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St. Gregory of Nyssa Greek Orthodox Church
Publish Date: 2021-02-28
Bulletin Contents
Prodson
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St. Gregory of Nyssa Greek Orthodox Church

General Information

  • Phone:
  • 619-593-0707
  • Street Address:

  • 1454 Jamacha Rd.

  • El Cajon, CA 92019-3752


Contact Information




Services Schedule

Saturday Vespers

5:00 PM

Sunday Liturgies

9:00AM Orthros

10:00AM Divine Liturgy

 

Parish Calendar:  http://www.stgregory.ca.goarch.org/parish-calendar 

Follow Us on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/StGregoryGOC


Past Bulletins


A Warm Welcome to Our Visitors

ABOUT GETTING VACCINATED

“According to federal, state, and county public health guidance, COVID-19 vaccination eligibility is implemented sequentially according to tiers. Access to vaccination follows two pathways. First, if you are under the care of a major health plan that receives direct shipments of vaccine in San Diego County (e.g. Scripps, Sharp, UCSD, Kaiser, VA), you will be notified when your turn comes up. Second, you can also register with San Diego County to receive the vaccine when your tier opens up.  The following website provides general information about COVID-19 vaccination in San Diego County:https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/community_epidemiology/dc/2019-nCoV/vaccines.html

To schedule a vaccination with the County of San Diego, consult the following websitehttps://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/hhsa/programs/phs/community_epidemiology/dc/2019-nCoV/vaccines/COVID-19-VaxEvents.html OR https://vaccinationsuperstation.com

Wm. Christopher Mathews, M.D., MSPH, Professor Emeritus of Clinical Medicine

If you would like help in making an appointment to get vaccinated, please call Gaye at 325-374-2698, leave a message,  and I'll call you back. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    There is still the necessity to reemphasize the absolute need to follow what is now common preventative medicine guidance:

  1. If you have been exposed, may have been exposed, or might have been exposed to COVID within the last 14 days: Please stay home and observe quarantine precautions!  If there is any doubt, please consult your medical provider.
  2. All attendees MUST remain properly masked at all times (except just before taking communion).  This will be strictly enforced.  With your assistance, we won’t need to stop the service to obtain compliance.  If you are unwilling to wear your mask properly (covering mouth and nose), we respectfully request you attend services virtually and not in person.
  3. We must observe proper social distancing.  To this end, we will need to ensure individuals and immediate families maintain a 6 foot social distance. This means staying at least 6 feet away from other people who are not in your household in both indoor and outdoor spaces.  Ushers will assist in maintaining this safe distance.  This also means we may not be able to accommodate everyone under the tent.  Limited overflow seating may be available outside in the front of the church.  
  4. Only the priest and the chanter are allowed to sing.  This is a challenge for us since we traditionally are a singing congregation; however, to reduce the threat to others; please sing along silently in your head
  5. We will continue to broadcast services live at https://www.facebook.com/StGregoryGOC/videos

 

 

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Saints and Feasts

Prodson
February 28

Sunday of the Prodigal Son

Through the parable of today's Gospel, our Saviour has set forth three things for us: the condition of the sinner, the rule of repentance, and the greatness of God's compassion. The divine Fathers have put this reading the week after the parable of the Publican and Pharisee so that, seeing in the person of the Prodigal Son our own wretched condition -- inasmuch as we are sunken in sin, far from God and His Mysteries -- we might at last come to our senses and make haste to return to Him by repentance during these holy days of the Fast.

Furthermore, those who have wrought many great iniquities, and have persisted in them for a long time, oftentimes fall into despair, thinking that there can no longer be any forgiveness for them; and so being without hope, they fall every day into the same and even worse iniquities. Therefore, the divine Fathers, that they might root out the passion of despair from the hearts of such people, and rouse them to the deeds of virtue, have set the present parable at the forecourts of the Fast, to show them the surpassing goodness of God's compassion, and to teach them that there is no sin -- no matter how great it may be -- that can overcome at any time His love for man.


Allsaint
February 28

Righteous John Cassian the Confessor

Note: If it is not a leap year the hymns of Saint John are transferred to the 28th.

This Saint was born about the year 350, and was, according to some, from Rome, according to others, from Dacia Pontica (Dobrogea in present-day Romania). He was a learned man who had first served in the military. Later, he forsook this life and became a monk in Bethlehem with his friend and fellow-ascetic, Germanus of Dacia Pontica, whose memory is also celebrated today. Hearing the fame of the great Fathers of Scete, they went to Egypt about the year 390; their meetings with the famous monks of Scete are recorded in Saint John's Conferences. In the year 403 they went to Constantinople, where Cassian was ordained deacon by Saint John Chrysostom; after the exile of Saint Chrysostom, Saints Cassian and Germanus went to Rome with letters to Pope Innocent I in defence of the exiled Archbishop of Constantinople. There Saint Cassian was ordained priest, after which he went to Marseilles, where he established the famous monastery of Saint Victor. He reposed in peace about the year 433.

The last of his writings was On the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius, written in 430 at the request of Leo, the Archdeacon of Pope Celestine. In this work he was the first to show the spiritual kinship between Pelagianism, which taught that Christ was a mere man who without the help of God had avoided sin, and that it was possible for man to overcome sin by his own efforts; and Nestorianism, which taught that Christ was a mere man used as an instrument by the Son of God, but was not God become man; and indeed, when Nestorius first became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, he made much show of persecuting the heretics, with the exception only of the Pelagians, whom he received into communion and interceded for them to the Emperor and to Pope Celestine.

The error opposed to Pelagianism but equally ruinous was Augustine's teaching that after the fall, man was so corrupt that he could do nothing for his own salvation, and that God simply predestined some men to salvation and others to damnation. Saint John Cassian refuted this blasphemy in the thirteenth of his Conferences, with Abbot Chairemon, which eloquently sets forth, at length and with many citations from the Holy Scriptures, the Orthodox teaching of the balance between the grace of God on one hand, and man's efforts on the other, necessary for our salvation.

Saint Benedict of Nursia, in Chapter 73 of his Rule, ranks Saint Cassian's Institutes and Conferences first among the writings of the monastic fathers, and commands that they be read in his monasteries; indeed, the Rule of Saint Benedict is greatly indebted to the Institutes of Saint John Cassian. Saint John Climacus also praises him highly in section 105 of Step 4 of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, on Obedience.


Allsaint
February 28

Basil the Confessor

Saints Procopius and Basil, fellow ascetics, lived about the middle of the eighth century, during the reign of Leo the Isaurian (717-741), from whom they suffered many things for the sake of the veneration of the holy icons. They ended their lives in the ascetical discipline.


Allsaint
February 28

Jonah the Righteous Martyr of Lerios


Allsaint
February 28

Kyranna the New Martyr of Thessaloniki


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Hymns of the Day

Resurrectional Apolytikion in the Fifth Tone

Let us the faithful give praise and worship to the Logos, coeternal with the Father and the Spirit, born of the Virgin for our salvation; for of His own goodwill he consented to ascend the cross in the flesh and endured death and raised the dead by His glorious resurrection.

Seasonal Kontakion in the Third Tone

I have foolishly run away from thy fatherly glory, and I have wasted in evil deeds the wealth which thou gavest me. Wherefore, I cry to thee with the voice of the prodigal: I have sinned before thee, O merciful Father. Receive me who repent and make me as one of thy hired servants.
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Gospel and Epistle Readings

Epistle Reading

Sunday of the Prodigal Son
The Reading is from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 6:12-20

Brethren, "all things are lawful for me," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me," but I will not be enslaved by anything. "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food" -- and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, "The two shall become one flesh." But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Shun immorality. Every other sin which a man commits is outside the body; but the immoral man sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body and in your spirit which belong to God.


Gospel Reading

Sunday of the Prodigal Son
The Reading is from Luke 15:11-32

The Lord said this parable: "There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that falls to me.' And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have filled his belly with the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to make merry. Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.' But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, 'Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!' And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'"


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Wisdom of the Fathers

But if he had despaired of his life, and, ... had remained in the foreign land, he would not have obtained what he did obtain, but would have been consumed with hunger, and so have undergone the most pitiable death: ...
St. John Chrysostom
AN EXHORTATION TO THEODORE AFTER HIS FALL, 4th Century

... but since he repented, and did not despair, he was restored, even after such great corruption, to the same splendour as before, and was arrayed in the most beautiful robe, and enjoyed greater honours than his brother who had not fallen.
St. John Chrysostom
AN EXHORTATION TO THEODORE AFTER HIS FALL, 4th Century

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Tithes & Offerings

Giving

February 2021 Budget:  $21,000

Monthly Offering to Date:   $ 42,302

Remaining Need (Budget minus offering to Date):  $ 

2021 Budget: $ 269,778

2021 Offerings:  $ 72,298

2021 Remaining Need:  $197,480

 

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Prayer List

HEALTH & WELFARE:

All affected by the Pandemic, Nicholas, Yvonne, Minerva and the Kelada Family, Robert and Britany Gardner, Newborn Styliani, Andy and Anna Popescu, Scott, Lydia Corona, Eric Grasser, Fr. George Morelli, Britney, Katherine, Michael George Stathorakis, Pres. Eleni ad the Tsigas Family, Matushka Natalia, Marvin Lidner, Juan Garcia, Matushka Natalia, Hetta and Wilma, the Sakkab Family, Michael, Lisa Kotitsa, Jan Manos, Carol, Kelly, Bill and Joy Cox, the Katsaras Family, Carol, Jason and the Lees Family,Katherine and the Limneos Family, Alex, Newborn Christopher (Kristo), Kodee, John, Gabriel, Newborns Vera Wilman and Josiah Jenkins and their Families, Anna Vlachopoulos, Voula Parashos, Pam and the Morn Family, Bill, John and Marina Navrides and the Angeles Families, Kelly Lees and sons Orrin, Nolan, Galloway, Kenneth, Marin, Alexandria, Stefan, Alina-Gadriela, Mara, Anna, Ana, Cecilia, John, Alexander Sacco, Amy. Amber, Kyriaki, Dawn, Gordon, Spahe, Tessa, Brianna, Josiah,  Anne Stropes, Ivan Holmes, Leland, Jennifer, Kadee & Abigail Becker, Micailah, Angelo, and Michelle, Fidias, Andreas, Robby, Trevonia, Samantha, Christine Fanos, Brad Summers, Brian, Connie, Ruby, Iris, Jo Cormier, Katy Brown, Faith St. Thomas,  John Vourexis, Linda Bhatia, Elizabeth Terris, Holly, Michael, Lily-Anna, Alexandra (Kyriako's Daughter), Betsy, Tabitha, Mother Susanna, Calliope, Robert, Stephanie and Bennet, Sharon, Tina Frankos, Jack and Tina Stavros, Freda Stavros, Magdalyn Grasser, Maria Del Soccoro, Kevin, Panagiotis, Mari Hanna, James, Natalia, Marika, Rachel, Sylvia Casberg, Angela Stassinopolis, Patrick Thrift, Olga Stephens, Kevin Wallace, Joseph Eyad Zarror, Augustine Ramirez, LaVonne Simonides, Kevin (Amanda's Grandpa), Stephen Awake, Nick, Sophia Busarelos Family, Irene Cantos, Aggie Annis, Lydia Chaconas, Sarah Cronstedt, Michael & the Piliaris Family, Mary Kladouras, Ralph Bradley, Rhonda,  Evonne Zouris, Garland, Pierre, Jethmark, Helen & the Eveland Family, Vernon & Kathern Rogers, Alex, Patty, Jimmy, Richie, Margie, Paul Lane, Alexi, Dr. Minerva, Sarah & Malichi, Stan, James, Dora, Julia, Alexandra, Sebastian, Queentina, Diana, Nico, Lillian Ana Grace, Sarah-Betsy's mother, MaryAnn, Gabrielle, Kiki, Father John Pilafas & family, Virginia, Corey & family, Adrienne & Josef preparing for Sweden, George, Maria Hazlaris, Sarah Oftedal & her family, Darin Williams, Dionisios & Eftixia Diakoumeas, Nicky, Michael, Kathy Jean Alexander, Gerontissa Markella & Sisters of Life-giving Spring Monastery. DEPARTED:   Ansofe Hanna, Mary Jane (Herb’s Mom), Agape (Aunt Aggi) Annis, Sarah Kelada, Tina, Fr. Dimetri Tsigas, BonnieLucia Corona, Peter Shenas Sr., Dan Henry, Fr. Hanna Sakkab, Irina Itina, Helen Glyptis,Dennis, Paul, Ken and Ruth Gilliland,Daniel Katsaros, Charles “Robbie” Kelly (Jason’s Dad), John Limneos, Elizabeth Zogob, Stavroula Floros, Mary Gikas, Dr. Al (Evangelos) & Angela Sarantinos, Darla Gliptis, Jimmy (Demetrios) Vlachopoulos, Raeburn McInnes,  Dennis (Dionysius) Laskarus, Christopher (Fr. John Pilafas’ nephew), Peter (Panagiotis) Parashos, George Marinos, Eva Angelos (Stamatiades), Christine Tzathos, Cliff Earle Morn, Stephanie Navrides, Alexandru, Maria, Maria, Nichita, Costa, Felipe, Daniel Lees (Jason's Brother), Scott, Fr. Paul Lazor, Fr. Elias Bitar, Fr. Jon Winfrey, Hanna, Helen, Mike Riskas, Zach, Photini (Nickie) Hrountas, Trenton Alexander, Eleni, Areti (Iris) and Georgios Pilafas, Archpriest Patrick, Elder Ephraim, Francis Manos, Nicholas Galaxidas, George Platis; Dimitra Biniaris, Leonidas Biniaris, William Lawrence (Larry) Everitt, Jr.,Senait, Abram Dominguez, Warren (George) Cormier, Laura Pantozoplus,George Mastorakos,Fr. Steven Kozler, Michael Surla, Jim (Dimitri) Costas, Zahwey, John Peters, Wendell Duncan,Theodora, Matushka Andrea, Jerry Costacos, Heidi Angelopulos, Athanasios Angelopulos, Pastor Orville Hiepler, Ioanna Melete (Anna’s sister), Catherine Sullivan, Theophanis Brinias (Maria Gregg’s Father), Victor Nasser, Louis Trantalis, Victor Roick, Christ Fergis, Michael Kladouras, Costa Stephens , Georgia Swisher, Nick Paschalydis, John Manos Sr, Jerry (Gerasimos) Howorth, Lin Judah, Paul James Aceves, Warren George Cormier, Judith Keep, George (Marc's Uncle), Samantha (Marc's friend), Carol Kinan, Athina Cavelaris, Andrew Kyriakides, George Speros, Nick Kosmas, Gigi Campbell,  Carl Collard, Jerry (Gerasimos) Filaktu, Doris Holmes, Spyridon, Thomas Munteanu, Sam Mellos, Richard Nicholas Nabhan, Helen Gliptis, George Koulaxes, Bishop Antoun, Eric Nectarios Cochran, Stella Angeles, Nell Thornblad, Katherine Eveland, Carole, Steve Kosic, Effie Matsolis, George, Arety, Manny, Archimandrite Paul Doyle, Eleni (Kyriako's Sister), Gregory Galanis, Deacon Michael, George & Iris Pilafas, Manuel Dragan, Fr. Theodore & Pres. Mary Phillips, Sophia Vourexis, Jason Hyde, Peter Kanelos, Mary Giana, Katherine Armatas, Lana Piliaris, William Piliaris, Katherine Kladouras, Heather Grinnell & Danny Ranglos. 

 


 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Calendar

  • Weekly Calendar

    February 28 to March 7, 2021

    Sunday, February 28

    9:00AM Morning Prayers (Orthros)

    10:00AM Divine Liturgy

    Tuesday, March 2

    Office Closed

    Wednesday, March 3

    3:00PM ST. GREGORY'S NIGHT AT FOCUS God's Extended Hand Ministry

    Thursday, March 4

    6:30PM Prayer and Bible Study (Catechesis) - Zoom Meeting Room 964 247 0828

    Saturday, March 6

    9:00AM Soul Saturday Morning Prayers and Liturgy

    5:00PM Great Vespers

    5:45PM CONFESSION and Prayers of Preparation

    Sunday, March 7

    9:00AM Morning Prayers (Orthros)

    10:00AM Divine Liturgy

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