Jesus Christ taught us to love and serve all people, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. To understand that, we need to look no further than to the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Every time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy, it is offered "on behalf of all, and for all." As Orthodox Christians we stand against racism and bigotry. All human beings share one common identity as children of God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatian 3:28)

Members of our Parish Council are:
Joseph Barbera - Council Member at Large
Dori Kuziak - Council Secretary
Carolyn Neiss - Vice President
Marlene Melesko - Council Member at Large
Kyle Hollis - President
Roderick Seurattan - Treasurer

Pastoral Care - General Information
Emergency Sick Calls can be made at any time. Please call Fr Steven at (860) 866-5802, when a family member is admitted to the hospital.
Anointing in Sickness: The Sacrament of Unction is available in Church, the hospital, or your home, for anyone who is sick and suffering, however severe. 
Marriages and Baptisms require early planning, scheduling and selections of sponsors (crown bearers or godparents). See Father before booking dates and reception halls!
Funerals are celebrated for practicing Orthodox Christians. Please see Father for details. The Church opposes cremation; we cannot celebrate funerals for cremations.

So here’s the schedule for Holy Week and the “type” of service that I’m expecting…. HYBRID is both online and in person, VIRTUAL is just online.

Saturday, April 24 - Lazurus Saturday
Liturgy - 9am (Hybrid)
Vespers - 5:30pm (Hybrid)

Sunday, April 25 - Palm Sunday
Liturgy - 9:30am (Hybrid)
Bridegroom Matins of Monday - 5:30pm (Virtual)

Monday, April 26
Bridegroom Matins of Tuesday - 6:30pm (Virtual)

Tuesday, April 27
Bridegroom Matins of Wednesday - 6:30pm (Hybrid)

Wednesday, April 28
Matins of Great and Holy Thursday  - 6:30pm (Virtual)

Thursday, April 29
Vesperal Divine Liturgy - 10:30a (Hybrid)
Matins of Great and Holy Friday (Gospels) - 6:30p (Virtual)

Friday, April 30
Royal Hours - 8:30am (Virtual)
Great Vespers (Entombment) - 4pm (Hybrid)
Matins of Great and Holy Saturday (Lamentations) - 6:30p (Hybrid)

Saturday, May 1st
Vesperal Divine Liturgy - 10:30am (Hybrid)
Paschal Nocturns and Matins - 9:30p (Hybrid)

Sunday, May 2nd
Divine Liturgy - 9:30a (Hybrid)
Paschal Vespers - 5:30p (Virtual)

Texts for the services will be posted in the parish shared folder.

Paschal baskets will be blessed on Sunday after Liturgy.

Archpriest Dennis, Archpriest Michael, Deacon Timothy, Evelyn, Katheryn, Anne, Aaron, Veronica, Richard, Nancy, Susanne, Carol, Alexander, Gail, Vincent, Nina, Ellen, Maureen, Elizabeth, Christopher, Joshua, Jennifer, Petra, Olivia, Jessica, Sean, Sarah, Justin, Arnold, Carol-Anne, Anthony, Natasha, Gene, John, John, Michael, Kelley, Krisha, Alix, Natalie, Edward, Nathan, Caila, Julianna, Paul, John, Jacob, Lynn, Anna, Richard, Robert, Dorothy, Elaina

Many years to Christine Jankura on the occasion of her birthday!

Memory Eternal for Alla Hamisevich.

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• Pray for: All those confined to hospitals, nursing homes, and their own homes due to illness; for all those who serve in the armed forces; widows, orphans, prisoners, victims of violence, and refugees;
• All those suffering chronic illness, financial hardship, loneliness, addictions, abuse, abandonment and despair; those who are homeless, those who are institutionalize, those who have no one to pray for them;
• All Orthodox seminarians & families; all Orthodox monks and nuns, and all those considering monastic life; all Orthodox missionaries and their families.
• All those who have perished due to hatred, intolerance and pestilence; all those departed this life in the hope of the Resurrection.

___

St Mary of Egypt. Ven. John, disciple of Ven. Gregory of Decapolis (9th c.). Martyrs Victor, Zoticus, Zeno, Acindynus, and Severian, of Nicomedia (303). St. Cosmas, Bishop of Chalcedon, and his fellow ascetic, St. Auxentius (815-820). New Martyr John the New of Epirus (1526). Ven. Evfimii (Euthymius), Enlightener of Karelia; and the Righteous Anthony and Felix.

Tone 4 Troparion (Resurrection)

When the women disciples of the Lord
learned from the angel the joyous message of Your Resurrection,
they cast away the ancestral curse
and elatedly told the apostles:
“Death is overthrown!
Christ God is risen,//
granting the world great mercy!”

Tone 8 Troparion (St. Mary of Egypt)

The image of God was truly preserved in you, O Mother,
for you took up the Cross and followed Christ.
By so doing, you taught us to disregard the flesh for it passes away;
but to care instead for the soul, for it is immortal.//
Therefore your spirit, O holy Mother Mary, rejoices with the angels.

Tone 4 Kontakion (Resurrection)

My Savior and Redeemer
as God rose from the tomb and delivered the earth-born from their chains.
He has shattered the gates of hell,
and as Master,//
He has risen on the third day!

Tone 3 Kontakion (St. Mary of Egypt)

Having been a sinful woman,
you became through repentance a bride of Christ.
Having attained angelic life,
you defeated demons with the weapon of the Cross.//
Therefore, O most glorious Mary, you are a bride of the Kingdom.

(Instead of “It is truly meet…,” we sing the following)

Hymn to the Theotokos

All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace:
the assembly of angels and the race of men.
O sanctified temple and spiritual paradise,
the glory of virgins,
from whom God was incarnate and became a Child –
our God before the ages.
He made your body into a throne,
and your womb He made more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace.
Glory to you!

Communion Hymn

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the highest! (Ps. 148:1)
The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance! He shall not fear evil
tidings! (Ps. 111:6)
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Reflections on Praying the Psalter

A rule of prayer is characterized above all by rhythm, the experience of a rule is that of submitting to the rhythm of it. You pray at certain times and in certain words; in these times and words begin fairly soon to give a definite pattern to one's days. When a rule of prayer is first begun, there is usually an ecstatic period in which the prayers are resonant, profound, and extremely moving. It is exactly like falling in love: an extraordinary sweetness gives one's days vividness, depth, and perfection. You wake up into joy - not merely into happiness but into genuine joy, into something richer, sharper, and more actual than any happiness ever can be. Happiness is feeling, but joy is something greater in the same order of magnitude that a child's happiness at play is something far greater than the stuffed teddy bear he plays with. And just as a child's happiness at play may be expressed by only the tiniest outward signs, so a person experiencing the first joy of prayer may in fact be quite subdued. For the first work of spiritual joy is often very largely inward. So it was for me.

But our loving cannot remain ecstatic, nor our children play happily forever, so a rule of prayer soon moves us beyond this first joy. For the experience of prayer that follows that first joy is experience of failure, and experience in which one's own prayer is a very poor thing, with nothing to recommend it. Prayer becomes a place of struggle, not triumph, a place where you just barely keep your head above water. And most of the time you sink and are engulfed again and again by the world you have so badly made and keep on making: your world of work and family and friends and enemies. This disastrous failure also is entirely undramatic and thoroughly un-spectacular. Where it once was vast, gathered, and profound, prayer now becomes mean, scattered, and flat.

There is no way out of this. It is what the early Orthodox Fathers called the desert. You cannot survive in this merciless place unless you submit to the first conditions of it: that is, unless you meet its implacable demand for an ever deeper spiritual poverty. For what the rule is drawing you toward is what Mother Maria [Lydia Gysi] calls the End-Point, that point wherein - as at your bath - you are stripped of absolutely all you possess - "except your sins, and the cry for mercy." With a slowly growing awareness - or else with a sudden shock of insight - you see that the desert is, in fact, the place where you live now - and will live for the rest of your life. Where is joy? In the rhythm.

Into this desert comes the voices of the great Orthodox Masters of prayer, the saints, fathers, mothers, monks, and nuns of the holy tradition. St. Innocent of Alaska says in The Art of Prayer: "the whole Holy Spirit teaches true prayer….A man with the Holy Spirit dwelling in him knows God and sees that He is his Father. He knows how to approach Him, how to ask and what to ask for. His thoughts in prayer are orderly, pure, and directed to the one object alone - God; and by his prayer he is truly able to do everything.”

If we feel something like despair in hearing such a voice (for our thoughts and prayer are anything but quote orderly, pure, and directed"), we are also instructed. I haven't the slightest idea what sustains one in a rule of prayer. Certainly, it isn't pleasure of easily recognizable variety, for desert life is scarcely anyone's formula for personal happiness. Yet what St. Innocent here says - "by prayer he is truly able to do everything "- is illumined by a joy so profound, so strong, and vivid that all our notions of pleasure simply vanish in the way flickers of candlelight vanished in the glaring immensity of the desert sun. You die into joy.

All the time rhythm of the rule keeps on working.

The Shield of Psalmic Prayer, by Donald Sheehan