Newsletter June 19, 2024

Who Sinned, This Man or His Parents?

There is a significant difference between considering illness as a direct result of a specific sin, and the way we deal with it. People can approach their illness in a spiritual and faithful manner, which can bear spiritual fruit, leading to their growth and salvation. Alternatively, they can approach it with complaints, blasphemy, and depression, thereby making it a spiritual illness as well. Believers accept their illness with humility and joy, placing their life in God’s hands and using it to grow in patience, endurance, meekness, and liberation from worldly matters that hindered their sought-after freedom.

Christ’s answer to the disciples sufficed with one brief phrase, according to the gospel: “Neither this man sinned, nor did his parents.” The Teacher rejects linking blindness with the sins of the blind man and his parents. In order to elevate the mentality of the disciples (for previously, it had not benefitted the blind man), He continues His answer with the next phrase, and says that this man was born blind so that “the works of God might be made manifest in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me, while it is day.”

God’s power appeared through this blind man’s miraculous healing at the hands of Christ. But Christ’s answer contained a broader meaning. In some translations, we hear Jesus using the collective phrase, “We must work.” We, Christ’s disciples, must continue to work according to His guidance and through Him, so that God’s power remains visible and “at work” in our world.

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Read the entire article: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2074

This coming Sunday, the Great Feast of Pentecost, we conclude our celebrations of the Lord’s Resurrection, Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. One component of our celebrations is expressed in the fact that we do not kneel in Divine Services nor in private prayer during this time. Then, after our celebrations on Pentecost morning, we return to our regular practices with the service of Vespers, known as the ‘Kneeling Vespers’ service wherein we pray the awesome and beautiful Kneeling Prayers.

I hope and pray that you will join us for this great service. (About 11:45 or so, after fellowship…)

Kh. Rebecca has decided to retire from her candle making business. It is a well established small business that supplies the hand dipped 100% beeswax candles for most of the Orthodox parishes in the Front Range area. She would like to offer to turn the business over to another local Orthodox person who is interested in inheriting and maintaining the business. The Orthodox parishes in the area have been very supportive of her work, and therefore she is concerned to reciprocate and do her best to assure that the business will continue to supply their needs. It requires on the order of 6 hours a day / 30 hours a week and a reasonable sized work area. Kh. Rebecca is willing to take time to train the new person in all aspects of candle making and the business, so no experience is required. She is beginning this process by offering the business to anyone of our St. James family. If you are interested in learning more and pursuing this opportunity, please speak to Kh. Rebecca. (Please do not share this information outside of our community.)

The Parish Council has established a system for processing and receiving gifts electronically. The system accepts credit cards and bank transfers. It is run my one of the major major processors of electronic giving for non-profits. The company is called Helcim. All of the processing takes place within their system. St. James provides a link into their system and then receives the funds into our account and a report listing names and amounts. We do not see nor handle any credit card or bank account information.

There is a ‘Donate’ page listed in the menu of the website where all of the information is listed, and here is link directly to the page:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Giving/giving.php

Thank you for your ongoing financial support of our little parish family. We hope that these new features will facilitate the giving process.

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 2024 web.pdf

Full schedule: https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Altar/Docs/epistle readers for 2024.pdf

Epistle: ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 2:1-11

WHEN THE DAY of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly a sound came from heaven like the rush of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and wondered, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontos and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

Gospel: JOHN 7:37-52; 8:12

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.'” Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This is really the prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then went back to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man!” The Pharisees answered them, “Are you led astray, you also? Have any of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, who do not know the law, are accursed.” Nikodemos, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and you will see that no prophet is to rise from Galilee.” Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

The Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Birth of the Church

Archbishop Averky (Taushev)

The great event of the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles is called by some the “birthday of the Church of Christ.” At the same time, this event was also a conclusion of the entire work of God’s economy of salvation. According to St Theophan the Recluse, “what God the Father willed to be and what the Son of God accomplished in Himself, that the Holy Spirit came today to give to the faithful.” Illumined by the Holy Spirit, the apostles fearlessly began to preach Christ crucified and risen. The Church of Christ began to grow and spread at first among the Jews of Palestine, then eventually among the Gentiles in the whole world, and even “to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

This occurred “when the Day of Pentecost had fully come,” the high point of the Jewish feast of Pentecost. The Law of Moses decreed to celebrate solemnly the fiftieth day after the day following the Sabbath of the Passover, counting seven full weeks from that day (Lev 23:15). The Jewish Passover in the year of Christ’s death occurred on Friday evening. The first day of Passover was thus the Sabbath, and the morning after the Sabbath was the Sunday of Christ’s resurrection. From that day, seven weeks must be counted. Thus, in that year, the celebration of the Jewish Pentecost occurred on a Sunday (and therefore Christian Pentecost always falls on a Sunday). The Pentecost of the Jews was established to bless the harvest or the first fruits, because the first harvest of seeds planted immediately after Passover brought fruit roughly at this time. This feast also was combined with the remembrance of the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai. This was one of the three major “pilgrim” feasts of the Jewish calendar (Passover, Pentecost, Booths), on which all Jewish men were obligated to travel as pilgrims to Jerusalem for the celebration.

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Read the entire article: https://orthodoxlife.org/scripture/pentecost-averky-commentary/