Bulletin

3^rd Sunday of Pascha

Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women

Christ is Risen!  Truly, He is Risen!
Христос Воскресе!  Воистину Воскресе!
Χριστος Ανεστη !    Αλιθως Ανεστη !
ქრისტე აღსდგა!    ჭეშმარიტად აღსდგა! 

May 6/19, 2013

The Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women: Mary Magdaline, Mary Cleopas, Salome, Johanna, Martha & Mary, Susanna and the others; Holy Righteous Joseph of Arimathea & Nikodemus; Righteous Job the Long-suffering; Venerable Micah, disciple of St. Sergius of Radonezh (1385); Venerable Job, abbot and wonderworker of Pochaev (1651); Martyrs Barbarus the Soldier, Bacchus, Callimachus, and Dionysius, in Morea (362); Martyr Barbarus the former robber in Epirus (9th c.); Martyr Vakushin (1943) (Serbia); Right-Believing Tamara, Queen of Georgia.

We magnify Thee O Life-Giving Christ, Who for our sake didst descend into hell,  and Who with Thyself didst resurrect all.

Please Join us for Coffee Hour – Today after Services

May sponsors: Anna-Zumrat Shkurba and Alla Gumeniuk

TODAY – Special General Parish Meeting – Sunday, May 19, 2013

The Parish Council has scheduled a Special General Parish Meeting to take place in the church hall after Divine Liturgy on Sunday, May 19, 2013. The purpose of the meeting is to decide which contractor to select to re-point the church exterior. The brickwork in many places is in bad condition and has allowed rain water to leak into the church and damage the walls. All pledging parishioners are expected to attend. For information contact Victor Marinich 443-512-0985 or VicMarinich@comcast.net. 

Air Conditioning is Installed:  We need your donations !

Yes, indeed we installed a much needed air conditioning system. However, this is a very large expense for our parish.  We have to collect approximately $33,000 in donations. Your special donations are needed to pay for half of the project.  And, half of the costs will be covered by our savings. Please offer a donation and/or pledge ongoing support to help us pay for this important upgrade to our church building. All A/C donations must be submitted by the end of this year. By supporting the Church, you offer glory to God. For general questions, contact Victor Marinich: 443-512-0985 or VicMarinich@comcast.net. To obtain a special A/C Project Pledge Form, contact Monika Handley at 410-263-5758. Thank you.

Installation has been completed – Thank You!

Our new air conditioning system has been installed and is working just fine. We offer our sincere thanks to everyone who helped make this possible – Victor Marinich, for being the project manager; Art Lisowsky and Dan Walsh, for their daily vigilance and concern making sure everything got done correctly; Vadim Radchenko, the cleaning groups and everyone who helped to make sure that the temple and hall were clean for each Sunday and other special services during the period of installation. This is a significant and much needed enhancement to our temple. May God bless you all.

Vigil Candles: On the Altar and near St. Barbara

May 19-25: Candles offered by Valentina Bosaya for the repose of the departed servants of God: +Boris, +Vera, +Victor, +Nikolai.

A $15 donation will keep all three candles lit for one week. Schedule your candle offering with Vadim Radchenko 410-465-6172.

Cleaning Groups – Group #3 /  Join a Group – Help your brothers and sisters

Group #3 is scheduled for the week: May 20-25: Vadim & Elena Radchenko (captain), Natasha and Vladislav Volkov; Nadiya Aleksandrovych. This group needs more members. Any volunteers…?

Forming a Special Cleaning Group

The Sisterhood is forming a “Reserve” Cleaning group of individuals who will not follow the usual weekly rotation, but will be available “on-call”

to fill in from time to time when the weekly groups need help. Please contact Anna-Zumrat Shkurba (443-857-8541) to join the reserve cleaning group.

Russian Festival Meeting – June 9^th

The Russian Festival Committee will conduct its first meeting for 2013 on Sunday, June 9^th after Divine Liturgy.

Everyone is encouraged to stay for the meeting. The committee values your input and suggestions and welcomes more people to get involved with the committee.

Christ is Risen !   Truly He is Risen ! Христос Воскресе!  Воистину Воскресе!

Indeed, these last few weeks have been very busy. The many Divine Services we conducted during Holy Week, Pascha, and Bright Week were very beautiful and prayerful.  Thank you to everyone who played a part in the celebrations of these solemn and festive days – to our choir for your careful preparation and heartfelt singing….to those who helped clean and get the church ready for each of the many services…to our altar servers who served with much solemnity and faith…to our Sunday School teachers, parents and students for all the activities for the kids…to those who decorated the church with beautiful flowers…to everyone who donated for and helped prepare the delicious Paschal breakfast and picnic.  Many of you contributed much time, energy and money to make this year’s Paschal celebrations joyous, sincere, faithful, and memorable.  Pascha is truly the “feast of feasts” – there is no greater celebration in the entire world. And because of your efforts, because of your dedication, our parish fittingly glorified the Risen Christ and showed our guests and each other our faith in the Resurrection and our love for God and His Holy Church.  May God bless you with His peace and love, preserving you in good health and prosperity for many years. Thank you very much! Многая Лета! Many Years! With love in the Risen Christ, Fr. John

Last Sunday’s Annual Picnic – Thank you !!!

All of us offer our special thanks to Vadim Radchenko and Albert Blaszak for coordinating our annual St. Thomas Sunday Picnic last week at Cathedral Gardens. Many people generously donated all kinds of dishes – salads, pasta, fruits, desserts and much more. We genuinely appreciate all of your efforts  -- everyone who helped with setting up the pavilion, cooking, serving, and cleaning up and everyone who organized the kids’ games, and all of you who attended. Also, we thank Fr. Ted Boback and Fr. Gregory Mathewes-Green for assisting with the grave blessings. Thank you. God bless you all.

New Vigil Lamp Holders

We thank the St. Catherine Sisterhood for donating the three new vigil lamp holders that hold the 7-day candles near the relics of St. Barbara and on the altar table. How good it is to adorn God’s holy temple!

Brotherhood Asks  “Baseball Anyone…?”

The St. Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood would like to organize a group to see the Orioles play on a weekday evening in June.

Please contact Albert Blaszak if you are interested: alb42@verizon.net.

Ordering Flour for Baking

Anyone interested in purchasing 50 lbs. bag(s) of King Arthur Flour for just $20, contact Albert Blaszak. alb42@verizon.net 410-799-3226.

To get this discounted price the church needs to place a minimum order.

Orthodox Coffee House?

On Sunday, May 19^th beginning at 3:00 PM, a Pan-Orthodox meeting will take place at Holy Cross Antiochian Orthodox Church to discuss the plans for a potential Orthodox Coffee House in the Baltimore/Washington DC region. For info contact: Greg Coogan at gregcoogan@gmail.com.

Therefore silence, prayer, obedience; when you practice these virtues with the help of God, then you will know the light of Christ is within your soul.

Elder Ephraim of Philotheou Mount Athos, "Counsels from the Holy Mountain"

Birthday / Anniversary Celebrations:  May 19-25

We offer our best wishes and birthday congratulations to Benedict-Basil Cardell (05/22). May God bless him with health, prosperity and many years. To include your birthdays and anniversaries in the bulletin please contact Fr. John.

Cathedraticum Offering

Our box of offering envelopes has a variety of additional envelopes for special collections.  One asks for donations for the Cathedraticum.  Please note that this offering is in addition to your pledge. The Cathedraticum is what each and every one of our Patriarchal Parishes offers in support of our diocese and our St. Nicholas Cathedral in NYC.  Every individual adult is expected to offer $50.00 to support our cathedral and bishop, as per the Operating Budget of the Patriarchal Parishes. Single pledging adult = $50; Married couple under one family pledge = $100…etc. Submit your Cathedraticum Offering to the Parish Treasurer, Albert Blaszak. Write “Cathedraticum” on the memo line of your check or in a specially marked envelope. Thank you for your commitment to our Church.

Submit your 2013 Pledge

Please be generous as the Lord is generous to you. Our church cannot operate without your financial contributions. Our parish will grow only through your prayers, work and generous sacrifice.

When you are generous, you are not bestowing a gift, but repaying a debt. Everything you possess materially comes from God, who created all things. And every spiritual and moral virtue you possess is through divine grace. Thus you owe every-thing to God. More than that, God has given you his Son, to show you how to live: how to use your material possessions, and how to grow in moral and spiritual virtue. St. John Chrysostom

Next Council Meeting: Monday, June 10^th – 7:00 PM in the Church Hall

Holy Hierarch Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
Homily on the Sunday of the Myrrh Bearing Women

On Spiritual Deadness

The Gospels have told us today about the exploits of the holy women who followed the God-Man during His earthly wanderings. They witnessed His sufferings and were present at his burial. The burial took place on Friday evening. While the Jews’ wrath was pouring out like the fiery lava of Aetna not only upon the Lord, but upon all of those close to Him; while the Holy Apostles were forced to hide or observe the extraordinary events only from a distance; while only John, the beloved disciple who leaned upon the breast of the Lord, feared nothing and remained always near the Lord, the secret disciple, Joseph of Arimathea, who had always concealed his heart’s allegiance due to persecution from the Sanhedrin, suddenly disregards all the obstacles, hesitations, and anxiety that had bound and worried him until then, and he appears before cold, cruel Pilate to beg the body of the One who was shamefully executed. He receives the Lord’s body and buries it with reverence and honor.

The Gospels imply that Joseph’s deed was big-hearted and courageous. That is truly what it was. In the presence of the Sanhedrin which had committed deicide, in the very Jerusalem that had participated in that deicide, a member of the Sanhedrin takes the body of the God-man killed by men down from the tree and carries it to the garden located near the city gates and walls. There, in quiet and solitude, under shady trees, he places the body by which the bodies and souls of all mankind are redeemed in a new tomb hewn from a solid rock, with an abundance of fragrances and oils, and wraps it like a precious treasure in fine, clean linen. Another member of the Sanhedrin also took part in the Lord’s burial. This was Nicodemos, who came to the Lord by night and acknowledged that the Lord was sent from God. Having rolled a great stone to the door of the grave—doors which Gospels call a low opening to the cave—Joseph has satisfactorily finished his service and so he departs. The Sanhedrin followed Joseph’s movements. Seeing him gone, it took care to set a guard at the grave and place a seal on the stone which covered the entrance. The Lord’s burial was witnessed by both His friends and His enemies. Although some members of the Sanhedrin in their frenzy and rage committed a great evil, they unconsciously brought a great sacrifice (cf. Acts 17:18): through the slaughter of the all-pure Sacrifice they redeemed the whole human race, ended the fruitless number of transformative sacrifices, and made these sacrifices and their very institution superfluous. Other members of the Sanhedrin, representatives of all the righteous people of the Old Testament, served with a God-pleasing intention and disposition of soul in the burial of the Redeemer of mankind, and by this action ended and placed a seal upon the pious works of the sons of the Old Testament. From this point begins the exceptional service of those of the New Testament.

The holy women show no less courage than the selfless Joseph. Present at the burial on Friday, they did not deem it permissible on the Sabbath—the day of rest—to disrupt that peace in which the body of Christ rested in sacred darkness and reclusion within the sepulchral cave. The women were intent upon pouring out their zeal for the Lord by pouring myrrh upon His body. When they returned from the burial on Friday, they immediately bought a goodly amount of aromatic substances and waited for the break of the day which follows the Sabbath, then called the “week,” now Sunday. On that day, as soon as the sun shone forth, the pious women went to the grave. On the way they remembered that a large stone had been rolled to the grave. This worried them, and the women began to say amongst themselves, Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? (Mk. 16:2). The stone was very great. Having arrived at the tomb, they saw to their amazement the stone rolled away. A light-bearing mighty angel had rolled it away: at the Lord’s resurrection, he had descended from heaven to the grave which encompassed Him whom the heavens cannot encompass, stunned the guards with terror, broke the seal, and rolled away the stone. He sat on the stone, waiting for the women’s arrival. When they came, he announced the Lord’s resurrection to them, telling them to inform the Apostles. For their zeal for the God-man, for their resolve to render honor to the all pure body that was guarded by the military guard, after which the Sanhedrin in their hatred sharply watched, the holy women were the first among humans to receive exact and sure testimony of Christ’s resurrection; they were made the first strong preachers of the resurrection, as ones who heard about it from the lips of the angel. The all-perfect God is impartial: for Him all people are equal. And those people who strive toward Him with great self-denial are made worthy of a special abundance of Divine gifts and spiritual elegance.

Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? These words of the holy women have their own mysterious meaning. They are so edifying that love of neighbor and a desire for his spiritual benefit will not allow us to be silent about it.

The tomb is our heart. The heart was once a temple, but it became a tomb. Christ enters it by means of the sacrament of Baptism, in order to dwell in us and work in us. Then the heart is consecrated as a temple to God. We steal from Christ the possibility to work in us and enliven our “old man”, which ever follows its attraction to our fallen will, our reason poisoned by falsehood. Brought in by Baptism, Christ continues to abide in us, but He is as if wounded and mortified by our behavior. The temple of God not made by hands is turned into a cramped, dark tomb. A very great stone is rolled over its entrance. The enemies of God set a guard over the tomb, and seal its entrance blocked by the stone. They seal the stone to the cave so that in addition to the stone’s great weight, this famous seal forbids anyone to even touch the stone. The enemies of God themselves watch over the preservation of this deadness! They have thought through and set up all these obstacles in order to forestall the resurrection, to prevent it, and make it impossible.

The stone is the soul’s illness by which all the other spiritual illnesses are guarded incurably and which the holy fathers call insensibility. Many will say, what sort of sin is this? We have never heard of it. According to the fathers, insensibility is the deadening of spiritual feelings, the unseen death of the human soul with respect to spiritual things in a life that is flourishing with respect to material things. From a long-term physical sickness all strength can become exhausted and the body’s abilities withered; then the illness cannot find any more food, and ceases to torment the body’s constitution. It leaves the sick man alone and wasted, as if dead and incapable of movement due to the debilitating suffering, the terrible, dumb morbidity that is not expressed by any particular suffering. The same thing happens to the human soul. Long-term slackness of life amidst continuous distractions, constant voluntary sins, forgetfulness of God and eternity, inattention or only superficial attention to the Gospel teachings removes from our spirit any inclination toward spiritual things, and deadens it to them. Although they continue to exist, they cease to exist for our spirit because its life has ended for them—all its strength is directed toward the material, the temporal, the vain, and the sinful.

Everyone who wants to dispassionately and seriously investigate the state of his soul will see the illness of insensibility in it; he will see its broad significance, its gravity and consequence, and will have to admit that it is the manifestation and witness of his deadness of soul. When we want to study the Word of God, what boredom hits us! Everything we read seems hard to understand, not worthy of attention, and strange. How quickly we want to be free of that reading! Why is this? Because we feel no affinity for the Word of God.

When we rise for prayer, what dryness and coldness we feel! How we rush to finish our cursory, completely distracted prayer! Why? Because we are estranged from God: we believe in God’s existence with a dead faith; He does not exist to our sensibility. Why have we forgotten eternity? Are we excluded from the number of those who must enter into its boundless realm? Doesn’t death stand before us face to face, as it does to all humans? Why is this? It is because we do not want to think about eternity; we have lost the precious foretaste of it, and acquired a false perception of our earthly sojourn. This false perception imagines that our earthly life is endless. We are so deceived and distracted by this false perception that we conform all our actions to them, bringing all the potential of our soul and body as a sacrifice to corruption, not caring at all about what awaits us in the other world. After all, we must inevitably become permanent inhabitants of that world.

Why does idle talk, snide laughter, judgment of our neighbors and derision of them beat forth from us as from a wellspring? Why do we spend so many unburdened hours in empty amusements, cannot get enough of them, are always leaping from one vain pastime to another, but we do not want to dedicate even the tiniest bit of time to reviewing our own sins and lamenting over them? Because we have acquired an affinity for sin, for everything vain, for everything that brings sin into a person, and by which sin is preserved within a person. Because we have lost our affinity for all exercise that brings God-beloved virtues into us; that multiplies and preserves them. Insensibility is rooted in the soul by the world which is at enmity with God, and by the fallen angels at war with God, with the aid of our own free will. It grows and gathers strength through a life according to the principles of this world; it grows and gathers strength when we follow our fallen reason and will, when we abandon service to God, and because we serve Him carelessly. When insensibility stagnates in the soul and becomes a property of it, then the world and its rulers place a seal on the stone. This seal consists in the concourse of the human soul with fallen spirits, in the spirit’s assimilation of human impressions wrought upon him by fallen spirits, and in its subjection to the aggressive influence and domination by these outcast spirits.

Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? This is a question filled with anguish, sadness, and perplexity. Those souls feel this anguish, sadness, and perplexity that have directed themselves toward the Lord, leaving behind service to the world and sin. Before their gaze is revealed the sickness of insensibility in all its horrifying enormity and gravity. They desire and pray with contrition, exercise themselves in the reading of the Word of God beyond all other reading, and abide in constant awareness of their sinfulness, in constant mourning over it. In a word, they desire to become part of God and to belong to Him. They meet an unexpected resistance in their own selves that is unknown to those who serve this world: insensibility of heart. The heart stricken by its former careless life as by a mortal wound does not discover any signs of life. In vain does the mind gather thoughts about death, about God’s judgment, about the multitude of its sins, about the torments of hell, about the sweetness of paradise; in vain does the mind strive to beat upon the heart with these reflections—the heart remains devoid of feeling for them, as if hell, paradise, God’s judgment, sinfulness, and the state of fallenness and demise have no relation whatsoever to the heart. It is asleep in a deep sleep, the sleep of death; it is asleep, drunken with sinful poison. Who shall roll the stone from the tomb for us? This stone is very great.

According to the teachings of the holy fathers, in order to conquer insensibility a person must have constant, patient, uninterrupted action against that insensibility; he must have a constant, pious, and attentive life. Such a life beleaguers the life of insensibility; however this death of the human spirit cannot be put to death through human efforts alone—insensibility is destroyed by the action of divine grace. An angel of God, at God’s command, comes down to help the laboring and troubled soul, rolls away the stone of hardness from the heart, fills the heart with compunction, announces to the soul the resurrection, which is the usual result of continual compunction. Compunction is the first sign of a heart revived toward God and eternity. What is compunction? Compunction is a person’s feeling of mercy and compassion toward himself, toward his grave state, his fallen state, a state of eternal death. Holy Scripture writes of the people of Jerusalem who were brought to this state by the preaching of the Apostle Peter and were inclined to accept Christianity that they were pricked in their heart (Acts. 2:37).

The Lord’s body had no need of the myrrh-bearers’ fragrant myrrh. Any anointing with myrrh was forestalled by the resurrection. But by their timely purchase of myrrh, their early arrival at the first rays of the sun to the life-giving tomb, their disdain of any fear brought on by the Sanhedrin’s wrath and the militant soldiers guarding the tomb and the One interred there, the holy women showed and proved by experience their heartfelt dedication to the Lord. Their gift turned out to be unnecessary. It was rewarded a hundredfold by the appearance of the angel, up to then invisible to them, and by the announcement that could not be anything but bountifully true—that the God-Man has risen and resurrected mankind with Himself.

Our dedication of our life and all our strength and abilities to the service of God are not needed by God for Himself—they are needed by us. We bring them like myrrh to the Lord’s tomb. We shall timely buy myrrh—our good intentions. We shall renounce from our youth up all sacrifices to sin; and with the price of this we shall buy myrrh—our good intentions. It is not possible to unite service of sin to service of God: the former is destroyed by the latter. We shall not allow sin to deaden in our spirit affinity toward God and all things divine! We shall not allow sin to mark us with its impressions, or to forcibly prevail over us.

Whoever enters into service of God from the very days of an unspoiled youth and remains in this service with constancy submits himself to the endless influence of the Holy Spirit, marks himself with the all-holy grace-filled impressions that emanate from the Spirit, acquires in good time an active knowledge of Christ’s Resurrection, comes alive in spirit in Christ, and becomes chosen by God to be a preacher of the resurrection to his brothers and sisters. Whoever has become a slave to sin through his ignorance or inclination, who has entered into concourse with fallen spirits, has become one of their number, who has lost in his spirit the connection to God and to the dwellers of heaven—let him heal himself with repentance. Let us not put off our healing from day to day, so that death might not creep upon us unawares and take us suddenly, so that we would not be proved incapable of entering the habitations of unending rest and festival, so that we would not be cast down as useless chaff into the fires of hell that burn eternally but do not consume. The healing of old illnesses does not happen so quickly and conveniently as ignorance might imagine. There is a reason why God’s mercy grants us time for repentance; there is a reason why all the saints begged God to give them time for repentance. Time is needed to erase the sinful impressions; time is needed for us to be marked by the impressions of the Holy Spirit; time is needed to cleanse us from defilement; time is needed to clothe ourselves in the garments of virtue, to adorn ourselves in the God-beloved qualities that adorn all those who dwell in heaven.

Christ is resurrected in the person who is prepared for it, and the tomb—the heart—again becomes a temple of God. Arise, O Lord, save, O my God (Ps. 3:7); in Thy mysterious and yet essential Resurrection is my salvation. Amen.    Translation by Nun Cornelia (Rees)    http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/53230.htm

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You have heard, dearly beloved, that holy women who had followed the Lord came to the sepulchre with spices. They had loved Him when He was alive, and they showed Him their eager tenderheartedness even when He was dead. Their deed points to something that must be done in our holy Church. Thus as we hear of what they did, we must also think of our responsibility to imitate them. We too, who believe in Him Who died, approach His sepulchre with spices if we are strengthen with the sweet smell of the virtues, and if we seek the Lord with a reputation for good works. And the women who came with spices saw angels, since those who advance toward God through their holy desires, accompanied by the sweet smell of the virtues, behold the citizens from on high.   St. Gregory the Great