vespers 7pm
Tuesday, March 25
The Feast of the Annunciation
Orthros 5am
Divine Liturgy 7am
Inquirer’s 101 7pm; you can also access the group on Discord
The Parish Council 7pm
Wednesday, March 26
The Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Thursday, March 27
The Bible Study, New Testament Edition 7pm; you can access this group on Discord
Friday, March 28
The Akathist Hymn 7pm
Saturday, March 29
St Thomas School 4pm
Great Vespers 6pm
Sunday, March 30
The Fourth Sunday of Great Lent
Orthros 7:30am
Divine Liturgy 10am
5th Sunday Potluck Noon
Anniversary / Memorial Blessings
You can use the links in the email version of the newsletter to sign up for anniversary blessings and memorial services that will be offered in 2025. Please note that things have changed for 2025 to accommodate our growing parish (i.e. some were not able to get on the schedule for anniversary blessings in 2024 because all of the slots were taken).
Memorial Services, will now occur at the end of Great Vespers on Saturday, and they may only be offered for Orthodox Christians who have departed this life. If your departed loved one was not an Orthodox Christian, visit this page on our website to learn about and request an Akathist for the Departed rather than signing up for a memorial service.
Anniversary Blessings may be requested for the first wedding anniversary and every fifth anniversary thereafter (i.e. 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, 25th, etc.). They may only be offered if one of the married couple is an Orthodox Christian. Approach the solea immediately after the hymn “Blessed be the Name of the Lord” at the end of the Divine Liturgy. If you have marriage crowns, bring them with you as you come forward. Those celebrating anniversaries that are not eligible to sign up, are invited to come forward during the “Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Namedays” segment of the announcements after the Divine Liturgy.
Coming Up
On Saturday, March 29, the new St Thomas School will host it’s first guest speaker. Dr Ryan Haecker teaches at the University of Austin; he studied in the United Kingdom under Rowan Williams, the man who wrote the book that we’re going to be using for the Pascha Book Study. Ryan is going to be talking to us about one of the most influential works in the history of the Church: Origen of Alexandria’s First Principles. This is going to be an amazing opportunity, so plan on showing up at 4pm in the parish house.
Sunday, March 30, is a fifth Sunday. That means we’re going to have a Fifth Sunday Potluck. Those potlucks always work a whole lot better if we all bring food, so just break out your best Lenten recipes, bring enough to share, and, when the potluck is over, please plan on pitching in and helping out with picking up the grounds and cleaning up the kitchen.
Great Lent is a good time to do some spiritual reading. This year, during the Pascha Book Study, we will be using a short book called The Passions of the Soul. That book is already available at Christ the Lightgiver, so why not pick up a copy, read through it slowly during Great Lent, and you’ll be ready to go when the book study begins on the Wednesday of Bright Week. Benedict H. will be leading the Pascha Book Study, and here’s what he has to say about the book and the event: “For the Pascha Book Study, we’ll be studying Rowan Williams’ Passions of the Soul. Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, is one of the premier Western scholars of the Eastern spiritual tradition. With Williams’ help, we’ll investigate what the fathers can teach us about the passions and how we can overcome them.”
The Church calls on us to make our confession during Great Lent. At St John’s, we hear confessions on Saturday evening following Great Vespers. There is a list in the narthex, you put your name on the list, and you make your confession with whichever priest calls your name. If Saturday night does not work for you, or if you wish to make your confession with a specific priest, then you can make an appointment during the week with that clergyman. However, we do not hear confessions during Holy Week, so we all need to go ahead and participate in that Holy Mystery before Lazarus Saturday, which, this year, falls on April 12.
Finally, the Church expects us to increase our giving during Great Lent. Of course, we should first check and make sure that we are up to date with our current commitment to the parish budget, but, if we are, then we should consider giving a little more to help out all those who aren’t able to contribute as much as they had anticipated, or we should think about making a special gift to the Building Fund during this season of spiritual striving.
Our Moment of Grace and Courtesy
This past Monday, in the weekly sweep of the property, ten paper plates, four red cups, five drink cans, seven napkins/tissues, three miss-matched socks, a glove, and assorted wrappers and peelings were collected. That’s starting to be a pretty regular occurrence, but the Most Holy Trinity has blessed us with these five acres, and that means we are to look after them; that means we are stewards of this particular plot of land. So we need to pick up after ourselves and make sure that our families do the same.
an unworthy priest
aidan