Newsletter February 15, 2025

Will and Eleanor (Father and infant daughter) will be baptized tomorrow morning (in place of Orthros) at 8:30 A.M. Please come and join us and pray with them on their blessed day!

The Parable of the Weeds, Part Two

Repentance means continuous self-correction. The one who refuses to change himself and is stubborn in his sin has no place in the Church. The process of purification and cleansing is continuous and active in the Church. It is a permanent dialectical process that requires great spiritual awakening and vigilance, on the one hand, and support for the repentant on the other hand. That support should be equal in strength to zeal for the purity of the Church.

…

Certainly, the more the Church is filled with pure people, the less corruption it will have. In the end, we are all responsible, and we will be judged for our evasion of responsibility in one way or another.

Take care of your purity so that your Church will be better!

Read the entire article: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2327

Part one: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2326

In this time after the Feast of Theophany and before Great Lent (1/6 – 3/2) 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 ask that there be no food. 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:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Calendar/calendar.php

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Prosphora/Docs/prosphora sched 2025 web.pdf

Full schedule:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Altar/Docs/epistle readers for 2025.pdf

Epistle: ST. PAUL’S FIRST LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS 6:12-20

Brethren, “all things are lawful for me, ” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me, ” but I will not be enslaved by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” — and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two shall become one flesh.” But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit which belong to God.

Gospel: LUKE 15:11-32

The Lord said this parable: “There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.’ And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his belly with the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to make merry. Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'”

The Gates of Death
A Sermon on the Meeting of the Lord

Igumen Gabriel

Today’s feast has many meanings, many aspects, and even many names. It is sometimes called the Meeting of the Lord, sometimes the Purification of the Virgin, sometimes the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and finally — especially in the West — it is known as Candlemas: the Feast of the Light that shown upon St. Symeon, and which we commemorate by blessing candles on this day. This multiplicity of names and meanings reveals that today’s feast is situated at a crossroads between the Law and the Prophets, between the Old and the New Covenants of God with man. Today — for the first time in history — God Himself enters bodily into the Temple which man made for Him, carried in the arms of Her who is Herself the true Holy of Holies, the Tabernacle more spacious than the heavens. He enters not in a cloud of glory but in humble poverty, in meekness and lowliness fulfilling the Law which He Himself gave. The All-Holy Virgin enters to be purified, who alone among women is spotless and undefiled. The Righteous Symeon prophesies over Him who is both the giver and the fulfillment of all prophecies.

It is no accident that the Holy Church has ordained that this feast be celebrated very near the beginning of Great Lent, because this feast is also the first feast of the Resurrection. In this feast we are given a foretaste of the Lord’s Pascha, seeing — for the very first time — death no longer as an enemy to be feared, but rather as a doorway which opens unto the salvation of God, which was “prepared before the face of all people.” In this feast, the death of St. Symeon the God-Receiver has begun to be touched by the life of Christ. He lived on this earth for 360 years, miraculously preserved by the grace of God in order to behold the coming of the Anointed One; and though after meeting Christ he still descended into Sheol, the hymns of the Holy Church tell us that he preceded St. John the Forerunner in preaching the coming of salvation and life eternal to the souls imprisoned there.

Read the entire article: https://www.rememberingsion.com/p/gates-death-sermon-meeting-lord