PRESORT All Holy Spirit Greek STANDARD Orthodox Church U.S. Postage 9012 Q Street PAID Omaha, NE 68127-3549 THE MESSENGER Newsletter of All Holy Spirit Greek Orthodox Church March 2015 Annunciation of the Theotokos Lenten Spring: A time to Blossom... 1 Community Activity... 2-6,10 Meet the Church Fathers... 7 Upcoming events... 8 My Life in Christ... 9-10 March Calendar and Usher Schedule... 11 12
SERVICES DURING LENT ~ March 2015 ~ Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat 1 SUNDAY OF ORTHODOXY 2 7:00 pm Choir Practice 3 4 6:30 Pre Sanctified Liturgy at St. Mary s 5 6 7 Thank you! Wednesdays Presanctified Liturgy of St. Gregory of Rome at 6:30 Fridays Salutations of the Theotokos at 7:00 Saturdays Great Vespers at 5:00 Presanctified Liturgies will be held at All Holy Spirit, St. Mary s, St. John s, and St. Nicholas. CHURCH PAINTING Thank you to Jim McDonnell for supplying materials and helping the OCF with the painting of the Narthex. PROSPHORA It s a great honor to offer the bread that will become the body and blood of Christ during Divine Liturgy and we thank the following people who provided Prosphora for February: Joanne Sgourakis, Mary Moustakes, Hellen Elfering and Voula Kotrotsios. 8 Daylight Saving Time Begins 15 22 29 9 6:30 pm Parish Council Mtg 10 7:00 pm Philoptochos 11 6:30 Pre Sanctified Liturgy at St. John s 16 17 18 6:30 Pre Sanctified Liturgy at AHS 23 7:00 pm Choir Practice 24 7:00 Great Vespers 25 ANNUNCIATION 9:30 Divine Liturgy 30 31 Notes: 12 13 19 20 Spring Begins 26 7:00 Cannon Andrew of Crete 27 14 5:00 Great Vespers 6:00 Christian Life seminar 21 5:00 Great Vespers 28 5:00 Great Vespers 2 SOCIAL HOUR Thank you to the February Coffee Hour sponsors: Bill & Joanne Sgourakis and The Elfering Family! Thank you to Chris & Nadine Saklar for picking up donuts, making coffee, setting up and cleaning for the Sunday Morning Social Hour. FLOWERS Thank you for altar flowers in February to Mike & Sandi Kriha and Bill & Joanne Sgourakis and to Angie Brown and Family for donating icon flowers in February. Usher Schedule If you are unable to usher on your assigned Sunday, please find a replacement within your group. March 2015 3/1 Brian & Sheila Zachariae, Chris Hoegemeyer, Bob Knowles April 2015 3/8 Josh Busch & Jim McDonnell, Andy Karavas, Bill Lewis 3/15 Bill & Cindy Lambert, Nick Petrow, John Pavalis 3/22 Mike & Nikki Moravec, John Sgourakis, George Rakes 3/29 George Poullos & Paul Bitsos, John & Kathy Treantos 4/5 Mike & Sandi Kriha, John Birge, George Pserros 4/12 John & Elaine Berger, Dora Bitsos, Steve Diamantis 11
GOYA/YOUTH MINISTRY Philoptochos has now turned our bake sales during the fish fries over to GOYA in an effort to help them raise money. Bakers needed! GOYA will be selling your delicious baked goods for the next 7 " Fridays", beginning February20th. Volunteers will be greatly appreciated...to bake, set up and take down pastry table, and sell. If you would like to help, and for more details please contact: Karen Chader at 402-599-3503 SACRAMENTS My life in Christ Sophia Bouzis (Continued from page 9) I have learned over time that fighting to break free of the Satan s grasp unaided is nearly impossible. Alone you feel much weaker than with someone else praying and helping you to remember that the lord promises us we will never walk without help. In Isaiah 42:6 He says I, the Lord, have called You in righteousness, and will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. That responsibility falls on us as the body of Christ. We can act as his hands when he calls upon us to aid our brothers and sisters who are locked up. We are given opportunities to be the ones who may say to the prisoners, Go forth, To those who are in darkness, Show yourselves. as stated in Isaiah 49:9. We can follow the example of when Christ pulled Adam and Eve out of the prison of hell to remind us that we can help those who are physically and spiritually locked up out of the darkness and into the light of Christ s love, after all we must live our lives according to Christ s example. In Hebrews 13:3 the lord says to us to remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. Christ himself was a prisoner and when even the most perfect man to ever walk this earth fell under the weight of his cross, a stranger helped to carry it for him and wipe the blood from out of his eyes. As the body of Christ we must continue to aid those in physical and spiritual captivity because as said in Matthew 18:20, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Photos by David Elfering 10 3
My Life In Christ By Sophia Bouzis Philoptochos Our next meeting will be a "pizza meeting" at church on Tuesday, March 10th at 7:00pm. **Prior to the meeting, I have arranged for Philoptochos to take a private tour of one of our Omaha charities - PROJECT HARMONY located at. 119th and Q at 6:15pm. It's a beautiful new facility and we will learn more about what they do and how we can further be of help to them. We will then immediately go to our pizza meeting. We have also just added a new additional charity to our local commitments called The Bethlehem House. It is a place where pregnant and unwed mothers can go to get help in a Christian atmosphere. We will not be meeting in April, so the next meeting after March will be an ELECTION meeting, Saturday, May 9th at 1:00pm at the Greek Islands Restaurant. Please be thinking of what office you would like to hold! It is a two year term. Have a wonderful Lenten season. -Maria Knowles Philoptochos will be selling frozen spanakopita rolls after church during lent and during the Friday fish fries! They will be ready to bake at home for any occasion. Just bake and slice for an easy addition to dinner or to have on hand as an appetizer. There will be "regular" and "lenten" versions available. March AHEPA NEWS 2015 Our February meeting finalized our menu for our 2015. We voted to follow Nick's recommendation to offer appetizers and we agreed that we all would park on the upper Southeast Parking Lot. The next item that we voted on was to donate $2500 to our Youth Ministry. It passed on a secret ballot. The last item we discussed was All-Play, which is an organization in Ralston to teach baseball to those with physical disabilities. We voted to donate $1000. Our meeting ended at 10:45 AM on 2/7/15 and our next Meeting is scheduled for March 14 th. 4 Four walls. Maybe some bars. Darkness. Solitude. Loneliness. The image of a prison may look roughly the same for us all, however, the reason for imprisonment can very immensely. For some it was a crime against our laws and we have been placed into a federal physical prison, but people around the world are constantly having to face our own spiritual prisons. In psalm 147:7 we cry out to the lord saying Bring my soul out of prison, That I may praise Your name bringing us to the realization that those four walls can be made up of many things. Fear. Neglect. Abuse. Inner trials. Depression. All of these are plagues that affect Christians each second. Yet, as spiritual brothers and sisters to each other, we have the opportunity, and even the responsibility to be the hands that pull each other out of that penitentiary. I once had an art show where I met a man who had been in a correctional facility for many years. He was by definition a convict. A person we are taught to be afraid of and look down on, however I did not feel fear. As I continued to speak to him I learned of the lessons he had acquired throughout his life and realized that he needed my respect and Christian love even more than the average person. He had experienced turmoil, spiritual warfare and loneliness just as I had but in a somewhat different way. I couldn t help but keep talking to him about one of the pictures of a wizened old man I had drawn. We connected over something on paper in a spiritual way. I could relate to him because I know what an internal prison feels like as well. I have been bound by my own fear and pain for a very long time in periods of my life and I needed people to come to connect with me in order to be renewed. I believe that when the lord says to us in Matthew 25:36, I was in prison and you came to visit me This is exactly what he means. Because of this conversation I now know that the inkling I felt of being called to do prison art therapy and ministry when I am older is more than just an idea. It is of the utmost importance to me to share God s love with spiritual prisoners behind actual bars just as it is for captives still in our citizen freedom. Many times we become captives of our daemons just as this man had become captive because of the ones that overtook him. He had told me that, while he was incarcerated, a pastor had shared God with him in a way that he had never experienced before and that was the only place that his hope came from. He was in prison and that pastor came to him and brought him the most important relationship he can ever gain as well; one with Jesus Christ. I have learned over time that fighting to break free of the Satan s grasp unaided is nearly impossible. Alone you feel much weaker than with someone else praying and helping you to remember that the lord promises us we will never walk without help. (Continued on page 10) 9
Omaha OCF Spring Retreat: The Passion of Christ Spiritual Themes of Holy Week April 3-4, 2015 What: Overnight Orthodox Christian Fellowship Retreat at All Holy Spirit Where: 9012 Q Street Omaha, NE 68127 Greek Orthodox Church Cost: in Omaha, Nebraska FREE RSVP: online by March 29th at GOYA In February GOYA members took a trip to Dallas for a fun filled weekend. They attended talks from Be the Bee s Steven Christoforou and key note speaker Michael Pritchard, participated in the basketball tournament, attended a formal, built and strengthened lasting relationships with fellow Orthodox Christians from around the country, and celebrated Divine Liturgy (with the Metropolitan, about 30 other priests, and close to 1000 people!) What a wonderful opportunity for the young members of our church to grow in the Orthodox faith! http://goo.gl/forms/mf0vdgvfb6 Direct any question to Maria Brown via email at mariabrown@unomaha.edu 8 5
On Sunday February 15, six speakers participated in the Saint John Chrysostom Oratorical Festival as well as three younger speakers. All who participated gave excellent talks on the Orthodox faith. Please congratulate all the participants in representing their faith and our parish in a spiritual pilgrimage to express their Orthodox Faith! John Mitchell Oratorical Festival Scholarship Senior Division First place: Sophia Lambert Second place: Asia Rakes Third Place: Sophia Bouzis Junior Division First place: Vasilli Sgourakis Second Place: Isabelle Sgourakis Third Place: Gabriella Laws Ages 6-8 Nicko Boulos, Sophia Detitch and Mahalet Kinde 6 On March 1st the Orthodox Church commemorates Saint David, the patron saint of Wales. He was born in about 487, on the southwestern coast of the country. His birth is traditionally believed to be the result of rape. His mother Nonita, who is also honored by the Church, was the daughter of a local chieftain, and often in the company of nobles and princes. One prince found her irresistibly attractive, and forcibly seduced her. She is said to have given birth to David in a raging storm, perhaps reflecting the violent nature of his conception. David was raised in the Welsh Church, and educated by clergy. His teachers were urgently aware of the need to take Christianity to the farther reaches of Wales and England. They recognized David's outstanding ability to speak with eloquence about the faith, and to engage the minds and hearts of people listening to him. This was why, in later years, he would be a convincing opponent of the Pelagian heresy. But as a student he was already seen as an excellent candidate to do missionary work, a ministry he undertook soon after his formal education was completed. Saint David's missionary travels ranged over Wales, western England, and Brittany. He founded several monasteries in southern Wales. They were noted for the extreme austerity of their practices, modeled on David's understanding of the life of the early desert monastics. A description of the monks' daily lives was recorded by an eleventh-century writer named Rhygyvarch (spelled in various ways), who based his life of David on "many old manuscripts" in the saint's monastery at Menevia. It is the only extensive record of David's life that we have. Rhygyvarch writes that after a full day of work plowing and planting, done without the aid of oxen or any animals, the monks stood in chapel for several hours of prayer, ending with chanted Psalms: "When the chanting of the Psalms is done...they worship on bended knees until the stars are seen in heaven bringing the day to a close. The father [David] alone, after having gone out, pours forth a prayer in secret to God for the state of the Church." The monks' meals were simple, and accompanied only by water: "Not dishes of various tastes lie before them or too dainty provisions, but having fed on bread and herbs seasoned with salt, they may assuage ardent thirst with a temperate sort of drink. On that occasion they provide for the sick and those advanced in age, and even those wearied with a long journey, some refreshments of a more appealing sort, for one must not weigh out to all in equal measure." David's last words to the monks gathered around his deathbed included these: "Do the little things." These words are a reminder of the words of Christ Himself, read two Sundays ago. Jesus' surprised listeners asked Him when they seen Him in need or distress, and ministered to Him. He answered, "As you did it to the least of these, you did it to Me" (Matthew 25: 40). 7