ST. NICHOLAS WEEKLY BULLETIN

Transcription

1 ST. NICHOLAS WEEKLY BULLETIN December 18, 2016 This Week s News THE YOUTH CHRISTMAS PAG- EANT will be held today. anks to the teachers and parents who helped organize it. Special thanks to the children and young people who participated. God bless all of them. REMEMBER TO PICK UP YOUR HOLIDAY PASTRY PLATTERS AND OTHER BAKED GOODS. A deep debt of gratitude for all of the people who have been baking and working to make over the past months to make this baking activity a real success for our parish, spiritually as well as financially. Special thanks go to Betty Anderson and Chris Toda, who have tirelessly spearheaded this effort and the other ladies and men who have done the hard work. THANKS TO THE MUSTARD SEED VOLUNTEERS! ose who cooked and those who served the meal this past Friday! is month s meal is sponsored by Mary Cocaine. God bless her and her family! e Mustard Seed is a Catholic Worker home providing dinner to about 150 people in need each day. THE CHRISTMAS CENTERPIECES on the tables in the hall are available for Greete T m 4: Dimitri Saffron and S n Fahey Coffee Hour Cl n-up Crew D: IlIana & Sean Fahey, DImItrI SaFFron, ChrIStoS & SpIro Spyrou All Altar Serve Invited The Sunday before e Na vi Apostolic R ding: Hebrews 11:9-10; Gospel: Ma hew 1:1-25 (The Gen logy of e Savior) Tone 1 Ma ns Gospel 4 purchase: $ Feel free to choose the one you like and leave your donation with the person at the candles. THE 2017 CHURCH CALENDARS are here, in both English and Romanian. Pick them up at the candles. Please con- METROPOLITAN NICO- LAE S PASTORAL LETTER on the occasion of the Lord's Nativity is available at the candles for you to read in English and Romanian. THE FULL CHRISTMAS/ EPIPHANY SCHEDULE is available and attached to the Bulletin. Fri, Dec 16 Sun, Dec 18 Sun, Dec 25 Sat, Dec 31 Sat, Jan 7 Dates to Remember Mustard Seed Meal, 5:00 pm Children s Christmas Pageant Christmas, Liturgy 10:00 am Staff Orthodox Food Pantry Staff Orthodox Food Pantry 34 Gold Street, Shrewsbury, MA Voice: Fax: FrNick@StNicholasChurch.org web: A Parish of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese in the Americas

2 sider a small donation to cover the costs. A NEW PARISH COUNCIL WILL BE ELECTED IN JANUARY, (the two-year term of the Parish Council expires this year). Please consider offering a stewardship of your time in this important ministry. We also are asking for people to serve on other Parish committees, if you would like to focus your efforts in just one area. However you d like to serve, please speak with Fr. Nick. TODAY WE CELEBRATE A MEMO- RIAL for Ilia Zhaka, the son of Nicola and Natasha Zhaka. May his memory be eternal! TODAY'S COFFEE HOUR is sponsored by the Zhaka family in memory of their son Ilia. Holy Trini News THANKS TO ALL THOSE WHO PUR- CHASED CHRISTMAS GIFTS for the Holy Trinity residents, and special thanks to Eleanor Sedares for spearheading this effort for our Parish. All gi s need to be here today, Sunday, December 18th. If there are any questions talk to Eleanor ( ). Support Holy Trinity through the United Way. It s not too late! e deadline is December 30th. Donate online at unitedwaycm.org and click on the Donate button in the upper right corner. Make sure to designate: Holy Trinity Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, Worcester, MA in the comments/questions window. You may also call Doreen ornburg at United Way: , ext Also, check to see if your employer has a matching gi program. Holy Trinity Nursing & Rehabilitation Center has the following EMPLOY- MENT OPPORTUNITIES: CNA s, RN s and Dietary Aides. Please contact Michelle Williamson, Dir. of Human Resources at: And in that region there were shepherds out in And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:8 14).

3 God has provided Some ing Be er For us T his is the Sunday before the Nativity of our Lord. e Epistle Lesson is taken from the Letter to the Hebrews 11:9-10; is chapter of Hebrews concerns faith. It begins with the famous line: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (v. 1) e rest of the chapter talks about specific people and examples of their continuing faith in God, even though they did not receive what was promised. (v. 39) From generation to generation faith in the promise was passed down parent to child. St. Paul says that, by faith Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. (v. 9-10) Abraham le Ur (in modernday Iraq) at God s bidding and went and sojourned in Canaan (cf. Genesis 12:1ff). He believed in God s promise, that one day this land would be given to him and his descendants. He never saw this, nor did Isaac and Jacob. In using the word tents and the impermanence it suggests, St. Paul seems to be saying that Abraham and his offspring understood the promise was not about the land of Canaan, but about their real dwelling place in the heavenly city, the city which has foundations. St. Paul offers us Abraham s faith as a model to emulate (cf. Romans 4). He is the prototype of the Christian believer. As Abraham sojourned in the land of promise, confident that his descendents would inherit it, so we sojourn on this earth awaiting the promised Kingdom. is selected reading jumps from verse 10 to 32. In the verses not read St. Paul speaks in detail of the faith not only of Abraham, but also of Sarah, who believed and gave birth in her old age to Isaac. Of Isaac, who on his deathbed continued to believe in the promise and passed this faith to his sons Jacob and Esau. In like manner, Jacob as he died blessed each of his twelve sons by the same faith in the promise as yet unseen. Paul speaks of Joseph s faith in the land of Egypt, sold into slavery. He reminds us of Moses faith, viewing the land of promise only from afar. ese and others are held up to us as persons to mirror, as well as to be encourage by. In the Sunday reading we skip to verse 32. Even St. Paul himself does not want to tire us by recounting all of the persons who lived by this faith; he feels these few examples are enough to illustrate his point. So he says: And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. ey were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented of whom the world was not worthy. ey wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. (v ) Reflect for a moment on this list. He could have mentioned more! ese were people with real lives, like ours. ey lived with all of the difficulties of life, like we do. ey passed on to their children the things that they held to most closely, just as we do. ese experiences went on for hundreds and thousands of years, not unlike our own, except for one thing. Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect. (v ) ink about this. People whose faith so surpassed our own, like the earth from the heavens, needed us to be made perfect. Never wavering from their faith, even in the most difficult of circumstances, they waited with certainty knowing that the promised would be fulfilled. We live in the time of the promise. e Lord has fulfilled His Word in our hearing. It is not only that apart from us, [they would not] be made perfect, we should understand that we would not have been made perfect except for their watchful expectation, certain of God s promise. e Feast of the Lord s Nativity is o en called a quiet celebration. e quietness can be found in the small number of people who knew (Mary and Joseph, perhaps the midwives, shepherds and magi). e quietness is also located in the humble circumstances: a newborn infant, a cave, a small village. We should celebrate this great event quietly as well: in our hearts, in our minds, and yes, in our actions. e great events of our Lord s coming are yet to be celebrated: the Baptism, the Entry in Jerusalem, the Crucifixion, and finally the Resurrection. However, each of these is wrapped tightly within the swaddling cloths in that cave in Bethlehem. We too await the promise with Abraham and all the others. However, we also await our Lord s birth, not in Bethlehem, but in our hearts and souls. Brothers and sisters, cut away the noise and distractions of the world. Let us not simply put Christ back into Christmas, but rather, put our Christ-

4 mas celebration back into Christ. Let us be firm in the hope of the promise given us, putting all our faith in Christ our Lord. While we may be terrified to put our lives in God s hands, remember how He put His life in our hands, through Mary, His mother, and Joseph, His stepfather. When we want to understand God s love for us, meditate on this: the universe s creator allows himself to be nurtured and raised by a teenage mother and a working-class father, in a back-water village in Galilee. Christ is Born! Glorify Him! Fr. Nicho s Aposto Namedays December 12 St. Spyridon the Wonderworker of Tremithus Spiro Kelly Spiro Kelly Spiro Spyrou December 15 e Hieromartyr Ele herios, Bishop of Illyria Lillian Chachi December 17 St. Dionysios of Zakynthos, Bishop of Aegina Denise Sparages e Holy Prophet Daniel Dan Manescu Dana Manescu Dan Alexandru Nedelescu Robert Daniel Salerno Dana Tsoules December 18 e Sunday of the Holy Ancestors of the Lord, according to the flesh e High Priest Aaron Aaron Paul Christo Adam the first man Adam Donabed Adam Mayer e Holy Prophetess Abigail, wife of David Abigail Mayer e Righteous Deborah Deborah Rucho Deborah Sedares e Righteous Noah Noah Peter Christo e Righteous Rebecca Rebeka Tanacea e Righteous Sarah Sarah Maria Blanchard Sarah Maria Bourisk December 25 e Holy Nativity of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ Christopher Blanchard Chrysanthi Charalambides Cristina M. Culcea Christopher Demake Cristean Dumitriu Kristjan Endriko Cristina Gavala Cristian Ionete Christine Kelly Christian Andrew Polymeros Christian Prizio Christopher Rucho Christina Soriano Christina Soter Christo Spyrou Christian oren Christina oren Christine Toda Christina Marina Tonna Chris Zaruha Cristian Zaruha A Prayer of Fr. Laurence LET US PRAY TO THE LORD, We glorify you, Lord Jesus Christ, for allowing us to know you. Everything we have belongs to you and we possess nothing of our own, for it is you who gave us all we have. By coming into our midst, you show us how to let go of everything, and by the poverty of your birth, you teach us to be attached to nothing. As we prepare for the celebration of your earthly birthday, O Christ, keep our hearts fixed only on you, so that we may always sing: Glory to God in the heights; on earth peace, and among all love and understanding. For you are God and we give you glory together with your Father Who is without beginning, and your allholy, good, and life-giving Spirit: now and forever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.

5 Christmas & Theophany Schedule Sunday before Christmas Sunday, December 18, 2016 Matins :00 a.m. Divine Liturgy :00 a.m. Children s Christmas Program a er the Liturgy Friday before Christmas Friday, December 23, 2016 Royal Hours :30 a.m. Christmas Eve Sa rday, December 24, 2016 Great Vespers :00 p.m. The Na vi of Our Lord Sunday, December 25, 2016 Divine Liturgy of St. Basil :00 a.m. New Y r s Day Circumcision of our Lord F st of St. Basil e Gr t Sunday after Christmas Sunday, January 1, 2017 Divine Liturgy of St. Basil :00 a.m. Eve of Holy Theophany Thu day, January 5, 2017 Royal Hours :30 p.m. Vesperal Liturgy of St. Basil :00 p.m. Great Blessing of Water at end of Liturgy Sunday after Holy Theophany Sunday, January 8, 2017 Divine Liturgy :00 a.m. HOUSE BLESSINGS. e blessing of homes at eophany will begin on Saturday, January 7, 2017, and continue until all homes are blessed. As in the past, we will be setting times when we will be coming to bless your home. If there is a specific time that is more convenient for you, please call Fr. Nick to arrange it ( ).