Newsletter Feb. 3, 2023

In this time after the Feast of Theophany and before Great Lent (1/6 – 2/27) we bring the Holy Water newly blessed during Theophany services to each of our homes and celebrate the service of the Theophany Home Blessing. I would love to celebrate it at everyone’s home (catechumens included!) this year.

As I am still working a secular job, weekday evenings are the prefered time. Please contact me via phone or email to schedule a time. Also, while I appreciate everyone’s hospitality, I would prefer not being invited to a meal. We can celebrate the service and then have a visit over a cup of tea (or other refreshment).

For the celebration of the service, I simply need a small space near your icons. I will bring everything required with me. If you would like to light a candle and carry it around during the blessing that would be great. The service is simple: we will say the few prayers and a litany, and then we will walk through the home and bless each room with the Holy Water.

Please remember that our full calendar continues to be available at our parish web site. Here is a link:
http://stjfc.org/Pages/Calendar/calendar.php

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Prosphora/Docs/prosphora sched 2023 web.pdf

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Altar/Docs/epistle readers for 2023.pdf

Epistle: ST. PAUL’S SECOND LETTER TO TIMOTHY 3:10-15

TIMOTHY, my son, you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings, what befell me at Antioch, at lconion, and at Lystra, what persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Gospel: LUKE 18:10-14

The Lord said this parable, “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The Communion of Friends
Fr. Stephen Freeman

In theory, our modern culture believes that relationships with other people are merely psychological phenomena – they are all in our head. There is occasional research to try and establish some notion of extra-psychological relationship (such as ESP), but even that is largely an extension of psychology. But there is an entire realm of human experience that such a belief ignores. And it is an experience that lies at the very heart of classical Christianity.

This experience is found in the concept of communion. It refers to a true participation and sharing in the life and actual existence of another. It is not a label for a set of feelings nor a synonym for being close with someone. It is a term that truly means what it says. The Greek is koinonia, a state of “commonality.”

The Orthodox faith teaches that we are saved by communion – in particular, communion with Christ. When a person is being baptized they are asked three times by the priest: “Do you unite yourself to Christ?” According to St. Paul, we are then baptized “into the death” of Christ and raised in the likeness of His resurrection. That is salvation. Christ’s death becomes my death and my death becomes His death. Christ’s resurrection becomes my resurrection, etc. Every sacrament of the Church is about union with Christ, or union with another human being (marriage). It is predicated on the possibility of true communion and participation.

…

That communion and participation in the life of the other is possible is one of the single most contradictory challenges to the modern world-view. We are not utterly individual in our existence nor in our experience. We are beings whose lives are best expressed and fulfilled through communion. When this is rightly understood, it is nothing more than the proclamation of the primacy of love.

Read the entire article:
https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2023/01/24/the-communion-of-friends-4/