Christ is born!
This week’s vigil light is offered to God by Pyrohy Workers in memory of Anya Rohmer-Hanson.
The next Financial Committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, January 8, at 6:00 p.m. in the Veteran’s Meeting Room. All Financial Committee members and interested parishioners are invited.
Congratulations to all KofC members who participated in the “Exemplification of Charity, Unity and Fraternity” on January 1. The next meeting of Knights of Columbus Blessed Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Ukrainian Council will be held on Wednesday, January 8, at 7:00 p.m. in the Holy Name Room. All men of the parish are invited to attend.
The Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Branch 108 New Haven and St. Michael Parish will be preparing a Prosphora, a traditional Ukrainian Christmas meal, on Sunday, January 19, after the only one (1) Divine Liturgy at 10:30 a.m. Tickets are $20.00 for adults, free for students Ridna Shkola and altar boys. We will be running a raffle. Please donate items for raffle and cakes for desert. You can buy tickets after each Divine Liturgy in the church hall or contact Anna Salemme 203-934-6520, or purchase tickets at SUMA credit Union.
Sorokousty —All Souls Saturdays will be celebrated on February 15th, March 7th, March 14th, March 21st, and May 30th. Please take a book found in the entrance of the church, fill it out, place it in envelope, and drop it in the collection basket.
Adult Faith Formation
Baptism of Our Lord in the Jordan River
At Your baptism in the Jordan River, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity was proclaimed: the voice of the Father bore witness to You by calling You “My beloved Son.” The Spirit, in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of this declaration. (From the Tropar of the Feast)
At the baptism of Jesus Christ in the Jordan, the public ministry of the Saviour begins. John the Baptist points to Christ in the Jordan and identifies Him as the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” During the baptism of Jesus, the Most Holy Trinity is made known: “Worship of the Trinity was revealed; the voice of the Father bore witness to You, naming you the beloved Son, and the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the word’s certainty.” “The voice of the Father” is the voice of the Heavenly Father, and the “Spirit in the form of a dove” is the Holy Spirit, who descends upon Christ, revealing him to be the Son of God. For this reason, Church tradition refers to the Baptism of Jesus Christ as the Theophany (from the Greek, meaning divine appearance).
The Theophany at the Jordan is liturgically connected with the Feast of the Nativity. In her celebration of both these events, Church tradition emphasizes that both the Incarnation and the Baptism of the Lord are when God appears (in Greek, theophania). In accordance with the text of the Great Blessing of Water at Theophany, “in the preceeding feast we have seen you as a babe, and in this present feast as perfect human, appearing as our perfect God.” At the Nativity, God the Word “was born,” but now he “appears in the flesh to the human race.” At the Nativity, the “Sun of Righteousness” rose, and now it “shines forth.” In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the feast of Theophany is also called the feast of Illumination. The sticheras of the feast of Theophany elucidate the bond between the feasts of the Nativity and Theophany: What was announced by the angel is now announced to the people by the Baptist; the spilling of infant blood caused Bethlehem to become childless, but through the sanctified waters of baptism, the Jordan now has many children. What was announced by the star to the Magi in Bethlehem is now revealed to the world by the Father himself. (Christ our Pascha, 197-198)