Newsletter February 21, 2025

Let’s have our Cheese-fare Sunday potluck again: Next Sunday, March 2. Bring a favorite cheese / creme / dairy / egg favorite to share!

Nina and Anna are starting a women & children prayer / fellowship group. It will meet Thursdays at 9:00 A.M. The gathering will begin by praying an Akathist together in Church, then will gather for fellowship (for adults) / play time (for children) afterward.

Reflections on Love

Saint Sophrony of Essex once gave a lecture at Oxford University. At the end of his talk, the moderator said, “We have time for one more question.” A man in the back of the room stood up and asked: “Father Sophrony, could you tell us—who is God?” The saint replied concisely: “Tell me first, who is man?”

In this brief exchange, Saint Sophrony profoundly revealed a crucial truth: God and man are mysteries intertwined, and one cannot be understood apart from the other. Since man is created in the image of God, there is a structural relationship between humanity and its Creator. If God is love, then man, in his truest nature, must also be love.

Read the entire article: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2342

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.

I may be accompanied by some of our altar servers when I visit.

We will be doing a book study this Lent: Great Lent: Journey to Pascha by Fr Alexander Schmemann

We will work through the introduction next week and then delve into the book in the following Wednesdays.

Open to all: please come join us!

Denver area Lenten Sunday evening pan-Orthodox Vespers will be held again this year. All services begin at 5:00 P.M.

Sunday of Orthodoxy (9 March): Assumption Cathedral, Denver
St. Gregory Palamas (16 March): Transfiguration Cathedral, Denver
Sunday of Cross (23 March): St. Elias, Arvada
St. John of the Ladder (30 March): St. Luke, Erie
St. Mary of Egypt (6 April): St. Herman, Littleton (co-hosted by St. Tikhon Mission)

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 8:8-13; 9:1-2

Brethren, food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. For if any one sees you, a man of knowledge, at table in an idol’s temple, might he not be encouraged, if his conscience is weak, to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge this weak man is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died. Thus, sinning against your brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Therefore, if food is a cause of my brother’s falling, I will never eat meat, lest I cause my brother to fall. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.

Gospel: MATTHEW 25:31-46

The Lord said, “When the Son of man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’ And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

From Moscow to the Northern Thebaid
On the Restoration of a Once-Forgotten Monastery

Hieromonk Laurus (Arkhipov)

How many monks are there at the Zaonikiev Hermitage now? We can say that the monastic community is at the very start of its rebirth. But Fr. Laurus isn’t discouraged: He serves molebens and Liturgies here every week. After all, Sretensky Monastery also faced enormous difficulties in its early days that were overcome with God’s help. The example of his native monastery inspires and supports him in his work towards reviving one of the monasteries of the Northern Thebaid.

How to keep up the struggle? With what? With the proven Christian weapons: prayer, patience, and enlightenment. The most effective means, according to Fr. Laurus, have been repeatedly tested. There’s no wishful thinking here—no blissful daydreams about a toy lavra with the sweet chiming of bells and birds of Paradise and fish in the pond. Fr. Laurus is firmly convinced that the ministry of the reviving monastery should first and foremost be prayer and Christian enlightenment of the once-Christian people.

Read the entire article: https://orthochristian.com/167419.html