Please Remember...
Our August schedule will include morning services each Sunday at 10:00 AM and Saturday Vespers on August 16 and August 30 at 5:00 PM. There will be no Sunday aftenoon services in August or September.
Choir practice will continue each Sunday morning at 9:00 AM - everyone is welcome to come and learn more about the service music!
We look forward to Father Ted Pisarchuk's upcoming visit August 16-17, which will include both Saturday Vespers and Sunday Divine Liturgy.
Also, remember that the Dormition Fast begins Friday, August 1, and continues through August 15. This is one of the shorter of the four fasting seasons of the Church Year, one which prepares us for the last great feast of the liturgical year: the Dormition (or Repose) of the Theotokos on August 15. For those who are new to fasting, or who would like to revisit the meaning of this vital ascetical practice, please consider these words from Metropolitan KALLISTOS (Ware):
Man is a unity of body and soul, "a living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible", in the words of the Triodion; and our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases a proper balance between the outward and the inward has been impaired.
One reason for the decline in fasting is surely the heretical attitude towards human nature, a false "spiritualism" which rejects or ignores the body, viewing man solely in terms of his reasoning brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians have lost a true vision of man as an integral unity of the visible and invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body in the spiritual life, forgetting St. Paul's affirmation: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit....glorify God with your body" (1 Cor 6:19-20).
Another reason for the decline in fasting among Orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our times, that the traditional rules are no longer possible today. These rules presuppose, so it is urged, a closely organized, non-pluralistic Christian society, following an agricultural way of life that is now increasingly a thing of the past. There is a measure of truth in this. But it also needs to be said that fasting, as traditionally practiced in the Church, has always been difficult and has always involved hardship. Many of our contemporaries are willing to fast for reasons of health or beauty, in order to lose weight; cannot we Christians do as much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom? Why should the self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of Orthodox prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today? Once St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked why the miracles of grace, so abundantly manifest in the past, were no longer apparent in his own day, and to this he replied: "Only one thing is lacking - a firm resolve." - from the Lenten Triodion
Our August schedule will include morning services each Sunday at 10:00 AM and Saturday Vespers on August 16 and August 30 at 5:00 PM. There will be no Sunday aftenoon services in August or September.
Choir practice will continue each Sunday morning at 9:00 AM - everyone is welcome to come and learn more about the service music!
We look forward to Father Ted Pisarchuk's upcoming visit August 16-17, which will include both Saturday Vespers and Sunday Divine Liturgy.
Also, remember that the Dormition Fast begins Friday, August 1, and continues through August 15. This is one of the shorter of the four fasting seasons of the Church Year, one which prepares us for the last great feast of the liturgical year: the Dormition (or Repose) of the Theotokos on August 15. For those who are new to fasting, or who would like to revisit the meaning of this vital ascetical practice, please consider these words from Metropolitan KALLISTOS (Ware):
Man is a unity of body and soul, "a living creature fashioned from natures visible and invisible", in the words of the Triodion; and our ascetic fasting should therefore involve both these natures at once. The tendency to over-emphasize external rules about food in a legalistic way, and the opposite tendency to scorn these rules as outdated and unnecessary, are both alike to be deplored as a betrayal of true Orthodoxy. In both cases a proper balance between the outward and the inward has been impaired.
One reason for the decline in fasting is surely the heretical attitude towards human nature, a false "spiritualism" which rejects or ignores the body, viewing man solely in terms of his reasoning brain. As a result, many contemporary Christians have lost a true vision of man as an integral unity of the visible and invisible; they neglect the positive role played by the body in the spiritual life, forgetting St. Paul's affirmation: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit....glorify God with your body" (1 Cor 6:19-20).
Another reason for the decline in fasting among Orthodox is the argument, commonly advanced in our times, that the traditional rules are no longer possible today. These rules presuppose, so it is urged, a closely organized, non-pluralistic Christian society, following an agricultural way of life that is now increasingly a thing of the past. There is a measure of truth in this. But it also needs to be said that fasting, as traditionally practiced in the Church, has always been difficult and has always involved hardship. Many of our contemporaries are willing to fast for reasons of health or beauty, in order to lose weight; cannot we Christians do as much for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom? Why should the self-denial gladly accepted by previous generations of Orthodox prove such an intolerable burden to their successors today? Once St. Seraphim of Sarov was asked why the miracles of grace, so abundantly manifest in the past, were no longer apparent in his own day, and to this he replied: "Only one thing is lacking - a firm resolve." - from the Lenten Triodion
posted by St. Matthew the Apostle Orthodox Church at 9:18 AM
