Glory to Jesus Christ!
Please see below for a schedule of our 2021 Lenten, Holy Week, and Paschal services.
As a reminder, please continue to practice sensible safety precautions as we increase our public worship during this season of Lent.
Looking for a good and meaningful book to read during this coming Lent? Look no further than our own parish library! Here are 5 books that can be checked out now:
About these books:
How to Be a Sinner by Peter Bouteneff (SVS Press)
The First Fruits of Prayer: A Forty-Day Journal through the Canon of St. Andrew by Frederica Mathewes-Green (Paraclete Press)
Defeating Sin: Overcoming Our Passions and Changing Forever by Fr. Joseph Huneycutt (SVS Press)
Great Lent by Fr. Alexander Schmemann (SVS Press)
Meditations for Great Lent: Reflections on the Triodion by Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou (Ancient Faith Publishing)
As we prepare for the beginning of Great Lent and all of the benefits it affords us, please see the Lenten Epistle of the Permanent Conference of Ukrainian Orthodox Bishops Beyond the Borders of Ukraine which can be found here: uocofusa.org/files/Archpastoral/2021/Proclamation-EN.pdf
Tomorrow, February 28, is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son. This Sunday, the second of the pre-Lenten Sundays, highlights the love and mercy that God extends to those who repent. The Gospel reading (Luke 15:11-32) calls us to forgo the false home we’ve created and return to the Father. | Read more about the Sunday of the Prodigal Son here.
It also on this day that, during Matins, we begin to sing the sorrowful and poignant verses of Psalm 136, ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept...’.
As Metropolitan Kallistos Ware writes in his introduction to The Lenten Triodion:
This Psalm of exile, sung by the children of Israel in their Babylonian captivity, has a special appropriateness on the Sunday of the Prodigal, when we call to mind our present exile in sin and make resolve to return home”.
The Meaning of the Great Fast
Today, February 21, we celebrate the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee and begin the use of the Triodion (the service book of the Orthodox Church that provides the texts for the divine services for the pre-Lenten weeks of preparation, Great Lent, and Holy Week).
‘Open unto me, O Giver of Life, the gates of repentance . . .’ sings the Church at Matins for the first of the four Sundays which prepare us for Lent. Indeed, this Sunday could be thought of as a gate: a gate through which we enter the sacred period which leads us on to Easter; a gate which opens into that atmosphere of repentance, to that life of repentance which Lent should bring to each one of us. But we must remember that the word “penitence” or “repentance” is a translation of the Greek gospel term metanoia: and that this means “change of spirit”. Much more is involved than the observance of some kind of outward repent ance. What is asked of us is radical change, renewal, conversion.
The Year of Grace of the Lord: A Scriptural and Liturgical Commentary on the Calendar of the Orthodox Church by Fr. Lev Gillet
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts scheduled for this evening, April 10, has been cancelled. We apologize for any inconveniences.
