St. Nicholas Orthodox Church American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese Ecumenical Patriarchate 1123 East Avenue Erie, PA 16503 Parish Website: stnicholaserie.org Diocesan Website: www.acrod.org Rev. Fr. Nicholas Mihaly Rectory: (814) 453-4902 Cell: (203) 241-1027 E-mail: nmihaly1013@gmail.com Sunday, January 14, 2018-The Circumcision of Jesus Christ Schedule of Services and Events: Sunday, January 14 9:30 AM; Divine Liturgy Sunday, January 14 11:30 AM; Board Meeting Tuesday, January 16 6:00 PM; Adult Class Wednesday, January 17 9:30 AM; Memorial Liturgy for William Demyanovich, offered by Pete & Marge Sima Thursday, January 18 6:00 PM; Theophany Eve Vigil Service & Holy Night Supper This is a day of Stict Fast Friday, January 19 9:30 AM; Divine Liturgy, Feast of Theophany and the Great Blessing of Water NO FASTING Saturday, January 20 Noon; Great Blessing of Water at Dobbins Landing Sunday, January 21 9:30 AM; Divine Liturgy Confessions are available thirty minutes prior to Divine Liturgy on the first Sunday of every month; one hour before vespers on Saturday evenings; or by appointment.
UPCOMING EVENTS January 14 - Feast of St. Basil January 14 - Parish Board Meeting Following Liturgy January 19 - Theophany January 20 - Blessing of the Bayfront Waters off of Dobbins Landing January 30 - Emmaus Soup Kitchen Please join us on Tuesday evenings at 6:00 PM for an adult education class. The class is open to anyone who wants to learn more about our Orthodox Faith. To begin, we will be reading through The Orthodox Way by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. It is an excellent book which reviews the basic tenets of our Faith. Please bring yourselves and any friends who might be interested in learning more! Please join your parish family this Thursday evening, the Eve of Theophany, Our Lord s Baptism, for a Vigil Service followed by the traditional Holy Supper. Please bring a strict fast dish (no meat or dairy) to share. A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who made the Nativity so blessed and wonderful! Thank you to those who helped decorate, clean and prepare the
church and hall for the St. Nicholas Brunch and for Christmas Day. Thank you to St. Nicholas for visiting us, thank you to those who donated flowers and items for the season. Thank you especially to Reader David for singing, cantering and reading the epistle for all of the special services. But most of all, thank you to those who came and participated in all of the services. It was a blessed and beautiful Advent and Christmas! Pani, Cyril and myself are eternally grateful for your love and kindness! Birthdays & Anniversaries Jan 16 Jenny Beskid 17 Mark DeHaven 18 Debra Tarasovich If you would like Many Years to be sung for you or a loved one, please let Fr. Nick know prior to the beginning of Divine Liturgy
House Blessing season begins this Friday, January 19 and lasts until the beginning of Great Lent, February 19. Please schedule an appointment with Fr. Nick so that he can come and bless your house with the newly blessed Theophany water. This is also a great opportunity for you to get to your new priest better and for your new priest to get to know you better, so keep your calendars open! Preparing Your Home for Blessing Your home does NOT have to be spotless, but should be free of clutter on the floor, like toys, may cause Father to trip A table should be prepared with a white tablecloth, an icon or cross, a candle and an empty bowl (Father will bring the holy water) A list of names of those you want Father to pray for during the service If you have any items (icons, crosses, etc) that you would like blessed, place them on the table also and let Father know Turn off all radios and TVs. Take the phone off the hook during the short blessing service. Cell phones should be turned to silent. Just remember to place your phone back on the hook at the end! Close all doors to rooms you do NOT want Father to enter open the doors to the rooms you do want Father to enter A family member should lead Father through the house. This can be done by your children, if you have any, girls or boys If you have a pet, they may also receive a blessing I look forward to visiting each and everyone of you during this special Theophany season!
Parish Prayer List Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. James 5:16 For the Health of Fr. John Baranik, Fr. John Gido, Fr. Nicholas Palun, Fr. John Zboyovski, Fr. David Smoley, Pani Donna Smoley, Pani Connie Miloro, Pani Eleanor Pribish, Ann Burdick, Emma Burkell, John Candia, Tom Candia, Sandy Carlisle, James DeHaven, Mary DeHaven, Ann DiMarco, Peter Dimitriadis, Helen Douglas, Irene Fendya, Miko Jovanovich, John E. Kelley, John Kloss, Richard Koerner, Jean Kramer, Don Kuzmin, Olivia Kuzmin, Serge Mihaly, Barbara Scheibeck, Irene Schwab, Elizabeth Skalko, Isabella Smith, Cheryl Walker, David Walker, Katlyn Wyant, George Yurcan through the prayers of St. Nectarios the Wonderworker & St. Panteleimon the Great-Martyr and Healer For the Repose of Fr. Charles Sunderland, Pani Ann Kozar, William Demyanovich, Maria Keim, Paul Meaden May their memories be eternal! If you have someone you would like to be added to the prayer list, please see Fr. Nick
To Ponder During the five Sundays of Great Lent we celebrate the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great on the Lord s Day. This Liturgy is used on five other occasions during the year, two more of which are during Holy Week - Thursday and Saturday. (The other three times are the Feasts of Nativity and Theophany, as well as on Saint Basil s day of commemoration, January 1). This Liturgy is known for its longer prayers, some of which may challenge our capacity to stand still in concentration and prayerful attention. But what prayers! They strike me personally as being unrivaled in our entire Tradition for their beauty of expression and the depth of their theological/spiritual content. Even though we are hearing them in translation, that beauty and depth remain intact and shine through quite well. Saint Basil did not sit down and compose the entire Liturgy from scratch, to use a common expression. The basic structure of the Liturgy was already an essential element of the Church s living liturgical Tradition. However, there is every reason to believe that he is responsible for the magnificent Anaphora prayers. These prayers reflect Saint Basil s intense preoccupation with the Church s Trinitarian faith - that we worship the One God as the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; the Son and the Holy Spirit being consubstantial with the Father as to their divine nature, and thus co-enthroned and co-glorified with the Father from all eternity. (Saint Basil wrote a separate, magnificent treatise On the Holy Spirit, demonstrating the divinity of the Holy Spirit through his knowledge of the
Scriptures and the Church s liturgical Tradition). That belief in the Holy Trinity, though present in the beginning of the Church s proclamation of the Gospel, was under attack during the turbulent fourth century, with the Arian heresy and its various offshoots stirring up seemingly interminable debate and dissension. Saint Basil was one of the premier exponents of the Church s faith that the one God is the Holy Trinity; and he helped establish the classical terminology of the Church in expressing that Faith: God is one in essence (in Greek, ousia), yet three distinct Persons (hypostaseis). That terminology remains intact to this day. The opening Anaphora Prayer, O Existing One, Master, Lord God, Father almighty and adorable, is steeped in praise and glorification of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and thus deserves our deepest attention and sense of overwhelming awe as we stand in the presence of the Holy Trinity and as we join the angelic powers in singing, shouting, and proclaiming: Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord of Sabaoth! In profound relationship to the prayers of the Liturgy revealing the Church s belief in the Holy Trinity, we find Saint Basil s unrivaled expression of the divine economy (in Greek oikonomia) throughout. This refers to God s providential dispensation/design toward His creation - culminating in the salvation of the world - in and through the Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ. If I were asked to present to an interested inquirer the most compelling and succinct expression of the divine economy as taught and proclaimed by the Orthodox Church, I would definitely refer this person to the long Anaphora Prayer of Saint Basil s Liturgy beginning where the Thrice-holy left off: With these blessed powers, O Master who lovest mankind. After praising God for the
magnificence of Thy holiness, we begin to prayerfully recall - and thus make present - the full extent of His providential dispensation toward the world: When Thou didst create man by taking dust from the earth, and didst honor him with Thine own image, O God. This long remembrance takes us through what we refer to as the Fall, through the promises of the prophets - foretelling to us the salvation which was to come - all the way through to the Lord s Incarnation, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and even Second Coming: Ascending into heaven, He sat down at the right hand of Thy majesty on high, and He will come to render to every man according to his works. Further recalling, and thus actualizing the night in which He gave Himself up for the life of the world, this entire process will culminate with the Epiklesis, or Invocation of the Holy Spirit, to bless, to hallow and to show that the bread and wine of our offering will become the Body and Blood of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ. We will then receive the Holy Gifts for the remission of sins and unto life everlasting. Today, the Orthodox faithful are blessed in that the prayers of Saint Basil s Liturgy generally are read aloud so that the entire gathered assembly of believers may actually hear the prayers that reveal the Lord God s Trinitarian nature and the divine economy together with the consecration of the Holy Gifts. In the past that may have not been so, and even today it is not so in all Orthodox churches. So we thank God for our own liturgical revival which has so enlivened our contemporary worship experience with
full parish participation in the Church at prayer and praise. However, and admittedly, there is one prayer that is usually read while the choir is singing a final prayer near the very end of the Liturgy that the priest will say while facing the Table of Preparation and the remaining Holy Communion that will eventually be consumed by the priest, and while the choir is singing Blessed be the name of the Lord, henceforth and forevermore three times: The mystery of Thy dispensation, O Christ our God, has been accomplished and perfected as far as it was in our power; for we have had the memorial of Thy death; we have seen the type of Thy Resurrection; we have been filled with Thine unending life; we have enjoyed Thine inexhaustible food; which in the world to come be wellpleased to vouchsafe to us all, through the grace of Thine eternal Father, and Thine holy and good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen. This summation of the meaning, purpose and experience of the Liturgy is an awesome claim that perhaps may strike us in its awesomeness even more effectively if we break the prayer down into its component parts: We have had the memorial of the Lord s death; We have seen the type of the Lord s Resurrection; We have been filled with the Lord s unending life; We have enjoyed the Lord s inexhaustible food; We ask to continue in this partaking in the world to come; and All this through the grace of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit! That is quite a Sunday morning experience which we so blandly describe as going to church! Clearly the remainder of the day is all downhill - no matter what we do! When we begin the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great we
know that we have a long road ahead of us. That will require some patience, concentration, and a willingness to stay with it through to its dismissal. If we are able to do that, then the rewards are inestimable. It will also test our deepest desires about what is the one thing needful in our lives and what is the treasure of our hearts. Yet, the Sundays of Great Lent are a unique opportunity to further our movement towards the Lord as we move through Great Lent and our lives toward the gladsome light of the Kingdom of God. Fr. Stephen Kostoff
WEEKLY OFFERINGS Sunday, January 7, 2018 DONOR $2.00 WEEKLY CANDLES FOR HEALTH GIVEN FOR Very Rev. Proto. David & Pani Donna Smoley Themselves and Family Tamara Kloss Husband John Kloss Phyllis Tarasovich Herself and Family Phyllis, Reader David, & Debra Tarasovich Richard Koerner Theodore & Patricia Molly Themselves and Family Theodore & Patricia Molly Richard Koerner Theodore & Patricia Molly John & Donna Novak Paul & Mary Ellen Demyanovich Richard Koerner Mark & Jenny Beskid Richard Koerner Bob & Sandy Carlisle Kris, David, and Caitlin Bob & Sandy Carlisle Daughter Pani Stacey, Father Nicholas, and Cyril Mihaly John Lipchik Jr. & Kathleen Boyce Uncle Peter & Aunt Marge Sima Kathleen Boyce Families of Brother John Lipchik Jr. and Husband Gary Boyce DONOR $2.00 WEEKLY CANDLES FOR THE DECEASED GIVEN FOR John & Tamara Kloss Her Parents Very Rev. Proto. Ronald & Pani Dolores Hazuda Douglas & Jean LaBoda and Family His Father Michael LaBoda Douglas & Jean LaBoda and Family His Mother Virginia LaBoda George Yurcan Parents Wasyl & Aniela Yurcan and Deceased in Family Richard & Susanne Demchak Beloved Parents Joseph & Susan Demchak Dr. George & Kitty Kuzmishin Beloved Family Members Janet Belliveau Parents Douglas & Anne Liebel John Lipchik Jr. & Kathleen Boyce Parents John Sr. & Helena Lipchik David Lipchik Parents Steve & Ann Lipchik Phyllis Tarasovich Deceased in the Tarasovich and Kelley Families Phyllis Tarasovich Dena Feagley Reader David & Debra Tarasovich Grandson Carter Robert Egloff Bob & Sandy Carlisle All Loved Ones CATEGORY AMOUNT CATEGORY AMOUNT Candles 162.00 Pledges 1,000.00 Loose Change 7.00 Social Hour 13.00 Regular Envelopes 744.00 IOCC 10.00 Christmas Donations 1,659.24 Diocesan Assessment 698.00 Church Donations* 146.00 Altar Flowers* 100.00 Total Income 4,539.24 *Thank you to Richard & Susanne Demchak for their donation to the church and for their donation of Altar Flowers for the Dormition of the Mother of God (August 28). ATTENDANCE Divine Liturgy (Sun., Dec. 31): Canceled, Snow Adult Education Class (Tue., Jan. 2): 3 Akathist for the Nativity (Wed., Jan. 3): 3 Royal Hours for the Nativity (Fri., Jan. 5): 2 Vigil Service for the Eve of the Nativity (Sat., Jan. 6): 20 Christmas Divine Liturgy (Sun., Jan. 7): 69