Category: Great Fast-Lent

Good-by to cheese brings new life at Pascha!

This weekend we are even closer to the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is not found because we give up meat and cheese and follow the prescriptions of the Great Fast like a robot. No, we enter into the Kingdom of God as a result of our being in good relationship with God and our neighbor. Recall Jesus’ teachings on forgiveness, unity, the Our Father, Prodigal Son, and more.

We say good-by to cheese for a period of time to open our hearts and minds and bodies to what the Lord wants to give us: new life. Eating cheese is like eating death in that we eat milk transformed into something new, exciting, robots for the whole of the body, mind and soul. But the Christian is asked to make a 40 day sacrifice of dairy products like cheese so that we can prepare ourselves for glory. God wants us to be a new creation in Him. And sin prevents us from this fact. Corporate sin and personal sin.

Reflecting on the place of forgiveness for the Christian, St Silouan the Athonite tells us that “We have such a law: If you forgive, it means that God has forgiven you; but if you do not forgive your brother, it means that your sin remains with you.”

Below please find link for all the resources prepared for you for the Sunday of Cheese-Fare (also known as the Sunday of Forgiveness!). Listen especially to the Gospel reflection.

Included among this week’s resources is “Great Lent at Home,” with reflections and activities for every day of the Great Fast, beginning with “Clean Monday,” the day following Cheese-Fare Sunday. We hope you will find it helpful as we journey together towards Pascha!

The Sunday of Cheese-Fare

Moving toward the Great Fast: Meat-fare Sunday

As the daylight increases we move closer to Holy Pascha. There is a cosmic connection here. But before we meet the Risen Lord in the Mysteries of Pascha we have a period of more intense prayer, fasting and almsgiving. The three go together otherwise it the Christian practice is bizarre. As one person said, fasting without prayer is a diet.

What is meat-fare Sunday? It is the day we say “good bye to meat” for Lent. The Church teaches us that “In the fasting practice common to all Byzantine Churches Meatfare Sunday is the last day on which meat would be eaten until Pascha. This is the first step towards the fuller discipline of the Great Fast when dairy products would not be eaten as well. This is why next Sunday is called Cheese-fare Sunday (good-bye to dairy products).” We do this fast together; we help each other do what we can to refrain from meat not because of some vapid moralism but to open our body, mind and soul to God’s grace. Fasting, and therefore meat-fare Sunday is fitting because it “warns us against a false subjectivism or individualism in the coming Fast.”

The great bishop of Constantinople, St John Chrysostom tells us:

The value of fasting consists not only of avoiding certain foods, but in giving up sinful practices. The one who limits his fast only to abstaining meat mocks it! … For a true fast, you cannot fast only with your mouth. You must fast with your eyes, your ears, your feet, your hands, and all parts of your body… For what good is it if you don’t eat meat or poultry, and yet you bite and devour the flesh of your neighbor?

The gospel reflection and the Resurrectional troparion for this Sunday of Meat-fare is here

Sunday of the Holy Cross resources

When, then, you make the sign of the cross on the forehead, arm yourself with a saintly boldness, and reinstall your soul in its old liberty; for you are not ignorant that the cross is a prize beyond all price.

Consider what is the price given for your ransom, and you will never more be slave to any man on earth. This reward and ransom is the cross. You should not then, carelessly make the sign on the forehead, but you should impress it on your heart with the love of a fervent faith. Nothing impure will dare to disturb you on seeing the weapon, which overcomes all things. (St. John Chrysostom)

As we approach the Sunday of the Veneration of the Holy Cross, let us consider also how we reverence the cross in our day to day life. Do I make the Sign of the Cross impressed on my heart with fervent faith?

Here are the Biblical, liturgical and catechetical resources for this Sunday given to us from God With Us Online. Be sure to both the Troparion in the Ukrainian tone and the Gospel reflection.

Sorokousty– All Souls’ Saturdays 2021

During the Great Lent there are special services held for the deceased members of a parish. These requiem services, known as “Sorokousty”, involves the reading of the individual names of deceased family members of parishioners.

Kindly provide Father Iura with the names of your deceased loved ones whom you wish to have remembered in our prayers.

Sorokousty will be celebrated on All Souls’ Saturdays: February 6th, February 27th , March 6th, March 13th, and May 22nd . Please take your book found in the entrance of the church, fill it out, place it in envelope, and drop it in the collection basket.

If you need a new book, ask Father Iura.

Great and Holy Week Schedule 2019

Great Wednesday, 4/17
7:00 p.m. Divine Liturgy of the Pre-sanctified Gifts

Great Thursday, 4/18
7:00 p.m. Great Matins and the Proclamation of the Passion Gospels

Great Friday, 4/19 —a day of strict fast and abstinence –NO meat or dairy products
4:00 p.m. Great Vespers with the Laying Out and Veneration of the Holy Shroud

Great Saturday, 4/20
8:00 a.m. Divine Liturgy

4:00 p.m. Blessing of Easter Foods
6:00 p.m. Blessing of Easter Foods

7:00 p.m. Great Vespers and Prayers at the Tomb

Sunday, 4/21, Resurrection of Our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ
9:00 a.m. Procession and Pascal Matins
10:30 a.m. For the people of the parish

Blessing of Artos
Blessing of Easter Foods

5th Sunday of the Fast – St Mary of Egypt

This Sunday of the breathtaking life of Saint Mary of Egypt is commemorated and presented to us sinners as an example of heroic hope in the mercy of the Lord and the heights it can raise us to.

The boundlessly sinful woman who took all in lust now boundlessly gives herself to Love. Our unity with Christ is a wedding that gives life, rather than take away. She exemplifies the beauty of Catholic sexuality, and in that light sheds even greater light on the “no-no’s” of the Church that everyone in their worldly thinking sees as discrimination. We don’t look at the No’s as if they were the meaning of our life. We don’t look at what we must not do but what we should be doing and always in better ways! Fear of death is an imperfect way of avoiding sin (just as in Confession’s contrition). It is LOVE that must draw us to God, and naturally this means away from any disfigurement (sin) of His Image in us and the beauty of His works.

Saint Mary reflects the harrowing difference between a sterile taking away of someone else’s treasure for our pleasure (her previous life) vs. the fertile and life-giving love that draws us out of ourselves to give this self to another as the height of our Matrimonial unity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of Matrimony’s purpose as being two things: to get yourself and the other to Heaven, and participating in God’s creating act by making souls for Heaven. It doesn’t talk about “he’s handsome and I get butterflies” or “she’s pretty and I like her”. These are natural feelings and beautiful in the right place. However, to follow them as the primary source and goal of our sexual love is a blasphemy against the Sacrament of Matrimony and our Crowning as mutual martyrs for the sake of Love. It is like saying “I am not a Christian, I see the Eucharist, I don’t think about God but I receive Him because the Host tastes good.” What a blasphemy and a sorrowful misunderstanding of the treasure unfolding in the Sacrament!

Saint Mary of Egypt who had known the entirety of worldly pleasures and a sexuality given to lust, finally in one moment of Grace understood that the true Love everyone is called to have and experience is the One hanging on the Cross. She represents a soul that crucifies itself and all the worldliness within it to be raised in Christ from the tomb of sin. And the means for this is always the Cross. A soul that crucifies its plans and picture-perfect future to raise that “unplanned” life growing in her womb. A soul that crucifies its pride and false expectations of what it “deserves” in order to refrain from insulting but rather raising the other. A soul that crucifies its pleasure and rest to stick with its family and maintain a tiresome job to raise the kids. So on…

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Presanctified Liturgy TONIGHT

Today, Friday, March 29, at 7:00 p.m. Father Iura will serve the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, in English and Ukrainian.

This is our weekly Lenten devotion. Join us in prayer and the reception of the Eucharist. Bring a friend.