Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
This coming 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.
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 20- Friday, March 24
Orthros 5am
Vespers 5pm
Seth Hart will be at the online chanter’s stand offering the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours this week.:
1st hour: 6:45 a.m.
3rd hour: 8:45 a.m.
6th hour: 11:45 a.m.
9th hour: 3:45 p.m.
Join the Daily Hours on Discord.
St. John Trapeza Readings
Fr. Andrew, Seth Hart, and Matthew Groh and 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. Please see the emailed version of the newsletter for the link to join the Trapeza Readings on Discord.
Lenten Services
Monday, March 20 Great Compline 7pm
Wednesday, March 22 Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Friday, March 24 Akathist Hymn 7pm
Tuesday, March 21
Orthodoxy 101 7pm
You can also access the group on Discord. Please see the emailed version of the newsletter for the link.
Thursday, March 23
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 25 The Feast of the Annunciation
Orthros 6am
Divine Liturgy at 10am
St. Thomas School at 4:00 p.m.
Great Vespers at 6:00 p.m.
Sunday, March 26 The Fourth Sunday of Great Lent
Orthros 8am
Between Orthros and Divine Liturgy, Michael T. will be made a catechumen, and Dominic R. and Nicholas P. will be baptized and William, T., Anastasia, and Adelina R. will be chrismated. Please arrive early to participate in these Holy Mysteries
Liturgy 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
St. Thomas School
On Saturday, March 25, Matt Groh will lead the discussion on Chapter 28 in Volume One, “The Second Coming of Christ”. 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 23 to reserve your spot.
coming up
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.
It may seem like a long ways off, but it will be here before we know it—The Pascha Book Study! The study will begin on Bright Wednesday, April 19, and it will meet each Wednesday night at 7pm through May 17. This year’s study will be structured just like the Fall Theological Seminar; we will have a series of presentations that will focus on our new temple, but we will also be talking about men’s issues and women’s issues and how, as women and men, we will interact with one another in our new temple. Please plan on joining us, either in person or on Discord, for what promises to be a very important time in the life of our community.
One of the really fun features of life at St John’s during the Paschal Season is our Annual Talent Show. This year, the show will be on Sunday, April 30th, so if you play a musical instrument or do magic tricks or sing or tell stories or jokes or dance—or, really, do anything that brings joy to others—please consider participating in the show. If you have questions or need some specific equipment, please check with Rigel Thurston, but go ahead and sign up for your slot with this link: https://forms.gle/dJ37Trzm5eiCfbLv7.
And to keep the fun going all throughout the Paschal Season, on the Sundays following the Talent Show, we’re going to have live music during Fellowship Hour. We want to feature all the musicians in our community, so if you are part of a group or play an instrument or want to put together a group just for this program, talk to Rigel Thurston or use this link to get on the schedule: https://forms.gle/EdcAtJidfBW9nAjT9.
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 #3: There are certain times when we should not enter the nave—during the Little Entrance, the Great Entrance, the Scripture Lessons, the Homily, and the Holy Anaphora. We should also not do what we all do at intersections when we see that the light is turning from green to yellow; we should not say, “Oh they’re coming out for the Gospel Reading, but I think I can still slip in before they actually start!” Rather than trying to rush, please just wait and enter the nave at the proper time.
Things That Make Priests Happy
Praying before the crosses adorned by the women of our parish; talking with Donna B. about The Traveling Wilburys (she’s still got the CD), with Mike B. about infernal snowballs, with Shamassy Rebekah about how much tomato paste it takes to get rid of skunk scent (more than you’d think), and with Bessie J. about how you should never, ever forget the bowling bumpers; learning that Cameron C. is preparing to dominate the World-Wide Window Market; offering the services for St Patrick with Joe W.’s (very tasty) Artos loaf; watching the trees flower red and white and yellow and green.
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 Arthur Howitzer, Jr; our Pickle Ball Team is called The Cornichons, and our Spiritual Advisor is Elder Galaction of the Holy Mountain.