Newsletter February 28, 2025

Let’s have our Cheese-fare Sunday potluck again: this 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 Forgiveness

“He is free because he forgives.” The words of St. Silouan the Athonite (1866–1938) resonate here: “Where there is forgiveness… there is freedom.” If we compel ourselves to forgive—or at the very least, desire to forgive—we find ourselves in what the Psalms call a “place of respite” or “a place of freedom”: “We went through fire and water, but You brought us into a place of abundance” (Psalm 65:12). Only forgiveness allows us to enter what St. Paul describes as “the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).

Read the entire article: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2348

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 LETTER TO THE ROMANS 13:11-14; 14:1-4

Brethren, salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for God is able to make him stand.

Gospel: MATTHEW 6:14-21

The Lord said, “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The Mercy of the Dread Judgment

Igumen Gabriel

Today is the Sunday of the Dread Judgment, on which we hear the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats read from the Holy Gospel. In just one short week we will enter once again through the gates of repentance, and begin once more the salvific struggle of the Great and Holy Fast. Fr. Seraphim (Rose) — of blessed memory — once said the following profound words:

Our Christianity is a religion which tells us about what we are going to be doing in eternal life. It is to prepare us for something eternal, not of this world. If we think only about this world, our horizon is very limited, and we don’t know what’s after death, where we came from, where we’re going, what’s the purpose of life. When we talk about the beginning of things, or the end of things, we find out what our whole life is about.

Read the entire article: https://www.rememberingsion.com/p/the-mercy-of-the-dread-judgment