Parish announcements this week

Christ is in our midst!

This week’s vigil light is offered to God’s glory by Halia Lodynsky and family in memory of Stefan Jurchak.

THANK YOU to Mr. Paul Zalonski for his donation of the icon of Our Lady Help of Persecuted Christians to our church. Written by master iconographer Fabrizio Diomedi, the icon depicts the Holy Theotokos, with the Child Jesus over her heart, spreading her protective mantle around a representative gathering of recent Christian martyrs, men and women, young and old, from East and West; priests, religious and laypersons, martyrs of Latin and Eastern Catholicism, including Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic and Syriac traditions.

THANK YOU to Mr. Michael Muryn, Ms. Mary Muryn and Mr. Paul Zalonski for preparing a new Divine Liturgy Missal for use in our church. Originally a Knights of Columbus project, these Missals have a larger format with bigger, easier to read printing.

The next meeting of Knights of Columbus Blessed Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Ukrainian Council will be held on Monday, December 2, 7:00 p.m. in the Holy Name Room. All men of the parish are invited to attend.

All donations and contributions must be received by Wednesday, December 25th to be recorded on the annual statement for the year 2019.

Our next Pyrohy Project will be December 14. We need your help to peel potatoes on Friday, December 13, and more help on Saturday, December 14. Please come and help.

St. Michael’s Day will be celebrated TODAY, November 24th On this day we will have only one (1) Divine Liturgy at 10:30 a.m. After the Divine Liturgy, we will have a dinner and short program. All parishioners are cordially invited to this celebration. Tickets are available through Margaret Maybury, Svitlana Nakonechnyj (SUMA Yonkers Credit Union, Branch New Haven) and Fr. Iura Godenciuc. Tickets are $25.00 for adults, $10.00 for youth between 14and 18. Free for students Ridna Shkola, altar boys and for children under 12. We will be running a raffle. If you would like to donate any items to be raffled, please bring them to our church hall on Sundays before our Feast Day. Also we ask for donations for dessert.

Ukrainian Women’s League of New Haven, Branch 108 will be holding their annual Christmas Bazaar, Sunday, December 8, Saturday, December 14 and Sunday, December 15, from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. On December 14 and 15 we will have baked goods. Pshenytsia (wheat) for kutia will also be available (new source, more tender). Donations of Ukrainian items would be greatly welcome. (please bring to church hall.) For more information, contact Anna Salemme (203) 934-6520 or Larissa S. (203) 248-9767.

REMINDER: Please don’t forget to donate to the Charities Appeal. Kindly make checks payable to the Byzantine Rite Eparchy of Stamford. DO NOT MAIL THIS FORM TO THE CHANCERY OFFICE. We sincerely ask all parishioners to make generous contributions.

PARISH MAINTENANCE UPDATE: Please take note of the fact that there is various concrete repair work being conducted around the Parish on all five buildings. This includes repointing the church stairs, repairing walkways and concrete areas. Your care in walking around and avoiding the work areas for your safety is appreciated.

STAMFORD CHARITIES APPEAL

REMINDER: Please don’t forget to donate to the Charities Appeal. Kindly make checks payable to the Byzantine Rite Eparchy of Stamford. DO NOT MAIL THIS FORM TO THE CHANCERY OFFICE. We sincerely ask all parishioners to make generous contributions.

Adult Formation Day

From a 2016 sermon by His Beatitude Sviatoslav of Kyiv and Halych

National Symphony of Ukraine in CT

The National Symphony of Ukraine will be touring the USA. Volodymyr Sirenko is the conductor and performing at UCONN’s Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts on Friday, November 22 at 7 p.m.

The NSU was founded in 1949.

Pre-concert lecture ( included in the ticket price) by Dr Glenn Stanley at 6:15 p.m.

University of Connecticut, 2132 Hillside Road, Unit 3104, Storrs.

The program includes:

~American Rhapsody, composed by UCONN 2019 Grammy Award-winner Kenneth Fuchs
~Brahms Double Concerto with Sophie Shao, cello and I as soloists
~Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6

Ticket prices $15.00 – $45.00
Tickets may be purchased online.

Holodomor Memorial Service 2019

Today, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC held the Holodomor Memorial Service.

As Deacon Thomas Stadnik said, “The Service was held to commemorate the 86th anniversary of the Genocide of Ukrainian People by artificially imposed Famine during 1932 and 1933 at the command of the merciless Satanic sociopath and mass murderer Josef Stalin. After imposing a collective farming program, Soviet authorities confiscated all food and beverages and all livestock from vast stretches of Ukraine, leaving people literally to starve to death, while the facts of these events were covered up and denied by Stalin and his henchmen. Whole extended families died out in this horrid genocidal famine. Today we pray for all who died, especially those who have no one left alive to pray for them, and for those few who did survive and live with the terrible memory of that experience.

For those who have not heard of the Holodomor before, it is recommended that you see the recently released movie “Mr Jones”, about the Irish journalist Gareth Jones who visited Ukraine at that time and documented this horror.

The bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox communities presided.

Picture by Jennifer Stadnik

Divine Liturgy for the coming week

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Sunday, 11/17, 23rd Sunday after Pentecost —Our Holy Father Gregory the Wonderworker
9:00 a.m. For our parishioners
10:30 a.m. +Ivan Godenciuc

Epistle: Ephesians 2:4-10
Gospel: Luke 12:16–21, Tone 6

Monday, 1/18, The Holy Martyrs Plato and Roman
9:00 a.m. No intention for the Divine Liturgy

Tuesday, 11/19, The Holy Prophet Obadiah
9:00 a.m. +Fr. Ivan and Sofia requested by the Walnycky family

Wednesday, 11/20, Forefeast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple; Our Venerable Father Gregory of Decapolis
9:00 a.m. No intention for the Divine Liturgy

Thursday, 11/21, The Entrance into the Temple of our Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary
9:00 a.m. Special Intention requested by the Walnycky family

Friday, 11/22, Post-feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God; The Holy Apostle Philemon and Those with Him.
9:00 a.m. +Iwan Sowa (10th Anniv., Pan.) requested by Bohdan Sowa

Saturday, 11/23, Post-feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God
9:00 a.m. No intention for the Divine Liturgy

Sunday, 11/24, 24th Sunday after Pentecost —Post-feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God; The Holy Great-Martyr Catherine
10:15 a.m. Lytija and the Blessing of Bread
10:30 a.m. For our parishioners
Anointing*Myrovann

Epistle: Ephesians 2:14-22
Gospel: Luke 13:10-17, Tone 7

Parish announcements this week

Christ is in our midst!

This week’s vigil light is offered to God by Vasyl Ivantsiv in memory of Eva.

Anya Rohmer-Hanson (Myketey) fell asleep in the Lord. Please remember her in your prayers. Eternal Memory!

PHILIP’S FAST, ПИЛИПІВКА, the pre-Christmas fast which began on November 15, the day after the feast of St. Philip, is a 40 day period of spiritual preparation for the celebration of the Nativity/Theophany cycle of the church year. Once a period of strict fasting, it has now been changed to a period of voluntary fasting and works of penance.

St. Michael’s Day will be celebrated on November 24th. On this day we will have only One Divine Liturgy at 10:30 AM. After the Divine Liturgy, we will have a dinner and short program. All parishioners are cordially invited to this celebration. Tickets are available through Margaret Maybury, Svitlana Nakonechnyj (SUMA Yonkers Credit Union, Branch New Haven) and Fr. Iura Godenciuc. Tickets are $25.00 for adults, $10.00 for youth between 14and 18. Free for students Ridna Shkola, altar boys and for children under 12. We will be running a raffle. If you would like to donate any items to be raffled, please bring them to our church hall today before our Feast Day. Also we ask for donations for dessert.

The Ukrainian Ridna Shkola of New Haven had started its school year with 3 classes: 1.) A nursery school program for children 3-5 years old; 2.) A class to teach Ukrainian to English language-speaking children ages 6-10; 3.) A class where instruction is only in the Ukrainian language for children 8-11 years old. Classes are from 9:30 to 11:30 each Saturday morning. Religious instruction follows at 11:30 a.m. We have dance instruction as well from 12:00 noon.

PARISH MAINTENANCE UPDATE NOTICE: Please take note of the fact that there is various concrete repair work being conducted around the Parish on all five buildings. This includes repointing the Church stairs, repairing walkways and concrete areas. Your care in walking around and avoiding the work areas for your safety is appreciated.

STAMFORD CHARITIES APPEAL

REMINDER: Please don’t forget to donate to the Charities Appeal. Kindly make checks payable to the Byzantine Rite Eparchy of Stamford. DO NOT MAIL THIS FORM TO THE CHANCERY OFFICE. We sincerely ask all parishioners to make generous contributions.

SEE SOMETHING – SAY SOMETHING: Dear Parishioners, the physical property of this Parish consists of five separate buildings. These buildings belong to you, take pride in them. If you see something broken or damaged, please pass the information on so that it can be fixed. Tell Father Iura, send an email to the Parish, or drop a note in the collection box at the Divine Liturgy on Sunday, so that we can repair/fix what is wrong. Suggestions for improvement are also happily accepted. Thank you.

PARISH MAINTENANCE UPDATE NOTICE: Please take note of the fact that there is various concrete repair work being conducted around the Parish on all five buildings. This includes repointing the Church stairs, repairing walkways and concrete areas. Your care in walking around and avoiding the work areas for your safety is appreciated.

Adult Faith Formation

The Feast of the Entrance into the Temple of Our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary is celebrated on November 21 each year. The feast commemorates when as a young child, the Virgin Mary entered the Temple in Jerusalem.

When Mary was three years old, Joachim and Anna decided that the time had come to fulfill their promise and offer her to the Lord. Joachim gathered the young girls of the town to form an escort, and he made them go in front of Mary, carrying torches. Captivated by the torches, the young child followed joyfully to the Temple, not once looking back at her parents nor weeping as she was parted from them.

The Nativity Fast Calendar 2019

The Advent/Nativity Fast journey has begun! See how this journey unfolds on a daily basis by walking this calendar to Christmas. Follow the Nativity calendar with your spouse  and children as daily an Advent discipline! 

Join the many of us who do this every year and prosper your soul in the effort. You won’t be the same. Begin today!!!

The attached Nativity Fast Calendar a beautiful thing to follow.

The 2019 New Testament Challenge

Beginning, today, November 15th (the beginning of the Advent/Nativity Fast), we will once again be embarking on our annual challenge event to read through the entire New Testament (aloud) by Christmas! This is a great endeavor and exercise and you should join it! Read with your spouse as an Advent discipline! Even children can do this, and they have. You can do it, too.

Join the many of us who do this every year and prosper your soul in the effort. You won’t be the same. Begin today!!!

The New Testament Challenge is kind of a tradition. We invite you to join us in this 40 day offering and make more time for the reading of Holy Scripture this Advent.

Here is schedule (a .pdf) for The 2019 New Testament Challenge

As our bishops said in the message for the Philips Fast 2019, we find ourselves at the present moment: Pylypivka: the 40-day period of waiting and watching for the fulfillment of God’s promises, and the coming together of humanity and divinity in the Christ child, who, with his nativity, will bring new life and new hope into our world and our lives. No better way to see God’s promises than to pray, read, study sacred Scripture!

Pylypivka (Advent) message 2019

Pylypivka (Advent) Pastoral of the Ukrainian Catholic Hierarchy of the USA to our clergy, hieromonks and brothers, religious sisters, seminarians and beloved faithful,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

We, the faithful experience the life of the Church by means of the unending cycle of the liturgical year. The liturgical year is not simply how we mark the passage of time in the church calendar year. The liturgical year tells the story of God’s life in the world, a story in which we are participants, not just spectators or listeners. It is a re-living of the life of Christ, His Most Holy Mother and the Saints. And liturgy is the means by which we tell, live, and experience the story. Through liturgy it becomes real to us and becomes part of our own lives.

It has been said that liturgy is humanity’s yearning for God, and that grace is God’s yearning for humanity. Liturgically, this story of holy yearning – God’s yearning for us and our yearning for God – begins at the point in the liturgical year that we find ourselves at the present moment: Pylypivka: the 40-day period of waiting and watching for the fulfillment of God’s promises, and the coming together of humanity and divinity in the Christ child, who, with his nativity, will bring new life and new hope into our world and our lives.

Too often we see this time of Pylypivka, through the secular lens of our modern post-Christian society, as the final countdown to Christmas, the time when we get things ready for the holidays. By now the malls and stores have long been decorated for Christmas. Christmas gift lists are growing and the number of shopping days is shrinking. Party menus are being planned. Travel plans are being made. Families are gathering. Expectations and hopes are growing. Christmas trees need decorating and presents need wrapping. The pressure is mounting. There is so much to do and so little time to do it in. We feel stressed and distracted.

This is not the liturgical or spiritual understanding of Pylypivka proposed by the Church. This is not the ideal way of spending this holy time. Pylypivka is not the time when we prepare for Christmas. It is the time in which we are prepared for Christmas. It is the time not so much for action as for reflection, a time not for doing but for being open and receptive. Pylypivka is the time when the Church offers to us an alternative to the secular model of “getting ready for the holidays” and asks us to slow down, be still, and be quiet. We are called to keep awake, to be looking and listening for the God who is coming to us. We are called to prepare the way of the Lord in our hearts. It is a time to watch and reflect on who we are. It is a time to look for Christ in all the unexpected places – in the ordinary events of everyday life, in the poor, the hungry, and the needy. And we wait and watch for the angelic messenger who will tell us of the birth of the Christ child.

Being still and keeping attentive is hard work at any time but especially now, during one of the busiest times of the year, so full of distractions and stress, which makes keeping still and attentive even more necessary for us. The time of Pylypivka reminds us that waiting and watching is holy work. So how do we do this?

The tradition of the Church teaches us that silence is the key. Silence is a way of waiting, a way of watching, and a way of listening to what is going on within and around us. Through stillness and silence, through attentiveness and watchfulness we come to self-knowledge and the true spiritual meaning of the coming of Christ.

Anya Rohmer-Hanson fell asleep in the Lord

We are sad to announce that Anya Rohmer-Hanson fell asleep in the Lord on Friday, November 8, 2019. She was 74 and was undergoing medical treatment at Yale.

No funeral arrangements are made as yet. According to the wishes of Anya, no funeral liturgy will be served. A memorial service will likely happen in August 2020.

Take a moment today to pray for the peaceful repose of the soul of Anyaand the consolation of her family and friends who mourn her.

May Mary, the Holy Theotokos, St. Michael the Archangel and all the saints and blesseds present Anya to the Lord of Life.

Eternal memory.

Divine Liturgy for the coming week

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Sunday, 11/10, 22nd Sunday after Pentecost
9:00 a.m. For our parishioners
10:30 a.m. God’s blessing and health for Gloria and Donald Horbaty (50th wedding Anniversary) requested by children and family

Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18
Gospel: Luke 10:25–37, Tone 5

Monday, 11/11, Our Venerable Father Theodore and Martyr Victor
9:00 a.m. +Paul and Johanna Patrylak (Pan.) requested by Maria Radawiec

Tuesday, 11/12, Holy Priest Martyr Josaphat
9:00 a.m. +Henryka Atonyszyn requested by Alicja Krenta

Wednesday, 11/13, Our Holy Father John Chrysostom
9:00 a.m. + Maria Sowa requested by Sestretsi

Thursday, 11/14, Holy and Praiseworthy Apostle Philip
7:00 p.m. +Stefan Jurczak (40 days, Pan.) requested by Halia Lodynsky and children

Friday, 11/15, Holy Martyrs Gurias and Samonas
9:00 a.m. +Stefan Jurczak ( Pan.) requested by Gloria and Donald Horbaty

Saturday, 11/16, Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew
9:00 a.m. +Stefan Jurczak requested by Jerry, Donna, Adam, Jaimee and Andew Lodynsky

Sunday, 11/17, 23rd Sunday after Pentecost
9:00 a.m. For our parishioners
10:30 a.m. +Ivan Godenciuc

Epistle: Ephesians 2:4-10
Gospel: Luke 12:16-21, Tone 6