THE MOSAIC
SPOTLIGHT: Diocesan Assembly
A Monthly Newsletter of Holy Apostles Orthodox Church
Every year each parish in the diocese sends clergy and lay representatives to the Diocesan Assembly. At this meeting reports and updates are heard from all the various ministries and departments of the Diocese, Archbishop Michael gives and important address, and resolutions are voted on. It is also a time for the representatives to ask questions, raise concerns, and express opinions on matters such as the budget of the diocese or a particular ministry. There are usually a couple resolutions to vote on. These resolutions have in the past included things like changes to the bylaws, changes to assessments, and statements on various cultural or social issues. The Assembly also elects many positions within the diocese such as Metropolitan Council members, Diocesan council members, and auditors. It is an opportunity for lay persons to have a voice in the direction of the Church, to learn how the diocese works, and to meet other faithful from around the diocese. The first day of the assembly is occupied primarily with business, but the second day is an education day for clergy and for lay delegates. Each year a new topic and speaker is chosen and those in attendance have an opportunity to learn about some important aspect of church life. This year’s Diocesan Assembly will be held on November 1-2 at Saints Peter and Paul Church in Endicott, NY
September & October 2017 Tamburitzans The Tamburitzans are the premier folk song and dance troupe in America. They are also one of the longest running concerts in US history. The group wearing colorful costumes performs various songs and dances of eastern European and Balkan heritage. The Tamburitizans used to visit northern New Jersey regularly but have not performed here in many years. Holy Apostles is proud to be sponsoring them again.
Buy Grocery Cards and Support Your Church
Many in the parish have been busy this summer making preparations for the concert and working to get the word out. The concert is an excellent opportunity for the parish to make itself known, share the cultural heritage of traditionally Orthodox lands and raise funds to support the work of the parish.
5% of all Grocery Card Sales goes to Holy Apostles and you get 100% of what you purchase to go towards groceries at either Stop & Shop or Shop Rite. Stop by the candle desk on your way out of church or contact Sandra Stefanik to order by mail: sands105@gmail.com
Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard and please support Holy Apostles by attending the concert and sharing it with your friends and family. 1
PRACTICING THE FAITH:
This Issue
SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES & SACRAMENTS
PAGE 3 Parish News & Events PAGE 4 & 5 Calendar PAGE 6 & 7 Fasting & Photos PAGE 8 & 9 Liturgics 101 & World News PAGE 10 & 11 Sophia & Practicing the Faith PAGE 12 Tamburitzans
Communion Of all the sacraments - or mysteries as they are called in the Orthodox Church Holy Communion is the most central. It embodies what it means to be a Christian: Oneness with God and with others. It is important to make communion a regular part of our spiritual lives. It is what literally makes us part of the church. It makes us in communion with God and his people. The Church should be thought of as a spiritual hospital and holy communion as spiritual medicine. We come to church for healing. But before we drink this medicine we should prepare, like a “If the poison of pride is swelling up in you, turn to the Eucharist; and that Bread, Which is your patient before a surgery, or an athlete before a God humbling and disguising Himself, will game. Some of the ways to prepare include atteach you humility. tending Vespers the night before, saying pre- St. Cryil of Alexandria communion prayers at home before Liturgy, keeping a fast before Liturgy, going to confession regularly, coming to church on time, keeping the Wednesday and Friday fasts the week before, and making peace with family and friends. If we find ourselves not well prepared we ought to refrain out of respect for the sacrament and as a discipline to guard ourselves against taking this mystery lightly or developing a casual or lax attitude towards it.
We ought to think of communion as a privilege and not a right, something that is given to us, not something that belongs to us. Such an attitude helps preserve humility. The Orthodox church’s position on closed communion can often be an offense to those outside, or a cause of grief for those of mixed faith families. It helps to remember that holy communion is like intimacy in a marriage, it is sacred and intensely personal; not easily or casually shared with others. It is also important to remember that the very act of communion is a confession of faith and a commitment to those who are also partaking of it. Someone cannot partake of communion if they are not making those commitments and confession. However, many other rites and services are open to the non-orthodox, such as receiving the antidoron (blessed bread after communion), or receiving a blessing with the chalice, or being anointed on a feast day. Inviting guests to share in these things shows hospitality and love, which is what communion is all about.
Thanks to Our Newsletter Sponsor:
Shook Funeral Home 639 Van Houten Ave. Clifton, NJ 07013 973-471-9620
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PARISH NEWS
Sophia Practical Wisdom for Everyday Life
In June the parish celebrated the feast of Pentecost covering the temple in greenery and kneeling for the first time since Lent. The last Pan-Orthodox bible study till the Fall was held at Holy Apostles at the beginning of June. Father Matthew participated in the Community partnership meeting, an alliance of non-profits and civil organizations in Saddle Brook, at the end of June. Father’s Day was marked by special prayers for fathers and a small gift to all of our men in the parish. Archbishop Michael paid the church a visit on the feast of Holy Apostles (June 30th). After the liturgy those attending met at the Saddle Brook Diner for a meal with the bishop. Also in June, Deacon John Holodeuk was assigned to Holy Apostles, which is a milestone in the life of the parish. Father Matthew, Matushka Elizabeth, and the family took a vacation in July. In August the feast of Transfiguration was celebrated and fruit was blessed. The Feast of the Dormition was celebrated with our sister parish Holy Assumption in Clifton and the parish picnic was held at the Ward’s home this year. Vespers was prayed outside at the end of the picnic. Several people from the parish went to Six Flags for the annual diocesan Youth Day and had a fun-filled time.
Doubt “How long do You keep us in doubt? If You are the Christ, tell us plainly.” -John 10:24
For many faith and doubt are like oil and water. You either believe or you do not. The good Christian avoids, ignores, and denies his doubt, the existence of which often serves to burden him with guilt. But faith, if it is rightly so called, is found only by treading the path of doubt. For faith is not certainty, it is trust. And doubt is but honest seeking. Therefore it is helpful to distinguish doubt from unbelief, the later which has already drawn its conclusions. Doubt seeks. Doubt struggles. Doubt years to believe. It desires truth. Men of great faith, have wrestled with their doubt and by confronting it rather than hiding from it they have found faith. Not a childish faith but a faith hardened by fire.
lives will surely not. God is not obvious, he requires work to discover, though he is everywhere and filling all things. He is like the fundamental forces of the universe (gravity, electromagnetic, strong force, weak force), everywhere in excessive abundance, but hidden, and holding all things together but thanked and noticed by few.
So perhaps we do not see because we do not seek? For this reason Jesus repeatedly said, “He who has ears, let him hear.” Such seeking, such listening requires humility, to admit wrongs, to change course, to leave all possibilities open, to tolerate uncertainties, to persist patiently even when we have not found all the answers we seek. “Just as all things speak about Dostoevsky attests to this: “It is not as a child that I believe and God to those that know him, and reveal him to those that love him, they confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.” Child- also hide him from all those that neither seek nor know him.” (Blaise ish faith rests in over -simplifications, clear cut answers, and Pascal) fears any encounter with doubt or ambiguity. But faith that is Lastly, belief is a virtue—like courage, self-control, and jusmature, having made its combat with doubt, has courage. tice—it is not merely an assent. Belief is not just accepting And is not this what God desired when he wrestled with Jathat something is true or real as a matter of fact. True belief cob the Patriarch, afterwards renaming him Israel, meaning, “he who struggles with God”? He wants us to seek, to ques- causes personal change. We can believe that God exists, that tion, to challenge, to reason. For this very reason Jesus Christ Jesus is God, that “There is only enough light for the Church is full condescends taking on human flesh that he might meet us those who only desire to see, and face to face, on an equal footing. Christ Jesus did not come to of grace, and continue on with our enough obscurity for those who make us slaves, but co-heirs and co -sons. He came to make life unaffected. have a contrary disposition” us ‘christs’ as he is ‘the’ Christ. “Question with boldness even the Such belief, if it -Blaise Pascal existence of God ; because, if there be one, he must approve of the homage can even be called of reason, than that of blindfolded fear” (Thomas Jefferson). It is foolish to think that our doubt and insecurities in anyway harm or that, lacks virtue. We believe that we might live by that belief. For example, we might believe that the story of Job from the weaken God. He is not offended by our struggle with him, nor insulted by our doubt. Even the famous Athiest Bertrand Old Testament actually happened and that Job is a real historRussell knew this: “And if there were a God , I think it very unlikely ical figure, and that the plot of the story was literally carried that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those that out in history as exactly as described, but such ‘belief’ still lacks faith. doubt his existence.” What is most important is not the history of the story but its We seek God and his truth because as Blaise Pascal so eloeternal and universal truth that speaks truly of man, his condiquently puts it “Happiness can be found neither in ourselves, nor in external things, but in God and in ourselves as united to him.” And so tion, his God, and his purpose and place in the world. In reit is in our struggle to be united to him that we must confront gards to the birth of Christ, Jesus desires not that we merely believe he was actually born, but that he is born in us. That by and pass through doubt if we want to reach a substantial amount of belief. Yet for as much as God is visible he is also our belief, the object of our belief, grafts itself to us, changing hidden. “There is only enough light for those who only desire to see, and us. That is what it means to be a man or women of faith. We enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition” (Blaise Pas- know it to be true because it lives in us. cal). That is to say, those who are open to seeing God might just see him, but those who are closed to his presence in their
UPCOMING EVENTS
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❖ Blessing of Pets on Saturday Sep-
❖ Tamburitzans Concert on Saturday
tember 2nd at 4 PM ❖ Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady will be held at St. John’s in Passaic: Vespers at ____ and Liturgy at 9 AM. ❖ Feast of the Cross will be held at Holy Apostles: Vespers at 6 PM and Liturgy at 10 AM ❖ Church School begins Sunday September 10th at 9:15 AM. ❖ Diocesan Assembly: November 1-2 in Endicott, NY. ❖ Retirement Party of Len Davis on Sunday September 24th after Liturgy.
September 23rd from 4—6 PM at Clifton High School. See parish website for more info. ❖ Parish Council Meeting: Wednesday September 13th at 7 PM following Vespers. ❖ Diocesan Workshop for Readers and Singers at St. Vladimir’s Seminary on Saturday September 9th. ❖ Annual Conference of The Brotherhood of St. Moses the Black in Princeton, NJ on October 6-8.
Orthodox World News
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Edited by Sub-Deacon Peter Eagler
Celebrate Creation in the New Church Year September 1 marks the beginning of the ecclesiastical year. And it was on that day in 1989 that His All-Holiness, the late Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I, issued a message on the environment while proclaiming the first day of the ecclesiastical year as a “Day of Prayer for Creation.”
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“The celebration offers Orthodox Christians—especially youth and young adults—an opportunity for us to reflect on the beauty of God’s creation,” said David Lucs, who chairs the Orthodox Church in America’s Department of Youth, Young Adult and Campus Ministries. “A variety of resources are available for parish communities to organize ministries and activities for faithful of all ages in the weeks and months ahead, especially as Church schools, adult religious education classes and youth groups gear up for the new year.”
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Available on the department’s blog just in time for this year’s “Day of Prayer for Creation” is a new reflection by Priest John (Kaleeg) Hainsworth, titled “Can You Hear the Beauty of Nature?”. “If you’re wondering what you can do or should think about the environment, then what follows is for you,” writes Father John in his opening paragraph. “In fact, every teen and young adult should pause on a regular basis – look up from their phones – and appreciate the glory and majesty of creation which is all around us.”
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“The Earth is the Lord’s: Caring for God’s Creation”—a five-session study guide for youth and teens originally published by the OCA in the mid-1990s and now available from SVS Press—makes an ideal curriculum resource for the beginning of the new Church school year. Sessions review a number of themes, including creation as of God, our responsibility for creation, our role as priests of creation, threats to creation and our call to be stewards of creation.
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The OCA’s Parish Ministry Resources features several thematic articles, including “A Creation Celebration”; “And God Saw That It Was Good”; and “Ten Green Projects Any Parish Can Adopt”, which offers practical suggestions for implementing a number of projects and ministries. Also recommended is Archpriest John Breck’s “Sanctify The Waters”, which provides the foundation for a genuinely Christian ‘ecology.’
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Many other resources are available on the web site of the Orthodox Fellowship of the Transfiguration, including “Creation Care and Ecological Justice”, a reflection delivered by His All-Holiness, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at the Oxford Union in November 2015.
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Other recommended resources include “Creation, Wonder and Ecology”; “Orthodox Perspectives on Creation”, which features extracts from the report of the WCC’s October 1987 Inter-Orthodox Consultation in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Father John Hainsworth’s multi-part podcast series—“Bright Wings: Classical Christian Ecology”— available from Ancient Faith Ministries
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Liturgics 101
O CTOBER 2017
By Sub-deacon Ben Kalemba
Soul Saturdays There are five Saturdays throughout the year when the church gathers as a community to remember all the dead (on Meatfare Saturday [two Saturdays before the beginning of Great Lent], the second, third, and fourth Saturdays of Great Lent, and the Saturday before Pentecost). These are known as the Soul Saturdays (Zadužda Subbbotu). In addition, in the Slavic tradition, the Saturday closest to the feast of St. Demetrius Day (October 26) is also a day of remembering the dead. It was originally instituted to commemorate the soldiers who fell in the Battle of Kulikovo (fought between Russia and the Mongol-Tatar Golden Horde in 1380), under the leadership of St. Demetrius of the Don. Today in America, most Orthodox view Soul Saturdays as days when they provide a list of their deceased relatives and friends to the priest and a requiem Divine Liturgy is celebrated followed by a Parastas, or a Panikhida is celebrated in the evening, just prior to the Saturday evening vigil. In actuality, the whole day is dedicated to the deceased, with the variable parts of the daily office (Vespers, Compline, and Matins) commemorating the dead.
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O faithful, let us commemorate today, all those who have fallen asleep from times beyond memory, and all those who have lived in true faith, each one individually. Let us praise the Lord and Savior, praying to him with fervor, that at the time of judgment they may give a good account to our God who is to judge the earth, so that they may stand joyfully at his right hand in the company of the just, as brilliant heirs of the saints, and that they may deserve his heavenly kingdom. (Vespers, Stichera at Psalm 140)
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Remember, O Lord and Savior, our parents and grandparents, all of our ancestors and elders, who from the beginning until these last days, have died in righteousness and true faith. When your angel shall sound the trumpet on the last day, O Lord, to call all flesh to the resurrection, then O Christ, give rest to all your servants. To all the faithful whom You have taken to yourself from every age of life: the old and the young, youths and those in the prime of life, children and newborn babies, grant, O Lord, your eternal
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