Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
This coming Saturday, March 11, is the second Saturday of Souls for 2023. Orthros will begin at 6am; Divine Liturgy will begin at 8am. After the services are over, the St Joanna Burial Society will provide a light breakfast along with information about the new Memorial Garden, advanced directives, and Orthodox funerals. Our goal is for all of us to be present on at least one of these Saturdays, because our departed friends and loved ones need our prayers, and we also need to teach our children and grandchildren and godchildren how to intercede for us when we have departed this life.
This coming Sunday, March 12, we will have our next Safety and Security Rehearsal. This event will work just like the rehearsal we had this past fall, and you will receive detailed instructions the week before the rehearsal. Basically, we will all be exiting the buildings and gathering at the Rally Point Signs on the parking lot, but please be prepared to participate so that we will all be prepared for whatever we may encounter in the providence of the Most Holy Trinity.
This coming weekend, Daylight Savings also begins, so please remember to set your clocks ahead (‘spring forward’) one hour when you go to be on Saturday night.
Our Calendar
Fasting Days
The traditional fasting discipline is that we go without meat (beef, pork, chicken, and fish with backbones), dairy products, oil, wine, and hard liquor through Pascha, Sunday, April 16 (there is a blessing for fish, wine, and oil on Saturdays and Sundays). If you need to modify that discipline in any way, please speak with your spiritual father as soon as possible.
Daily Services
Monday, March 6 - Friday, March 10
Orthros 5am
Vespers 5pm
Seth Hart will be at the online chanter’s stand offering the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours this week on ZOOM. The schedule is below:
1st hour: 6:45 a.m.
3rd hour: 8:45 a.m.
6th hour: 11:45 a.m.
9th hour: 3:45 p.m.
The login information is available in the emailed version of the newsletter.
St. John Trapeza Readings
Fr. Andrew, Seth Hart, and Matthew Groh and many other folks continue to broadcast daily readings from spiritual books online. d many other folks continue to broadcast daily readings from spiritual books online. They are currently reading Beauty, Spirit, Matter: Icons in the Modern World by Aidan Hart.
The schedule is as follows: Monday to Friday at 12:00 p.m.
If you would like to listen in, use the link to join the Telegram group shared in the emailed version of the newsletter.
Lenten Services
Monday, March 6 Great Compline 7pm
Wednesday, March 8 Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Thursday, March 2 Great Compline 7pm
Friday, March 10 Akathist Hymn 7pm
Tuesday, March 7
Orthodoxy 101 7pm available on Discord. Please see the emailed version of the newsletter for the link.
Thursday, March 9
The Bible Study 7pm
Topic: St. John the Forerunner - Bible Study
Please see the emailed version of the newsletter for the Zoom link.
Saturday, March 11
St. Thomas School at 4:00 p.m.
Great Vespers at 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 12 The Second Sunday of Great Lent
Orthros 8am
Liturgy 10am
Typkia with Holy Eucharist in Killeen 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
Akathist to the Mother of God of the Inexhaustible Cup 1pm
St. Thomas School
On Saturday, March 11, John Bell will lead the discussion on Chapter 26 in Volume One, The Theotokos. St Thomas School is now on Discord, but if you would like to participate online, you still need to sign-up ahead of time. Just send an email to remote.meetings@theforerunner.org by Thursday, March 9 to reserve your spot.
coming up
After this Saturday, there are two more Saturdays of Souls for this year: March 18, and June 3. These Saturdays are not only an important time to remember our departed loved ones and friends, they are also how we can teach our children and grandchildren and godchildren to pray for us once we have departed this life. Please use the Memorial Book in the narthex and print the first names of those that you would like to have remembered at the service you will be attending. And on each of those Saturdays, representatives from the St Joanna Burial Society will be on hand to help us with advanced directives, wills, funeral arrangements, and cemetery information. So please plan on participating on at least one of these three Saturdays and taking full advantage of all that is on offer.
On Saturday, March 25, we will celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. We will offer Orthros at 6am and Divine Liturgy at 8am. Please join with us as we honor the Most Holy Theotokos on this lovely festal day.
The Archdiocese expects all of us to make our confession before Pascha. In our parish, confession is offered on Saturday evenings after Great Vespers or just about any other time by appointment, but we do not hear confessions during Holy Week. That means we have until Lazarus Saturday, April 8, so let’s not wait until the last minute to receive that blessing.
Hopefully, by now you’ve heard that we are setting up our official St John’s online presence on Discord. Discord is available as an app for your phone or computer or in your internet browser; to check it all out, click the link below. If you already have Discord set up, you will be added to the server without a role - in other words, as a guest. If you have not set up Discord, you will be prompted to create a username (please use your actual name, so we will all know with whom we are communicating) and a Discord account. Once you are in the server, you'll see a small number of channels, either on the left of the screen or (on mobile) in a three-line menu on the left. Go to the Verify channel for instructions on confirming that you are a St. John parishioner. Once you've been verified, you'll see that the Verify channel disappears and there are additional channels available to you.
At any point, if you run into issues, please feel free to email, text, call, or send a carrier pigeon, etc to Seth Hart, who has graciously agreed to guide us through this process.
The St. Joanna Myrrbearers have now installed the St. John's Memorial Garden by the front entrance walkway to the Long Hall, so that all of us in passing will be able to cross ourselves and say a prayer for the departed. This space will be dedicated to parishioners (and Orthodox immediate family members of parishioners) whose graves are more than 100 miles away and difficult to visit, or simply unavailable to us. In addition, parishioners who have suffered the loss of an unborn infant, by whatever cause, will now have a place to lay a stone in their remembrance. The Myrrhbearers are finalizing the vendor choices for the stones, but in the meantime, we ask that you contact Becky T. (or snag her at Fellowship Hour) if you are interested in getting more information and/or purchasing a stone.
OUR MOMENT OF GRACE AND COURTESY
Since our first practical session of St Thomas School proved so popular, we are going to be highlighting a few of the liturgical etiquette tips in the weeks ahead. Here is Tip #1: Since we now have about 250 people trying to light candles on a Sunday morning, we need to try and leave space for everyone in the candle trays. So, when you light your candle, put it as far to the back of the tray and as close to the other candles as you can. That will leave some room for the next person.
Things That Make Priests Happy
Processing around the property with the Holy Icons; reminding Nick C. not to eat the small chips; realizing that we need a Sator Square somewhere in the new temple; admiring Keri G.’s purple shoes; talking about Carthage and Ethiopia with Ella M. and the weather in Georgia with Demetry Z. ; seeing so many people at the weeknight Lenten services; arriving for Orthros and pulling into a parking lot full of deer.
an unworthy priest,
aidan
The Happy Priest is a publication of Life At A Dead Run Media, which is a subsidiary of One Take Productions. Our IT Guy is Christian Perez; our Webmasters are Lily Halsey and Seth Hart; our Keeper of Lists is Father Andrew Wilson; our Roving Reporter is Ben Manalowitz; our corporate headquarters features the world’s most extensive collection of Solo Cups, and our Spiritual Advisor is Elder Galaction of the Holy Mountain.