All Saints of North America Orthodox Church

Transcription

1 All Saints of North America Orthodox Church Including ser vices for St.George s BRANTFORD, ONTARIO Ours must be an Orthodoxy of the heart, not just of the mind - St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Nov. 8/1, 018

2 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday November 018 In which we commemorate the Synaxis of the Archangels Black background indicates a service at St. George s, Brantford; All other entries are All Saints, Hamilton. Service times are approximate. Fasting Days are shaded grey. Dates are shown in civil dates (top) and Julian (Church) Calendar dates (bottom). T- Wine & Oil Allowed W Fish Allowed H Milk & Cheese Allowed - Domestic Chapel (Call for Details) D Coffee Talk/Question Hour l Charitable Works Collection 1 Prophet Joel 19 GM Artemius 0 3 Demetrius Saturday Sleepers of Ephesus D 5 Ap James, Brother of the Lord 3 6 M Arethas 4 7 M Marcian Akathist to St John Maximovitch 6pm 5 8 St Demetrius 6 9 M Nestor 7 10 M Terrence 8 11 St Anastasia Memorial for Departed Soldiers to l 9 1 St Zenobius 13 Ap Stachys (70) 14 Sts Cosmas & Damian Akathist to the Mother of God 6pm 15 M Acindinus 16 M Acepsimus 3 17 St Johannicius the Great M Galacteon D 5 19 St Paul the Confessor 0 33 Martyrs of Melitene 1 Synaxis of the Archangels Michael & Gabriel Akathist to St Xenia 6pm Followed by Small Uncion Martyr Onesiphoros 3 Ap Erastus & Olympas Orthodox Institute of the Family 6pm 10 4 M Menas of Egypt Ven John the Merciful 1 6 St John Chrysostom 7 Ap Philip No Liturgy 8 M Gurius Akathist to St Seraphim of Sarov 6pm 9 St Matthew the Evangelist 30 St Gregory the Wonderworker

3 Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday December St Gregory of Decapolis 6pm Vespers In which we commemorate Saint Nicholas & Saint Lucia 4 Entry of the Theotokos 10:15am Hours 10:30am Liturgy 5 Akathist to the Mother of God 6pm 6 St Amphilochius 7 GM Catherine Orthodox Institute of the Family 6pm 4 1 M Platon Retreat at St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church (Barton St) 8 HM Clement D Ven Alypius the Stylite 6 10 St James of Persia 7 11 Ven Stephen the New 8 1 St Paramon & Companions Akathist to St Andrew 6pm 9 13 Ap Andrew the First Called Pr Nahum 1 15 Pr Habakkuk 16 Pr Zephaniah Santa Lucia Festival l 3 17 St Barbara 4 18 St Sabbas the Sanctified 5 19 St Nicholas Akathist to St Nicholas 6pm 6 0 St Ambrose of Milan 7 1 Ven Patapius of Thebes 8 Conception of the Mother of God 9 3 M Mennas D 4 St Daniel 4pm Vespers (Note Time) 11 5 St Herman & Martyrs of North America Pretzels & Alaskan Salmon to 1 6 St Lucia No Akathist 13 7 M Thyrsus 14 8 HM Eleutherius 15 9 Pr Haggai Pr Daniel Dean s Visit 31 M Victor 18 Black background indicates a service at St. George s, Brantford; alll other entries are All Saints of North America Orthodox Church, Hamilton. Service times are approximate. Fasting Days are shaded grey. Dates are shown in civil dates (top) and Julian (Church) Calendar dates (bottom). T- Wine & Oil Allowed W Fish Allowed H Milk & Cheese Allowed - Domestic Chapel (Call for Details) D Coffee Talk/Question Hour l Charitable Works Collection

4 Sunday, December 16th, 018 ing Divine Liturgy Traditional Baking Saint Lucia Procession Music A Wonderful Day to Invite Guests to Visit Our Parish and the Desert Wisdom Book Room Giving Thanks Through Clenched Teeth Friday, November 3rd Hieromonk Philip (Speranza) Dealing with Family & Friends from Orth Faiths (and None) Friday, December 7th Father Bohdan Hladio Cultivating Faith & Love in Our Children Friday, January 11 th, 019 Father Geoffrey Korz Register Online at ***************************************************** Nativity Services at All Saints of North America for the Eve of Nativity, Sunday, January 6, 019 Vespers 5pm Potluck 6pm Christmas Eve Concert Great Compline 8pm Musicians, singers, and poets - both children and adults - are invited to be part of the Christmas Eve Concert Monday, January 7 th, 019 Hours 10:00am, am Christmas Lunch to (reserve ahead) **************************************************** PRAYING FOR OUR PARISH FAMILY - An insert is included with this calendar: Please remember these names daily in your prayers. needs requests to korzg@hotmail.com. COFFEE TALKS will take place ing the potluck luncheon on Sundays November 18 th and December 3rd at the Hamilton parish. All who are interested in deepening their understanding of the Orthodox Christian faith are invited. A CHURCH-RELATED SPIRITUAL TALK will take place ing potluck on Sundays November 4 th, December nd and 30th at St. George s All are welcome. CHARITABLE WORKS COLLECTIONS in support of those in need in our community will be taken at the Hamilton parish Sundays November 18 th and December 16th.

5 Birthdays & Namesdays WE WISH MANY BLESSED YEARS to Konstantin S. (Nov. 5 Namesday), Claudia A. (Oct. 7/Nov. 9 Namesday - St Claudia Procla), Matushka Linda (Oct 9/Nov 11 Namesday - St Ermilindis), Justina A. (Nov. 15 Namesday), Victor I. (Nov 16 Birthday), Reader John J. (Nov. 0 Bday. Dec 3/16 Namesday - St John the Silent), Angelica C., Michael D., Michael (Mike) P. & sons Michael and Gabriel, Michael D. - Nov 8/1 Namesday (Archangels), Maria T. (Nov 8/1 Namesday), Deacon Sean R. (Nov 9/ Namesday), Michael D. (Nov 30 Birthday), Alexander P. (Dec. Bday), Zeina N. (Dec. 6 Bday), Julia R. (Dec. 10 Bday), Meagan (Marina) L. (Dec.13 Bday), Andrei D. (Dec. 13 Namesday), Kira S. (Dec. 4/17 Namesday - St. Kira of Petersberg), Nicholas M., Reader Nicholas F. (Dec. 19 Namesday), Ioanita Family, Orlic Family (Patron Saint Slava - Dec. 19), Virginia (Anastasia) Hill (Dec 9/ Namesday), Daniel P. (Dec 17/30 Namesday), Chrysanthe K. (Dec. 7 Bday). Please advise the priest of any other occasions. Why Do Some People Leave the Orthodox Church? - Priest Richard Rene As a priest, I am always concerned about why people leave the Orthodox Faith. Over the years, I have noticed that the problem may have to do with the very modern ways in which we think about our spiritual lives as personal journeys. In pre-modern societies, a person s identity was forged almost entirely in relation to his or her tribe. As a member of the tribe, your journey was well-defined through rituals of birth, coming-of-age, marriage, the making of war and peace, and death. Your journey was not your own, but one that your ancestors had taken before you. In the modern world since the 18th century, the ties between individuals and communities have largely been severed. As a result, the sense of life as a journey has come unmoored. While your journey to maturity used to be well-defined for you by your tribe, now you must invent not only the destination (whatever constitutes personal fulfillment ), but also the route and the markers of meaning along the way. I think of myself as a typical example of this modern situation. When people learn that I m an Orthodox priest, they often asked whether I am Russian or Greek. The assumption is that I entered the priesthood because it is my tribal religion. In fact, I was born in the Seychelles, raised in southern and eastern Africa, and emigrated to western Canada. I chose to attend an Orthodox Church independently of my family, who found my decision strange and alienating. Entering the priesthood was very personal for me. It was my journey, one that I undertook for myself, rather than as a part of the well-worn path that the members of my tribe had ed before me. In this sense, then, the modern breakdown of the tribally-defined journey has been a good thing. It has made it possible for people like me, who are outside the Slavic, Greek, and Palestinian tribes, to discover the riches of our Orthodox spiritual heritage. But there s also a dark side to these personal spiritual journeys. When the tribe no longer defines your journey into spiritual maturity, then every path and every destination is equally valid, because you chose it, and it s right for you. This assumption can be very dangerous. If every path you choose is right as long as it s part of your personal journey, then Orthodox Christianity, which considers itself the way to human salvation through Jesus Christ, is no more right than any other spiritual path. Worse yet, Orthodoxy may become just another stop along your way to something more fulfilling. In short, when we uncritically adopt the modern understanding of the spiritual life as a personally-defined journey, we allow for the possibility of reducing Christianity to a purely subjective faith, dependent on our notions of personal fulfillment. While the modern sensibility has broken down barriers and allowed people outside tribal boundaries to journey into an encounter with the fullness of the Gospel, it also has a dangerous tendency to make the journey away from the Church just as valid as the journey towards it. If we have to talk about a personal spiritual journey or a journey of faith (and it would be hard not to do so), we need to remember that as Orthodox Christians, our journey and the destination the fullness of Christ in the tradition of the Orthodox Church are not self-defined, but a given. However personal our journey to Orthodoxy may have been, once we arrive, we are called to do

6 something profoundly anti-modern: to conform the rest of our journey to that of the spiritual tribe to which we ultimately belong the Church. While Orthodoxy may have been a choice we made because it felt right, our choices as Orthodox Christians cannot be made using that same approach. Rather, we must continually make our spiritual decisions within the context and understanding of the Church, asking how we can choose a path that is consistent with that of our spiritual ancestors the apostles, the saints, martyrs, evangelizers and the Mother of God, herself those who have walked before us. Only then can we avoid the pitfalls of modernity, which too easily leads us away from our hearts true home. - Priest Richard Rene is an Orthodox priest and prison chaplain in western Canada. Committed Christians Are Now a Minority and Kids Need to Know It CHRISTIAN PARENTING BLOG I grew up in a smallish town in Arizona (about 5,000 people at the time). Almost everyone I knew fit into one of four buckets: 1) committed Christians, ) nominal Christians, 3) those who didn t call themselves Christians but accepted Judeo-Christian values, and 4) Mormons. In my view of the world at the time, believing in God and being a Christian specifically was the default for most people. There were certainly a few kids who fell into other buckets (atheist or New Age), but they were the exception; there was something different about them. My beliefs were normal. Oh, how things have changed. According to Pew Forum research on the religious landscape of America, Christians statistically are still the majority. But those statistics are highly misleading because religious categorization is based on self-identification, and the Christian category includes a wide range of beliefs and commitment levels. The Pew Forum, however, just released an eye-opening new method of categorizing America s religious beliefs, and it reveals a more realistic picture: Less than 40% of Americans are highly religious (seriously committed to their faith; this includes non-christian religions such as Judaism and Islam). About a quarter of the highly religious are what researchers call diversely devout, meaning they mostly believe in the God of the Bible but hold all kinds of views inconsistent with Christianity, such as reincarnation. From the publicly available data, I don t see a way to break down the remaining 30% of highly religious people into those who hold beliefs consistent with historic Christianity, so for our current purpose, we ll just have to say that committed Christians represent some portion of that 30%. In other words, a minority. I ve noticed lately that my subconscious assumption that this has become the case has had a number of implications for how I talk with my kids. For example, some phrases that have regularly worked their way into our daily conversations are the world tells us, or the world would like us to think, or the way the world is. In other words, I find myself constantly placing an emphasis on making sure my kids know that what they are learning to be true about reality is literally opposite of what the world around them the majority believes. This is so different than how I and many of you grew up. We were part of a pack. We moved along without having to think much about our beliefs versus those of the world. Our parents didn t have to coach us on why we were so very different because we weren t very different. Sure, there were probably some great differences between our homes in how prominently faith actually played out, but we didn t readily see that on the playground. We didn t have social media to make the differences abundantly clear. We didn t have the internet to give us access to the many who are hostile toward our beliefs. In a world where your beliefs will constantly rub up against opposing views, however, you need parents who will give it to you straight: Our entire view of reality is unlike the view most others have. We. Are. Different. And that will affect your life in profound ways. I don t say this as a mere suggestion that this is a conversation we should have with our kids at some point. I say this believing it s a critical part of how we approach our parenting every single day. It has to become a way of life. Here s why. When you raise your kids to understand they have a minority worldview, it does three important things: 1. It sets expectations. This is, perhaps, the most important function of all. If kids expect that their views will be like those of others, they will be shocked when they consistently see how different they actually are. If kids expect that holding a minority worldview won t result in sometimes being treated poorly by others, they will be wounded by what they weren t prepared for. If kids expect that divergent worldviews won t lead to heated debates about how our society should best function, they will be frustrated by lack of agreement between Christians and nonbelievers. But when we

7 consistently help them understand that their worldview will clash frequently with the world around them, they will begin to have very different expectations that lead to healthier outcomes. They will expect to be different, and not be surprised when they don t fit in. They will expect that the world will hate them for their beliefs, and understand that has always been part of what it means to be a Christian (John 15:18). They will expect that divergent worldviews will often affect their relationships with others, and be motivated to learn how to navigate those differences with both truth and love. Action point: Find ways to regularly compare and contrast what others believe and what Christians believe. Make sure your kids understand how different their beliefs are, and, importantly, the implications of that it affects how we see where we came from, why we re here, how to live while we re here, and where we re going. It s no small matter. You can point this out in movies, song lyrics, news stories, things that friends say, things that other parents say, signs you see, billboards, messages on clothing, and much more.. It allows us to emphasize that different isn t (necessarily) wrong. Humans have a tendency to assume that there is truth in numbers. My twins are in fourth grade and are getting to the age where they notice what their peers do a lot more. They tell me, for example, that everyone else has their own phone, that everyone else gets to go to sleepovers, and that everyone else plays Fortnite. They assume that if the majority gets to do something, then that must be what s right. Similarly, when kids eventually see that most people believe something very different about reality than what they do, it s natural to wonder if their minority view must be wrong. Here s the conversation we should be having with our kids from the time they are very little: different doesn t mean wrong. It doesn t necessarily mean right, either. The question we must plant firmly in our kids hearts and minds is, What is true? The truth about reality isn t a popularity contest. It s a question of which worldview is the best explanation for the world around us. Action point: Find ways to regularly compare and contrast why others believe what they do and why Christians believe what we do. If we don t want our kids to assume that different is wrong, they need to have good reason to believe that their different view is right. They need to hear regularly from their parents that Christianity is a worldview based on evidence, and that faith is not blind. If you have kids in the 8-1 range, J. Warner Wallace has three kids books that are amazing for helping them start to think evidentially about their faith: Cold-Case Christianity for Kids, God s Crime Scene for Kids, and Forensic Faith for Kids (this one JUST came out this month and is a perfect place to start). Even if your kids are a little younger, they can benefit tremendously from reading these with you. My 7-year-old is reading Forensic Faith for Kids and is super excited about doing the corresponding worksheets and watching the videos available for free at Honestly, these books should be required reading for every kid in this age range. 3. It fosters worldview vigilance. Talking regularly about the world versus Christianity leads kids to constantly have a worldview radar up. Because they expect to constantly see ideas that clash with the Christian worldview, they become vigilant about sorting everything they see into consistent with Christianity or inconsistent with Christianity. This is extraordinarily important today, as kids so often quietly absorb secular views into their thinking without even realizing it. But the more they know that most of what they will see and hear will not fit with Christianity, the more they learn to vigilantly separate Christian ideas from others. Action point: Encourage your kids to spot the secular wisdom all around them. These examples are everywhere but they are, of course, never marked with worldview labels. The more you point out examples, the more kids learn to think critically. When this becomes a habit in your family, your kids will see it on their own and show you examples. We were at a store the other day and my 9-year-old son came around the aisle carrying this sign: Love is All You Need. He looked at me with a big, disappointed sigh and said, Look. Love is all you need. He recognized this as bad secular wisdom as soon as he saw it. I asked him to explain what s wrong with it, and he said, there s no moral setting. As I pushed him to explain what he meant, he said there s no context for making this statement. If God doesn t exist, then what love means is just a matter of personal opinion and no one has the authority to state that anything is all you need. I concurred and (gently) hit him on the head, saying, I could claim that love means hitting people on the head in that case! But if God exists, then He defines what love is. When we the greatest commandment to love God it informs what it means to the second commandment to love others. It s no longer up to us to define the word. This sign means nothing outside of a worldview context a moral setting as my son put it. +

8 hapgive them a gift that will last forever Iconographers Paint Full-Figure Icon for a Church in Canada from Catalogue of Good Deeds Website, Minsk An icon of Saint Mardarije of Libertyville and Saint Sebastian of Jackson will soon appear in the church in honour of All Saints of North America in Hamilton, Canada. Our Convent has already made numerous icons for the parish church, including the Image of Christ Not-Made-By-Hands, the Mother of God of the Sign, and the Grand Princess Elisabeth.The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonised Bishop Sebastian (Dabovic) and Bishop Mardarije (Uskokovic) in 015. The Russian Orthodox Church did the same in 017. Artyom Glibchuk who painted the images of Saint Mardarije and Saint Sebastian told us that icon painters differentiate between an 'icon painter' and an 'iconographer'. The former simply copies established images, while the latter creates new images. One has to draw up new images for newly-canonised saints in conformity with the Orthodox theology. Artyom has been painting icons for seven years; it was thanks to his experience that he was entrusted with this project. "When you see images of people who lived not long ago in church, you feel the living faith and realise that holiness is something that every believer should strive for," Artyom says. "I've painted icons of St Gabriel (Urgebadze) and St Paisius of Mt Athos recently... St Sebastian of Jackson was the first Orthodox priest born on American soil... It was thanks to (St Mardarije) that the first Serbian Orthodox monastery in North America was established. Nun Jadranka (Uskokovic) from our Convent is St Mardarije's granddaughter. When she saw the icon of her saintly grandfather, she remarked that the image was almost photographically accurate, even though the icon was strictly canonical. Spiritual Books, Prayer Books, Church Goods & Children s Books 397 MELVIN AVENUE AT WOODWARD IN HAMILTON Open ing services or by appointmentgrapesnthingpenawiergtetzatynisfoewmainethdocheruslitu