5th Sunday of Great Lent – St. Mary of Egypt

Announcements

Saturday of Lazarus Palm Crosses/Candles . . . . Apr. 8 Calling all Church School students and their families, friends relatives, and everyone at Church: Your help is needed to prepare some important items for our Holy Week services! Matins and Divine Liturgy begins at 8:00 a.m. followed by a Lenten breakfast and the project. Plan to stay and help make the many Palm Crosses (note: everyone can help with this!) as the younger students prepare the cupped candles for Holy Friday and Holy Saturday evenings. The GOYA teens will be setting up for the Palm Sunday lunch-eon. Parents, please be sure to attend with your children and family.

Philoptochos Palm Sunday Luncheon. . . . April 9 The GOYA teen ministry is asked to help in the Community Palm Sunday Fish Luncheon again this year in the Chopman Center. Please make plans to attend with your family !

Help Decorate Kouvouklion on Holy Thursday! . . . April 13 As we prepare to celebrate Pascha! All ages are invited to come to the church and help with decorating the Kouvouklion (the Tomb of Christ) with flowers immediately following the service of Holy Thursday night! Please consider taking the day off from school or work on Holy Friday. Service of the Royal Hours is at 9:00 a.m. You can come to participate and read the Royal Hours service. Important note: this is a family opportunity, not a “drop-off” event. Young children must be supervised by a responsible adult.

Make Plans for the Anastasi Dinner . . . . . April 16 Don’t forget to make plans to attend the Resurrection Orthros, Liturgy and Dinner at Saint George on Saturday evening/early morning of Pascha. Following the liturgical celebration of the Resurrection, join your family, friends and other members of Saint George to celebrate the Feast of Feasts!

Agape Vespers & Pascha. . . . . April 16 Agape Vespers Service at 12:00 p.m. MARK your calendars also for the Feast of Saint George on Saturday, April 22nd! All the children are invited to come for this beautiful and bright service. It is a great way for all children and families to attend the service to share in a special celebration of Pascha and to honor our Patron Saint at the Great Vespers 6 p.m.!

 

Pain as it is related to death

 

Αre we willing to suffer On Loneliness and Real Communication

Archim. Joel Giannakopoulos

Pain is related to death. For pain is daiSaint Nicholas Velimirovichg ab-stract, but pain is specific. We fear death but we do not live it. We all though live pain, both young and old… Great pain often causes the de-sire of death, and, something more, it makes [death] its savior. In this way we are forced to think that there is something better than life. No knowledge can obstruct the metaphysical desire of pain. Pain knows more than knowledge. Thus, the pain we have in facing life and death verifies that whatever comes from the present life in this world is a trumpet, an echo, a voice of the other world, of eternity.

<h5Don’t be afraid to be alone. People are alone if they don’t know God, even if they have dealings with a large number of other people. Even in a densely-populated society, people like this would say- and, in fact, some actually do say- ‘I’m bored. I don’t know what to do with my-self, everything’s a burden’. Those are souls empty of God, husks without a pit, ash without charcoal. But you’re not alone, because you’re close to the Lord and the Lord’s close to you. Saint Paul was apostle to the whole world. Listen to what he says when, at one time he’d been abandoned by everybody: ‘At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone de-serted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth’ (2 Tim. 4, 16-17). Do you see the holy manner in which the servant of Christ, Paul, thought and spoke in those first days, when there wasn’t a single Christian church in the world, nor a single Christian ruler. Yet today the whole earth is adorned with Christian churches and Christians number in the hundreds of millions. So don’t be sad because you feel all alone in your own place. If, as you write, you feel you’re in the wilderness, you should know that many people have been saved in the desert. All of these, God’s desert-dwellers, ascended into the great company of God and his angels. There were people who didn’t see another human face for fifty years or more but who never said ‘We’re alone’. Because God was with them and they were with God. You can live without anyone and without anything, but you can’t live without God. This was their experience, which they bequeathed to the Church as their legacy. We don’t know if an atheist could live for fifty years in the wilderness in complete isolation. Nobody’s ever done that in the history of the human race. To people like that, it’s wearisome to live in human society, yet more monotonous- even impossible- to live outside it. Because the godless seek out people in order to pierce their heart with atheism and to nourish themselves on the pain of others. But who would they find in the wilderness to feed off, except themselves? And whose pain would nourish them if not their own? So, let your thoughts soar to the spiritual heights where he dwells who is better and more gentle company than any human society. Serve him, keep company with him, talk to him, strive for him, love him with all your heart, with all your mind. He’ll find ways to open the eyes of your neighbors and their minds so that he can manifest to them living faith in him. Then, in the place where you live, the glory of God will be hymned not only by a soloist, as it is now, but by a choir.

Palm Sunday

How intereste(Mark. 9, 14-29) Christ?

 

As you feel the love of God, you ought to respond possitevely to His love

Six days before Christ’s passion, we find the Lord at the house of Martha and Mary where he had resurrected their brother Lazarus. Out of deep gratitude, Mary anoints the Lord’s feet with myrrh. And Judas protests, supposedly from concern for the poor. Here, we see Mary’s loving disposition towards the Lord, which calculates neither money, nor what impression this will give to those around her. Perhaps few Christians understand what great importance this worship of the Lord has. Usually we become busy with practical things, more or less just like Judas is thinking here as well. Taking the example from Mary, we must stress here that it is a worshipping disposition towards Christ that has great importance. This is not something simply expressed through a few works. It is the deepest flame, the desire of the soul to be given God and to enjoy him. However, few overcome the impediments which they must overcome in order to arrive at union and communion with God, which is incomprehensible delight. Also, the evangelist stresses that certainly many came to see Jesus but mostly Lazarus, and his resurrection, although Jesus is everything. In this manner, men rise up in certain situations to hear certain news, to satisfy their curiosity and not to have personal communion with Christ. And this is incredible. And so, we Christians, how interested are we to meet with Christ? Usually other things that encircle Christ move us, attract our interest, but nobody seeks Christ. People do not have a disposition to travel along with Christ and to go where he goes – to his Passion – and to where he leads them. As we come, my brothers, into Holy Week, let us consider these things, so that with the grace of God, this time we will truly be there with the Lord. To feel his love but also to love him without calculations, without a disposition to be rewarded – at such times no one thinks of what he will get. Truly, therefore, we are to die to sin and to rise with the Lord in new life.

The Lord goes up to Jerusalem in order to suffer. And all of us who, in one way or an-other, show that we are of Christ, must understand that there is no other road except that we be crucified with him in order to rise with him. However, one constantly realizes that we, who are supposed to be following the Lord, instead seek other things. Ultimately, each man seeks for his own will to be done. We don’t seek Christ with the sense that we will suffer with him. This is not our longing, nor our deepest desire. We don’t want to understand that this is the utmost: to follow Christ to his passion and to his resurrection, and not to put a thousand different things that we seek and desire above this. Grace is this: to pass with Christ from his passion, from his cross, and to suffer with Christ. All other roads, however good and beautiful they are imagined to be, do not lead to resurrection, to salvation. Our God calls us to imitate the Lord and to suffer, to go through the death of the old man and the death of sin, so that we may rise with Christ in the new ‘in Christ’ life. Just as the Lord sacrificed his human life because of his infinite love for each man, like-wise each man, as he feels this love, ought to be moved to respond positively to His love and to sacrifice the old man along with its many wills and desires.