SAINT JAMES ORTHODOX CHURCH

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1 SAINT JAMES ORTHODOX CHURCH 195 N. Main Street Milpitas, Ca Matins 8:00 a.m. Liturgy 10:30 a.m. The Very Reverend Fr. Jiris Hanna (408) Fr. Dcn. Joseph Kawar (408) Sunday January 25 (1/12), rd Sunday after Pentecost Sunday after the Theophany Zaccheus Sunday Martyr Tatiana of Rome and companions - األحد الذي بعد الظهنر - احد زكا لعشار - تذكار القديسة تاتياني الشهيدة األحد الثالث والثالوثن بعد العنصرة Matins (Eothina XI): John 21:15 25 Epistle: Ephesians 4:7 13 Gospel: Matthew 4:12 17 The Glory of Jesus Baptism Monday 1/19 (1/6) This glorious of Theophany feast is our illumination because it shines so eminently upon the whole world the knowledge of the One True God: the Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In our Lord s Nativity we worshipped His divinity. We adored Him with the shepherds. We offered Him our obeisance with the Magi. We sang His praise with the angelic host. But we did it in a cave, in a manger hidden in a small town. Today, before the masses the light of our Lord s identity shines forth before all publicly as he ascends from the font of the Jordan. Jesus descends into the waters. St. John s trembling hand touches the divine head. The heavens open. The Father speaks, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased. And the Holy Spirit descends as a dove. Truly the Prophet Isaiah s words are fulfilled, Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel (12:6). Great is the Holy Trinity! God is manifested to the world. Our Lord did not need baptism. He had no sin. This is why St. John the Baptist was in fear. He protested saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? This is why the water saw Christ and fled. The Jordan river turned back. All creation shook, as the Creator descended into the waters. Why did He do it? In order to place His lot with sinners. To identify with us and to open for us the gates of paradise in baptism. It was at our Lord s baptism that the heavens were opened! It was that holy and humble baptism that called down the Holy Spirit as a dove. Then did the Holy

2 Spirit unite Himself to water so that we could all be born again of water and the spirit, and have the heavens opened up to us in our baptisms. The Lord s baptism is our redemption. It is the cornerstone and fountain of our baptism and of every good thing we receive in baptism to this day. What is so beautiful about the picture on the right is that there, the person being baptized is illumined by the Holy Spirit! As clear as day. Great is the condescension of the Spirit of God Who allowed this photo, and great is this feast of Theophany which is our redemption. Christ Himself brings His saving presence to us in the waters for the healing of our souls and bodies, for the averting of everything evil, for the strengthening of virtue, for the holiness of our homes. The practice of house blessings which always follows the Great Feast of Theophany in which the priest visits the homes of the faithful in order to bless them with the water from the Great Sanctification is a very important sign that we are joyously drawing water from the springs of salvation. The illumination of the Theophany cannot be contained in the Church. It is spilling out into our homes and into all of creation and this is exactly how it is supposed to be. May the true knowledge of the Holy Trinity illumine our hearts so that we may know the Only God. And may we hasten to fulfill the responsibility of those who keep this feast by joyously drawing water from the springs of salvation and making known God s deeds to ourselves, our families, and even among all nations. Services This Week Monday 1/19 at 7pm The Holy Theophany of Our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ (Baptism of the Lord) Thank You For Your Understanding If you need to talk to Fr. Giris after the liturgy on Sundays, he will be more than happy to take as much time as you need. But please allow him to spend some time with the rest of the parish in the church hall first. Please do not tie him up in the church or in the office immediately after the liturgy. You can also call him directly and set an appointment to meet with him privately. A Holy Invitation When arriving at the church for services, we should seek to arrive a few minutes before the service begins, in order to prepare ourselves and clear our minds. Jesus Christ our Lord has invited us to His Mystical Supper. Imagine, for a moment, if you were invited to dinner at the White House with your favorite president, and how much time and effort you would put into making sure you were dressed properly and would not arrive late.

3 Home Blessings Fr. Giris will be more than happy to come and bless your house with Holy Water any time starting Monday 1/19. Hanan Aboujudom will schedule Fr. Giris daily visits and home blessings. Please contact Hanan at (408) to schedule. Fr. Giris would like to finish all home blessings before the start of Great Lent on February 23. It will be much harder to schedule him during Lent. If at all possible, please help Fr. Giris do home blessings during the day time. Please help make Fr. Giris visits as short as possible so he can bless as many homes as possible. Home blessings should not take more than 15 minutes or 30 minutes at the most. House Blessings are a yearly tradition. On and for a few weeks following Theophany but before the beginning of Great Lent, it is customary to invite the parish priest to bless your home with the Holy Water. The priest will go to each room, blessing it by sprinkling Holy Water, which will protect you and your family from evil spirits. For House Blessings, it is appropriate that all family members are in attendance. All electronic devices and distractions should be turned off. Thank You! Many thanks to everyone who donated the food, or helped with cooking, or delivered the food to the homeless shelter in Redwood City on Saturday. May God bless you all! While we have food on the table, a roof over us, a family around us, what a great blessing to remember all those in need at all times. Lunch This Sunday January 25 will be provided by Farouq & Abeer Daoud and Family Thank you and God bless you. sjoc@earthlink.net or call (408) for your bulletin personal announcements, comments, or feedback. Living a Life of Theophany Shirtless and the More Happy for It After Christ was baptized, the first words that He said were: Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Why? Because after we have been baptized, we are always tempted again and the only way to end temptation is to repent. But what exactly do these words mean? What is repentance? What is the Kingdom of Heaven? In order to understand the meaning of the word repentance, we must first understand the nature of the opposite of repentance, the reason for repentance sin. Sin comes to us in three stages. Firstly, we have a thought, a temptation towards evil. Secondly, we entertain that thought and imagine its attraction until it becomes irresistible. Thirdly, we act on that thought that we have entertained. These are the three stages of sin. Repentance also has three stages. Firstly, our consciences are pricked, we have the thought that what we have done is bad. Secondly, we entertain that consciousness and develop it until action becomes irresistible. Thirdly, we act. These are the three stages of repentance.

4 Repentance then is not just an idea, a thought, it is above all an action. Repentance is a change of mind which leads to a practical and visible change in our way of life. Yes, it is true, that often we seem to come to confession with the same sins as before. Yes, it is true, that often we seem to make no progress, that although we have done wrong yet again, we have no tears, no depth of repentance to make us change our way of life. However, this should not mean that we lose hope, that we despair. That would be to fall to another temptation of the demon, the thought that we are unable to repent and that all our efforts are futile. Merely coming to confession and saying that we are weak, that we have done wrong yet again, that our repentance lacks depth, is an act of repentance in itself. As the Gospel says, we must forgive even unto seven times seventy. Moreover, by continued repentance and the determination to repent, eventually depth of repentance and tears will come to us. If this is repentance, what then is the Kingdom of Heaven? Firstly, the Kingdom of Heaven was Christ Himself Who spoke these words to the people of that time, before whom He stood. The Kingdom of Heaven was indeed at hand, for He stood before them. Secondly, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand in another sense and stands before us in the here and now. The Kingdom of Heaven is here and now, but it depends on our willingness to accept Christ and His Holiness, Mercy and Grace. At this very moment each one of us is in fact able to meet God and enter into His eternal joy, but only if we wish to do so through deep repentance. The joy of the Kingdom of Heaven, simply the state of contentment with God, our well-being, is open to all who wish to accept Christ, the Word of God. Yes, it is true that our well-being does to some extent depend on whether we have a job, a roof over our heads, enough money to pay our way in the world. But none of these things is absolutely essential, for there are people who have all these things but are still unhappy, they do not have the Kingdom of Heaven. And there are people who have none of these things and yet they are happy, they have the Kingdom of Heaven. This reminds me of film-stars who marry and then divorce, remarry and redivorce and do this six or seven times, and each time blame the others for the divorce. In fact it is the film-stars who bear the problem inside themselves, in their selfishness and hardness of heart. It reminds me of someone who goes from country to country and job to job, blaming each uprooting on others. In fact the problem is carried in the suitcase, the problem is with the instability of the person, their inability to get on with others, it is not in external circumstances. It also reminds me also of the old folk-tale about happiness, which goes like this: There was once a King who was very sad. He was told by his advisors that he should send out servants to find someone who was completely happy, take the shirt from his back and put it on. Then the King would be completely happy. So the King sent out his servants and they searched up and down the kingdom. Eventually one of the royal servants found a man who was completely happy. The servant returned to the King with the good news. The King asked impatiently: But where then is the man s shirt? Unfortunately, replied the servant, this man who was completely happy was so poor that he did not have a shirt.

5 In other words the presence of the Kingdom of Heaven depends ultimately not on our external circumstances but on ourselves, on our interior disposition, on our ability to repent. Indeed it is only if we repent that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. May God grant us the desire for that repentance. General Parish Meeting New Date Sunday February 8, 2015 Archpriest Andrew Phillips, Orthodox England Immediately after liturgy in the church to present the Budget Forecast for 2015, and to present the 2015 Board of Trustees. Please do your very best to stay in the church and listen to the latest updates about the church and meet the new Board Members. ALL St. James Ladies Meeting Friday 2/6/15 at 7pm All St. James Ladies Please mark your calendar for a meeting with Fr. Giris and Dcn. Joseph to have an open discussion, share and exchange ideas and thoughts about St. James Ladies Auxiliary Group function in Please attend. Happy Birthdays Mary Zuriakat 1/19 Aknas Alsawssaji 1/22 Olfat Zuriakat 1/24 Rajaie Dabaie 1/25 عقبال المئة سنة!!! Synaxis of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John Tuesday January 20 In the Orthodox Church it is customary, on the day following the Great Feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God, to remember those saints who participated directly in the sacred event. So, on the day following the Theophany of the Lord, the Church honors the one who participated directly in the Baptism of Christ, placing his own hand upon the head of the Savior. St John, the holy Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, whom the Lord called the greatest of the prophets, concludes the history of the Old Testament and opens the era of the New Testament. The holy Prophet John bore witness to the Only-Begotten Son of God, incarnate in the flesh. St John was accounted worthy to baptize Him in the waters of the Jordan, and he was a witness of the Theophany of the Most Holy Trinity on the day of the Savior s Baptism. The holy Prophet John was related to the Lord on His mother s side, the son of the Priest Zachariah and Righteous Elizabeth. The holy Forerunner, John, was born six months before Christ. The Archangel Gabriel announced his birth in the Temple at Jerusalem, revealing to Zachariah that a son was to be born to him. Through the prayers offered beforehand, the child was filled with the Holy Spirit. St John prepared himself in the wilds of the desert for his great service by a strict life, by fasting, prayer and sympathy for the fate of God s people.

6 At the age of thirty, he came forth preaching repentance. He appeared on the banks of the Jordan, to prepare the people by his preaching to accept the Savior of the world. In church hymnology, St John is called a bright morning star, whose gleaming outshone the brilliance of all the other stars, announcing the coming dawn of the day of grace, illumined with the light of the spiritual Sun, our Lord Jesus Christ. Having baptized the sinless Lamb of God, St John soon died a martyr s death, beheaded by the sword on orders of King Herod at the request of his daughter Salome. The Transfer of the Right Hand of the holy Forerunner from Antioch to Constantinople (956) and the Miracle of Saint John the Forerunner against the Hagarenes (Moslems) at Chios: The body of Saint John the Baptist was buried in the Samaritan city of Sebaste. The holy Evangelist Luke, who went preaching Christ in various cities and towns, came to Sebaste, where they gave him the right hand of the holy Prophet John, the very hand with which he had baptized the Savior. The Evangelist Luke took it with him to his native city of Antioch. When the Moslems seized Antioch centuries later, a deacon named Job brought the holy hand of the Forerunner from Antioch to Chalcedon. From there, on the eve of the Theophany of the Lord, it was transferred to Constantinople (956) and kept thereafter. The right hand continued to be kept in Constantinople. And at the end of the fourteenth to the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, the holy relic was seen at Constantinople in the Peribleptos monastery by the Russian pilgrims Stephen of Novgorod, the deacon Ignatius, the cantor Alexander and the deacon Zosimus. When Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, sacred objects were gathered up at the the conqueror s orders and kept under lock in the imperial treasury. In the Lives of the Saints is clear testimony that in the year 1484 the right hand of the holy Forerunner was given away by the son of the Moslem sultan Bayazet to the knights of Rhodes to gain their good will, since a dangerous rival for Bayazet, his own brother, had allied himself with them. A contemporary participant, the vice-chancellor of Rhodes, Wilhelm Gaorsan Gallo, also speaks of this event. The knights of Rhodes, having established their base on the island of Malta (in the Mediterranean Sea), then transferred the sacred relic they had received to Malta. When the Russian Tsar Paul I ( ) became Grand Master of the Maltese Order in honor of the holy Prophet John, the right hand of the Baptist, part of the Life-Creating Cross and the Philermos Icon of the Mother of God (from Mt Philermos on the island of Rhodes) were transferred in 1799 from the island of Malta to Russia [because of the Napoleonic threat], to the chapel at Gatchina. In the same year these sacred items were transferred into the church dedicated to the Icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands at the Winter Palace. A special service was composed for this Feast.

7 An Annual Theophany Miracle The Jordan Reverses Its Flow "Today the nature of water is sanctified. The Jordan is parted and reverses its flow on seeing its Master being baptized." - Orthodox Hymn for Theophany This video was recorded through a cell phone camera on the day before Theophany on January 5th (according to the Old Julian Calendar; on January 18 according to the Revised Julian Calendar) in 2006, during the blessing of the waters which takes place every year on the same day at the Jordan, in the very same area where Jesus Christ himself was baptized. What is captured in that video is a recurring annual miracle in the Holy Land on the Feast of Holy Theophany, as followed by the Jerusalem Patriarchate. When standing on the Israeli side, the Jordan River normally flows towards the right. However, during the blessing of the waters service on Theophany, a miracle takes place that is said to have also taken place on the day Jesus was baptized in that same area: "The Jordan reverses its flow!" This other video, filmed in 2011, better shows what takes place. During the ceremony, which is led by the Patriarch of Jerusalem (who is standing on the Israeli side), and by one of Jordan s Orthodox priests (on the Jordanian side) the waters continue to flow as usual toward the right. However, as soon as the Patriarch and the Jordanian priest drop the Cross into the river, chanting En Iorthani Vaptizomenou Sou Kyrie ( When You were baptized in the Jordan, Lord ), the waters start to mysteriously bubble in places. The bubbling then spreads, and the river develops two currents, one running to the right and another running to the left, with the two currents finally merging into each other! Eventually, after a few minutes, the miracle is completed. The new current is steadily flowing! The Jordan had reversed its flow like then, when God Himself was baptized in it and blessed it! The miracle takes place as long as the Crosses are in the river. When they are removed, the Jordan normalizes its flow. St. James Orthodox Church 195 N. Main Street Milpitas, CA Tuesday 1/20 (1/7) Synaxis of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John

8 Sponsored by Sunday School Fundraising event $5 per person No Drop offs Show starts 7:30 sharp Popcorn and a drink included

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