Brothers and Sisters,
Greetings in the Name of the Lord.
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 this coming Friday, March 6, for The Akathist Service. You should arrive early to get a parking place and a good spot in the nave. The service will begin at 7pm, and, at the conclusion of the service, Demetry Zozuyla will be tonsured a Reader. Afterwards, we will provide refreshments, and His Eminence will visit with us and answer any questions you might have about life in our archdiocese.
This coming Sunday, March 8, Daylight Savings Time begins, so we will add to our asceticism and Spring Forward by setting our clocks ahead one hour before we go to bed.
Fasting Days
We are keeping 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, March 2-Friday, March 6: 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 The Letters of St Ignatius. 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, March 2
Great Compline 7pm
Tuesday, March 3
The Inquirer’s Class 7pm
Wednesday, March 4
Pre-Sanctified Liturgy 7pm
Friday, March 6
The Akathist Hymn with Metropolitan SABA 7pm
Saturday, March 7
St Thomas School 4pm
Great Vespers 6pm
Sunday, March 8 The Second Sunday in Great Lent
Orthros 8am
Church School 8:15am
Divine Liturgy 10am
Fellowship Hour Noon
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 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
On those Sundays when Church School is in session, let’s remember that this is an opportunity for all the parents to participate in Orthros or offer some private prayers or catch up on some spiritual reading. The common room in the parish house is available for those who prefer not to be in Orthros, but, when we are in that room, we need to be as quiet as possible with our personal devotions, and we need to remember that Fellowship Hour does not start until after the Divine Liturgy has ended.
an unworthy priest
aidan