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Monday, June 15, 2015
Thursday, May 9, 2013
May 12th - Mother's Day
We will be having a Readers Service at 10:30am, followed by a potluck fellowship lunch and weiner/marshmallow roast.
Afterwards, we will have a bocce ball tournament, Mothers against all those brave enough to face them.
Afterwards, we will have a bocce ball tournament, Mothers against all those brave enough to face them.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Wednesday night service is on
Father Kaleeg will be here for our Wednesday night service. :)
All other services are as scheduled.
All other services are as scheduled.
Monday, April 29, 2013
Pascha Week Calendar
Holy Saturday, April 27 - Vespers @ 6pm
Holy Sunday, April 28 - Hours @ 10:10 am & Liturgy with Blessing of the palms and Procession @ 10:30
Holy Monday, April 29 - Bridegroom Matins @ 7 pm
Holy Wednesday, May 1 - Presanctified Liturgy @ 6pm followed by soup supper
Holy Thursday, May 2 - Matins with Passion Gospels @ 6pm
Holy Friday, May 3 - Vespers @ 3:30 pm followed by soup supper
- Matins with Procession @ 6:30 pm
Holy Saturday, May 4 - Vesperal Liturgy @ 10am
- Midnight office with Procession and Paschal Liturgy @11:30 pm followed by
Blessing of baskets
PASCHA Sunday, May 5 - Agape Vespers @ 12 noon followed by Feast! (approximately 1pm)
Please invite all friends and family to the feast! To ensure that there is enough food for everyone, please bring an entrée and either a side dish or a desert. There will be a lamb and a turkey provided.
* Due to a Family Emergency, Father Kaleeg will not be arriving from Vancouver on Saturday, April 27th as planned.
Holy Saturday Vespers and Holy Monday Bridegroom Matins will not change, but Divine Liturgy on April 28th will become a Typika Service.
Presanctified Liturgy on Wednesday may be cancelled, we will let you know as soon as we know.
All other services are expected to stay the same.
Please pray for Father Kaleeg and his 3 little girls - they need comfort and strength right now.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Meeting/Discussion/Ideas
Hello Parish,
We need to begin to discuss some possibilities for our parish for the future, so I would like to add as many people to this blog as possible from the parish. Please contact me and I can send you an invite via email.
We will be having a brief parish meeting this coming sunday to discuss some issues and ideas for the future. Fr. Kaleeg will be with us this weekend serving Vespers and Liturgy for the Elevation of the Cross. See you then!
And if you are reading this, maybe drop a comment in the comment section, I see that there are a number of daily visitors to this site, I am curious as to the readership.
-David
We need to begin to discuss some possibilities for our parish for the future, so I would like to add as many people to this blog as possible from the parish. Please contact me and I can send you an invite via email.
We will be having a brief parish meeting this coming sunday to discuss some issues and ideas for the future. Fr. Kaleeg will be with us this weekend serving Vespers and Liturgy for the Elevation of the Cross. See you then!
And if you are reading this, maybe drop a comment in the comment section, I see that there are a number of daily visitors to this site, I am curious as to the readership.
-David
Friday, March 15, 2013
Just a note...
Hi all,
Just a quick note to say that while we are having a good visit, we miss you all and look forward to seeing you. Forgive me, a sinner.
David (and Family)
Just a quick note to say that while we are having a good visit, we miss you all and look forward to seeing you. Forgive me, a sinner.
David (and Family)
Monday, December 31, 2012
Theophany January 6 2013
We will be having a liturgy with Fr. Kaleeg Hainsworth on January 6th, followed by the blessing of water. There will be vespers on saturday evening January 5th as well. House blessings are available but please see Parish council about the schedule of blessings, due to our geographic discontent.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Look Up And Seek Your Maker
There's an old American folk song that goes, “Look down, look down that lonesome road, before you travel on. Look up, look up and seek your maker, 'fore Gabriel blows his horn.” The lyrics are a warning and an exhortation to the traveler on the spiritual journey: consider the consequences of your current path, and find God before it's all over. In essence, the singer's message is simply a rephrasing of the preaching both of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (Matthew 3:2 and 4:17)
“Repent!” The word alone conjures up for many of us the image of a red-faced, finger-pointing, pulpit-thumping preacher, judging and condemning us to eternal punishment. In our culture, the call to repentance inspires guilt, fear, and even resentment. We imagine a repentant life to be a miserable existence devoid of the enjoyment, pleasure, laughter, lightness and freedom that should be the hallmark of every Christian.
I would like to explore a radically different vision of repentance, one that I believe is truer to authentic Christianity. What does Jesus really mean when He calls us to 'repent,' and what should repentance look like in our daily lives?
The original Greek word for 'repent' is 'metanoia,' which literally means 'I change my mind.' The word, however, implies more than just switching points of view. Contained within 'metanoia' is the sense of an active change to one's way of life. If before you devoted all of your mental and physical energy and efforts walking in one direction, now you do an 'about face' and started to walking in the opposite direction, with the same determination.
Far from being a passive emotional state of guilt and shame, genuine repentance is a primarily about action. While feeling sorry for one's sins has a part to play in 'metanoia,' this feeling acts primarily as a catalyst for changed behaviour. We are not supposed to merely feel repentant as much we are to do repentance. In our contemporary culture, the phrase “I turned my life around” comes closest to capturing the true meaning of 'metanoia.'
Why should we turn our lives around? Because, Jesus says, “the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The song I quoted at the beginning seems to suggest that He means, “Before it's too late,” but we shouldn't read a threat when no such threat exists. In saying, “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” Jesus is simply declaring that in Himself “God is at hand,” meaning that we can touch God, hold him, encounter Him, and know Him. When Jesus says, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand,” He is in effect meaning, “Turn around because I am here.”
How does this understanding of repentance affect our lives? Imagine, if you will, an old-fashioned jailhouse made of bricks, and a single window with bars. Now imagine a miserable-looking prisoner standing at the window, gripping the bars. Now, do some mental magic on your picture: make the walls behind the prisoner disappear, so that all that remains of the jail cell are the single wall that he can see, and the window with bars.
You and I know that the prisoner is free, but he is so fixated on his imprisonment that he can't see that his prison has vanished! Why doesn't he turn around and discover his freedom? Perhaps his misery is all that he knows and he cannot imagine any other life. Perhaps he is afraid of life beyond his prison; the bars have become a source of comfort for him. Perhaps those bars give him a sense of control, which he enjoys. Whatever the case may be, the prisoner continues to wallow in the grey and lonely condition to which he has become accustomed.
My point is, each one of us is that prisoner, locked in a prison of self-destructive attitudes and actions that we ourselves allow to continue. So locked are we in this self-made prison, that we cannot see that in the coming of His Son Jesus Christ, God has torn down the walls and smashed the bars that held us captive to sin and death.
Our responsibility—our only responsibility—is to repent, which comes down to this: let go of the prison bars and turn our lives around to embrace the freedom that God offers us. We can continue clutching miserably at those old bars, locked away in our private darkness, or we can simply walk away into the light of the eternal Sun that never sets. We can keep on staring down that lonesome road, or we can turn, look up and seek our Maker, who is even now at hand, waiting with arms outspread to embrace us with His boundless love.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Easter, East and West by Fr. Isaac Skidmore
Why does the date of Easter often differ between the Catholic and
Protestant churches of the West, on the one hand, and the Eastern
Orthodox Church on the other? Believe it or not, the formula for
calculating the date is the same for both, provided by the Council of
Nicea in 325 AD: that Easter is to be celebrated on "the first Sunday,
after the first full-moon, after the Vernal Equinox, and not according
the reckoning of the Jews" (that is, not according to the calculation
for the date of the Jewish feast of Passover).
In the early church, there were some who celebrated Easter on the day of Passover, the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. They did so regardless of whether it fell on Sunday or another day of the week, believing that this was the best way to express their belief that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb that the Jewish feast prefigured. Other Christians celebrated on the following Sunday instead, because it was the day of the Lord's resurrection. Still others chose not to rely on the Jewish calendar at all, because its 12 lunar months (each of which began with the first sighting of the new moon over Jerusalem) didn't correspond exactly with the 365-plus days it takes the earth to go around the sun, and so resulted in dates that weren't considered precise enough for determining Easter. These Christians, especially those in Alexandria, who had access to astronomical tools, calculated the date themselves, celebrating on the Sunday after the first full-moon after the Spring Equinox.
These different dates for celebrating Easter were annoying, but not an absolute problem. St. Irenaeus, at the end of the 2nd century, writes that Christians should not consider differing dates for Easter a reason to sever communion with each other. Still, it was hoped that there could be a uniform date for all. So, at the Council of Nicea, in 325, the common formula was put forth. It was followed in a straightforward way--identifying the Equinox as March 21st, where it appeared on the Julian calendar in use at that time. Thenceforth, for over a-thousand years, there was general uniformity regarding the date for the celebration of Easter.
To understand what happened next, a word must be said about calendars. Calendars have always relied (and still do) upon periodic adjustments, such as our modern "leap-years" to keep them in sync with the astronomical realities and seasons they're intended to measure. Lunar calendars are inherently imperfect because the lunar year is a mere 354 (and slightly more) days long. Without adjustment, a lunar calendar loses 11 days every year. A date that is in Spring now might be in Winter in a year or two, and in Autumn, in a decade. Solar calendars are likewise imperfect because it actually takes the Earth a little longer than 365 days to go around the Sun. They, too, require adjustment to keep them on track.
The Julian calendar had such adjustments--but not quite enough. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII noticed that it was losing time. Using a solar observatory he had built, he found that the Vernal Equinox was occurring on March 11th instead of the expected 21st. He devised an adjustment to get it back on track, and built in additional adjustments to keep it accurate over the long term. In 1582, he added 10 days to the date, and established an improved system for the observance of leap years. The changes were accepted first by Catholic, then, more reluctantly, by Protestant countries. Orthodox countries also eventually accepted the new dating with regard to international trade and civic life but not church holidays.
In 1923, some of the Orthodox churches narrowed the divide between their civic and ecclesiastical calendars by accepting the Gregorian (or modified Julian) calendar with regard to church dates except when it came to the date of the Vernal Equinox. Why exempt the Vernal Equinox? Because the East and the West had come to differ on their interpretations of the final clause of the Easter formula, "and not according to the reckoning of the Jews." The West took it to mean that the date of the Jewish Passover should be disregarded--considered irrelevant to the date of Easter. The East, on the other hand, interpreted it to mean that Easter should never be celebrated on the same day as the first day of Passover. In addition, the Eastern churches held that Easter should only be celebrated after Passover had occurred, and never before--as a way of testifying to Christ as the feast's fulfillment. Eastern Christians foresaw that, if they accepted the March 21st Gregorian date for the Equinox, there would be years in which Easter would fall on the same day as Passover, and sometimes occur before it (as it does in our present year, 2005).
The divergence between Easter in the East and West boils down to the interpretation of this one clause. The Orthodox churches that utilize the new calendar have refrained from using it as it concerns the Equinox date, not because they consider the older calendar to be inherently more sacred, but because it violates their principle of always celebrating Easter after the Jewish Passover (and, also, to maintain uniformity of the Easter date amongst the Orthodox churches, not all of whom have embraced the "new calendar"). It should be noted, though, that there is debate amongst Orthodox as to whether this principle is inherent in the Nicene declaration, or whether it is a rationale that took hold and grew, mostly unexamined, during the Middle Ages. (Those who opt for the latter point out that, using the Julian formula, Easter fell on the day of Passover several times during the first ten centuries.)
Some, in the East and West, who advocate a modern, uniform Easter date, propose calculating the Equinox by astronomical means and, so, not according to the approximate dates of either the old or new calendar, and that the clause regarding the Passover be interpreted as it currently is in the West. This would mean a change for East and West, but more so for the East. In the meantime, one can hope that St. Irenaeus' words will not be overlooked, and that the divergence of dates will not obscure discussion of deeper unities of faith.
In the early church, there were some who celebrated Easter on the day of Passover, the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. They did so regardless of whether it fell on Sunday or another day of the week, believing that this was the best way to express their belief that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb that the Jewish feast prefigured. Other Christians celebrated on the following Sunday instead, because it was the day of the Lord's resurrection. Still others chose not to rely on the Jewish calendar at all, because its 12 lunar months (each of which began with the first sighting of the new moon over Jerusalem) didn't correspond exactly with the 365-plus days it takes the earth to go around the sun, and so resulted in dates that weren't considered precise enough for determining Easter. These Christians, especially those in Alexandria, who had access to astronomical tools, calculated the date themselves, celebrating on the Sunday after the first full-moon after the Spring Equinox.
These different dates for celebrating Easter were annoying, but not an absolute problem. St. Irenaeus, at the end of the 2nd century, writes that Christians should not consider differing dates for Easter a reason to sever communion with each other. Still, it was hoped that there could be a uniform date for all. So, at the Council of Nicea, in 325, the common formula was put forth. It was followed in a straightforward way--identifying the Equinox as March 21st, where it appeared on the Julian calendar in use at that time. Thenceforth, for over a-thousand years, there was general uniformity regarding the date for the celebration of Easter.
To understand what happened next, a word must be said about calendars. Calendars have always relied (and still do) upon periodic adjustments, such as our modern "leap-years" to keep them in sync with the astronomical realities and seasons they're intended to measure. Lunar calendars are inherently imperfect because the lunar year is a mere 354 (and slightly more) days long. Without adjustment, a lunar calendar loses 11 days every year. A date that is in Spring now might be in Winter in a year or two, and in Autumn, in a decade. Solar calendars are likewise imperfect because it actually takes the Earth a little longer than 365 days to go around the Sun. They, too, require adjustment to keep them on track.
The Julian calendar had such adjustments--but not quite enough. In the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII noticed that it was losing time. Using a solar observatory he had built, he found that the Vernal Equinox was occurring on March 11th instead of the expected 21st. He devised an adjustment to get it back on track, and built in additional adjustments to keep it accurate over the long term. In 1582, he added 10 days to the date, and established an improved system for the observance of leap years. The changes were accepted first by Catholic, then, more reluctantly, by Protestant countries. Orthodox countries also eventually accepted the new dating with regard to international trade and civic life but not church holidays.
In 1923, some of the Orthodox churches narrowed the divide between their civic and ecclesiastical calendars by accepting the Gregorian (or modified Julian) calendar with regard to church dates except when it came to the date of the Vernal Equinox. Why exempt the Vernal Equinox? Because the East and the West had come to differ on their interpretations of the final clause of the Easter formula, "and not according to the reckoning of the Jews." The West took it to mean that the date of the Jewish Passover should be disregarded--considered irrelevant to the date of Easter. The East, on the other hand, interpreted it to mean that Easter should never be celebrated on the same day as the first day of Passover. In addition, the Eastern churches held that Easter should only be celebrated after Passover had occurred, and never before--as a way of testifying to Christ as the feast's fulfillment. Eastern Christians foresaw that, if they accepted the March 21st Gregorian date for the Equinox, there would be years in which Easter would fall on the same day as Passover, and sometimes occur before it (as it does in our present year, 2005).
The divergence between Easter in the East and West boils down to the interpretation of this one clause. The Orthodox churches that utilize the new calendar have refrained from using it as it concerns the Equinox date, not because they consider the older calendar to be inherently more sacred, but because it violates their principle of always celebrating Easter after the Jewish Passover (and, also, to maintain uniformity of the Easter date amongst the Orthodox churches, not all of whom have embraced the "new calendar"). It should be noted, though, that there is debate amongst Orthodox as to whether this principle is inherent in the Nicene declaration, or whether it is a rationale that took hold and grew, mostly unexamined, during the Middle Ages. (Those who opt for the latter point out that, using the Julian formula, Easter fell on the day of Passover several times during the first ten centuries.)
Some, in the East and West, who advocate a modern, uniform Easter date, propose calculating the Equinox by astronomical means and, so, not according to the approximate dates of either the old or new calendar, and that the clause regarding the Passover be interpreted as it currently is in the West. This would mean a change for East and West, but more so for the East. In the meantime, one can hope that St. Irenaeus' words will not be overlooked, and that the divergence of dates will not obscure discussion of deeper unities of faith.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
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