Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
We’re now into the second week of the Fast, so it’s worth pausing to think about how we did during the first week: Were you able to get to a week night service? Were you able to stick to your fasting discipline? Have you made your confession yet or participated in one of the Saturdays of Souls? If you were able to follow through on all your plans, thank the Most Holy Trinity and do it again this week! If things just fell apart, thank the Most Holy Trinity and plan on making a come-back this week! After all, spiritual striving is an on-going challenge, but one thing is certain: We will all make it to Pascha.
Our Calendar
The Fast Continues
During the Fast we abstain from meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, fish, wine, and olive oil Monday through Friday, with katalysis (a blessing) for wine and olive oil on Saturday and Sunday. If you need to modify the fast in any way, please check with your spiritual father.
Daily Services
Monday, March 9-Friday, March 13
Orthros 5am;
Vespers 5pm
(Please don’t forget that since life in our parish community can be pretty busy, sometimes the starting times for the daily services has to be shifted. So, if you know ahead of time that you will be attending a particular service, it’s always a good idea to send Father Aidan a note to confirm when the service will actually begin.)
Lenten Services
Monday, March 9
Great Compline 7pm
Wednesday, March 11
Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm (there will not be daily vespers on Wed, Mar 11)
Friday, March 13
Akathist Hymn 7pm
Saturday, March 14
The Second Saturday of Souls
Orthros 7am
Divine Liturgy 9am
St Thomas School 4pm
Mike Ruse will be leading the discussion over pgs 43-53 of Chpt 2 The Age of the Ecumenical ChurchGreat Vespers with the Jesus Prayer 6pm
Sunday, March 15
Second Sunday in Great Lent
Orthros 8am
Divine Liturgy 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
A New Password
Access to the Members Section of the website is restricted to parish members. There is a new password, which was distributed in the email version of this newsletter.
This Week at St Thomas School
Vol 1, Ch 2, Part 1 (pp43-54)
The Age of the Ecumenical Councils
It may seem odd to begin a chapter summary of a book on Orthodoxy with a quote from a Protestant, but the famous G.K. Chesterton describes the state of the early Church in a most delightful and graphic manner. From chapter 6 of Chesterton’s book, Orthodoxy (referring to “right belief”):
This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic. The Church in its early days went fierce and fast with any warhorse; yet it is utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. She swerved to left and right, so exactly as to avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all the worldly powers to make Christianity too worldly. The next instant she was swerving to avoid an orientalism, which would have made it too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable. It would have been easier to have accepted the earthly power of the Arians. It would have been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own.
You should read the entire opening of Chesterton’s chapter. It will give you the full sense of what Metropolitan Hilarion describes in the first part of this week’s reading.
There is simply too much information in these first eleven pages to adequately summarize. Metropolitan Hilarion moves through the first 4th through 7th centuries of Christianity with great speed.
With Constantine’s Edict of Milan (AD 313), which legalized Christianity throughout the Roman Empire came wave after wave of heresy. He introduces us to the earliest controversies over the trinitarian nature of God. The ink was not yet dry on the Nicene Creed (from the 1st and 2nd Ecumenical Councils, AD 325 and 381, respectively) when controversy arose over the nature of Christ: Is He man? Is He God? Neither? Both? The 3rd Ecumenical Council was convened in Ephesus in 431 to answer the question. We would recognize their concluding dogmatic statement of Christ’s two nature’s, but the controversy refused to go away (recall Jesus’ central question: “Who do you say that I am?”).
In 451, the 4th Ecumenical Council was convened in Chalcedon and attended by 630 bishops. They affirmed the two natures of Christ in one person. And here we encounter the first major schism of the Church when churches in Egypt (today’s Copts), Syria, and Armenia refused to accept the Council’s wording. The schism continues today.
As controversy continued, the 5th Ecumenical Council was held in 553 at Constantinople. This Council, among other things, reviewed writings of earlier authors, such as Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius. It continued the anathema against them and condemned others who were then dead. The controversy over the nature of Christ continued and a 6th Council was held in 680-681. Participants again affirmed the dual nature of Christ, and the Emperor—in one of many interventions by an Emperor in the history of the Councils—signed the closing statement. With the conclusion of this Council, the question of Christology within the Orthodox Church finally appeared settled.
Next week we will learn about the final and greatest debate within the Church: Iconoclasm.
Coming Up
Don’t forget: During this flu season, you need to use hand sanitizer when you first come into the Long Hall. If you have time, an even better precaution is to go into the restroom and wash your hands with soap and hot water for at least twenty seconds (and be sure to use lots of friction!). We also need to wash up or use hand sanitizer before we go through the line at Fellowship Hour. There are bottles of hand sanitizer in a number of different locations throughout the Long Hall and the Parish House, so let’s take full advantage of that and stay as healthy as possible.
After this coming weekend, there will be just one more Saturday of Souls between now and Pascha. On those Saturdays we serve Orthros at 7am and Divine Liturgy at 9am. The Memorial Book is available in the narthex, so please legibly print the names of the folks that you wish to commemorate in the section for the particular Saturday when you will be in attendance. Those Saturdays fall on March 14 and March 21, and our goal is for everyone in the parish to make at least one of those services.
The expectation of our archdiocese is that each of us will make our confession before Pascha. In our parish, we do not offer that Holy Mystery during Holy Week, so that means we have until Friday, April 10 to fulfill that obligation. Confession is offered each Saturday evening following Great Vespers and just about any other time by specific appointment, so let’s be sure and get that done during the next nine weeks.
During Great Lent we always try to do some spiritual reading, so why not get a head start on the Pascha Book Study and read through the book that we will be using during that six week discussion? The book is called The New Media Epidemic; it’s by a French Orthodox scholar, Jean Claude Larchet. It’s a fairly short book, so you can read a couple of pages a day during Great Lent and be ready to join the book study when it kicks off on Wednesday, April 22. The book is available at Christ the Lightgiver Bookstore, so pick up a copy in the next week or so.
One of the most beautiful feasts of the Mother of God falls during Great Lent. It’s the Feast of the Annunciation, and we will begin that cycle of services with Great Vespers on Tuesday, March 24, at 7pm. We will continue the services on March 25, the day of the feast, with Orthros at 4:30am and Divine Liturgy at 6:30am. Plan on joining us as we honor the Most Holy Theotokos.
Our Moment of Grace and Courtesy
It’s time to start getting ready for Pascha, and that means we need to review all the Grace and Courtesy Moments which apply to Easter. Here’s the first one:
During the Paschal Services on Saturday night/Sunday morning, if young children need to sleep, then they must be A) in the parish house with a family member or friend, or B) held in the arms or on the lap of a family member in the nave. Please do not, under any circumstances, allow your children to sleep on the floor of the nave, the narthex, the cry room, or the kitchen. This is not safe, and our ushers have been instructed to remind parents and grandparents that children are not allowed to sleep in these locations. Also, please remember that if your children are going to sleep in the parish house, there must be a family member with them at all times; they are not to be left alone for any reason.
I’m praying that this second week of the Fast will not only be a blessing for all of us but also for all those that we love.
an unworthy priest
aidan