Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
Please remember to bring canned goods for our Hill Country Community Ministries Basket. The folks who staff that important local ministry tell us that they are seeing record numbers of people, so be sure and pick up some extra food when you make your next grocery run.
Metropolitan SABA is returning to Central Texas to visit those communities he had to miss due to last month's weather. He will be at St John's on Friday, March 6, for The Akathist Service. The service will begin at 7pm, but you should arrive early to get a parking place and a good spot in the nave. Afterwards, we will provide refreshments, and His Eminence will visit with us and answer any questions you might have about life in our archdiocese.
Fasting Days
On Monday, February 23, we will begin the traditional fasting discipline in which we go without meat (beef, pork, chicken, and fish with backbones), dairy products, oil, wine, and hard liquor through Pascha, Sunday, April 12 (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, February 23-Friday, February 27: Orthros 5am; Vespers 5pm (please also check the schedule of Lenten Services; it’s always a good idea to check the day before and make sure nothing has come up to change the regular schedule). However, Fr. Andrew, Seth Hart, and many other folks continue to broadcast daily readings from spiritual books online. They are now reading A Life Testimony by Metropolitan SABA. The schedule is as follows: M-F at 12pm.
In addition to the daily Synaxarion readings posted in the #synaxarion channel on Discord, the online team is now posting daily Bible Readings that will allow you to read through the Bible in a year. These readings are posted in the #bible-365 channel.
Monday, February 23
Great Compline 7pm
Tuesday, February 24
Great Compline 7pm
Wednesday, February 25
Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Thursday, February 26
Great Compline 7pm
Friday, February 27
The Akathist Hymn 7pm
Saturday, February 28
St Thomas School 4pm
Great Vespers 6pm
Sunday, March 1 The Sunday of Orthodoxy
Orthros 8am
Church School 8:15am
Divine Liturgy 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
Youth 1pm
Coming Up
This year, the Saturdays of Souls fall on March 14 and May 30. On those Saturdays, we pray for our departed friends and loved ones, and the Burial Society has provided us with some helpful guidelines on how to submit the names for those whom we wish to have remembered in the Divine Services. You can find those guidelines in the documents attached to the email version of this newsletter. On those Saturdays, we also prepare for our departure from this life, and our Burial Society can also help us with a lot of those practical details. Members of the society will be present on each Saturday, and they can answer all your questions and help get you started on that process that so very many of us just try to postpone. Since there are four Saturdays of Souls, our hope is that all of us will attend the Divine Services on at least one of those days, so look at your calendar and go ahead and pick a Saturday on which you can join us.
The archdiocese expects all of us to make our confession prior to Pascha. Here in our parish, we do not offer the Mystery of Holy Confession during Holy Week, so that means we now have six weeks to get that done. Of course, that seems like a long time, but it will go by very quickly, so we need to plan ahead. Holy Confession is available on Saturday evenings after Great Vespers or just about any other time with a specific appointment (our priests do not hear immediate-request-on-the-spot confessions).
Our Moment of Grace and Courtesy
Now that we have a nice railing for older folks to use when they are getting in and out of the Long Hall, let’s be sure to leave the railing clear for them to use. It’s not going to help them feel like valued members of our parish if they have to ask acrobatic children or lounging adults to move out of the way so they have access to the railing.
an unworthy priest
aidan