Category: Pascha and Pentecost

Pascha

“Christ is risen! Indeed, he is risen”

It has become a habit of the “wise of this world,” – those who claim to discern reality as it truly is – to say that modern man can no longer believe in miracles. Science has invalidated “miracles,” and while the Resurrection is a very nice thing, it is only a spiritual subjective experience. But today I say: ‘Says who?”

Today St. Paul says, “Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? (1 Corinthians 1:20)” Even when we say that the resurrection is a spiritual subjective experience, we do this because we say that “God is the ground of all being,” as St. Paul preached to the Athenians, “‘In him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28)” If so, can he not give life that defies our earthly wisdom? Indeed, Jesus said to the Sadducees who denied resurrection, “As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?

He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled” (Mark 12:26-27). Did not St. Paul warn us, “if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14).

What the resurrection of Jesus has taught us is that we enter the fullness of life through the gates of death, just as he did in the cross and resurrection, for “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit,” (John 12:24) and again, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). The only difference is that Christ is risen, because “But God raised [Jesus] up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it … nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption” (Acts 2:24.27). Because of our sins, we must go through the corruption of death to attain life. The “wise of this world” say this is a childish belief, how can this happen, but again St. Paul writes, “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Nor, my brothers and sisters, is this other-worldly escapism: the resurrection can and should transform the way we live in the world today.

Pages: 1 2 3

Easter Sunday Liturgy 2020

On Easter Sunday, the Divine Liturgy will be live streamed at 10:00 a.m. in English and in Ukrainian.

It will be on the parish Facebook page (stmichaelnewhaven) AND it will later be posted here on this website https://stmichaelukrainian.org

Live stream Paschal liturgies

In addition to liveliturgy.com, which will give you abundance of options for the Divine Liturgy around the world, in various Eastern Churches and languages. This option was previously sent to you.
 
You can also attend the Paschal liturgies at St Michael’s in Terryville, CT … https://stmichaelsterryville.org/holy-week

Easter Basket blessing 2020

Easter Baskets will be blessed on Saturday, April 11.

This blessing will be live streamed via Facebook at 4:00 PM AND will also be posted on the parish website (https://stmichaelukrainian.org)

Parishioners will be able to sprinkle their baskets with holy water while Fr. Iura does this virtual blessing.

Those parishioners who do not have access to the internet and wish to have their baskets blessed may come to the church parking lot at 4:15 PM or 6:00 PM and Fr. Iura will bless your Easter Baskets while you remain in your vehicles.

 

Please do not bring your baskets into the church or the church hall.

Thank you for your understanding.

The Meaning of the Ascension

“Jesus said to her (Mary Magdalene), ‘Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not touch me (Μή μου ἅπτου / Noli me tangere / Не прикасайся мне), for/because (γὰρ) I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (Jn 20: 15-17)

As many Christians celebrate the Lord’s Ascension this Thursday, (and we, Orthodox Christians, prepare to celebrate it next Thursday), I’m thinking about what the Lord says to Mary Magdalene about His upcoming Ascension. She’s not to “touch“ Him as she could previously, physically, “because“ He had not yet “ascended“ to sit at the right hand of the Father, whence He was to send down His Holy Spirit, ten days after His Ascension, on Pentecost. The Ascension was to take Christ’s physical Presence from us, and prepare us for a new kind of His Presence among us, in the Holy Spirit, in Whom we are given to “touch“ Christ in a new way, in the sacraments of the Church. Christ is preparing Mary for that new reality, because, apparently, He knows that she is ready for that, even while the “doubting“ Thomas was not, who was given physically to touch the wounds of the risen Lord (Jn 20: 24-29).

Why would Christ remove Himself from us, physically, in His (physical) Ascension to sit at the right hand of the Father, in order to inaugurate the sacraments of the Church? Because 1. He wanted to demonstrate to us His unity with the Father, as the “place“ from which the grace of God, the Holy Spirit, is poured out upon us; and 2. Because in this project Christ was inaugurating, called “Church,“ He was entrusting the celebration of these sacraments to physically-present human beings, His apostles and their followers, whom He was to empower to do so with the (invisible) grace of the Holy Spirit, and no longer with His own (visible) Presence, in the way it was “touchable“ to us throughout His earthly mission. So as our Lord prepares to elevate fallible human beings, the apostles and all of us, to be vessels of the Holy Spirit in this world, He “ascends“ to His Father in His human body, thus elevating our humanity (in His human body) to a “place“ higher than it ever was before. When He ascends, He’s restoring our dignity, which we had lost when we followed the God-less advice of the serpent (Gen 3: 1-7), and which we continue to lose whenever we get caught up in the pointless circles of our obsessions and addictions. So let me break out of the pointless circles today, and be elevated onto the life-bringing Cross, which points in all four directions, extending me and dignifying me to self-offer as Christ did, in His all-embracing arms, stretched out on the Cross.

Pages: 1 2

Ascension Thursday 2019

Thursday, 5/30, Ascension of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ –it is a holy day

The Divine Liturgy will be offered:

9:00 a.m. +Vira Walnycky requested by Ksenia Kuzmycz (in Ukrainian)
7:00 p.m. For the people of the parish (in English)

St. Augustine of Hippo, one the Doctors of the Church, preached:

On this day therefore, that is, the fortieth after His Resurrection, the Lord ascended into heaven.  We have not seen, but we believe. They who beheld Him proclaimed what they saw, and they have filled the whole earth:

There are no speeches nor languages where their voices are not heard.  Their sound hath gone forth into all the earth: and their words unto the ends of the world (Ps. xviii. 4, 5).

And so they have reached even unto us, and awakened us from sleep. And lo! this death is celebrated throughout the world.

#ByzantineCatholicNewHaven
#stmichaelnewhaven

Myrrh Bearing Women

SEEKING THE LIVING AMONG THE DEAD
(Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers)

“The godly women hastened to You with myrrh, O Christ. The one whom they had sought with tears, as a dead man, they worshipped as the living God! And they proclaimed the mystical pascha to Your disciples.” (Paschal Canon, Troparion of Ode 7)

The women hastened to the Tomb that Sunday morning, looking for “a dead man.” But the One they found, the One revealed to them, was “the living God.” Hence the “mystical pascha” (i.e., “passover” or “transition”) that they proclaimed to the disciples was not only the Lord’s transition from death to life, but their own, the women’s, transition from merely-human dedication to “a dead man” to faith in “the living God.” Because their beloved Teacher was “more” than they had recognized. In His resurrection, Jesus Christ exceeded all their expectations.

Today let me not approach “the living God,” my risen Lord, as if He were “a dead man”; as one to whom I may pay my respects in some external way, but whose life-giving Presence in my world I don’t quite recognize, for all practical purposes. Let me embrace wholeheartedly the Great Fact that He is, indeed, risen, and is there for me, and alive to me, beyond my expectations. “Let God arise,” I say this morning with the Myrrh-Bearing Women, “and His enemies be scattered” from my heart. Today let me start anew, and embrace, once again, the new life in my ever-living, ever life-bringing Lord, by re-connecting with Him, rather than “seek the living among the dead,” – among the merely-human opinions and expectations that come from my own head or from God-less voices in my world. O Christ, our mystical Pascha, help us transition once again today, from the tombs of self-isolation and self-reliance, according to our oft-suffocating expectations of ourselves and others, to the freedom of communion with You, a Lord beyond all our expectations.

Meditation by Sr. Vassa

The Myrrh-bearers —Third Sunday of Pascha

This Sunday presents us with the proclamation of the resurrection according to St. Mark.

We are first confronted with the death of our Lord. Joseph of Arimathea goes to Pilate to reclaim the body. Pilate wonders that he died so quickly, while Joseph entombs his body with great care and love. As Christians we must confront the reality that Jesus died as a sign of his love. His glory was the Cross, making the Christian faith unique – love is found in sacrifice, life is found in death, power is found in service. And St. Paul’s words are read on Good Friday: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside.’” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19). Believing in the Resurrection, we are confronted with the Christian paradox that the world cannot understand.

The women go to the tomb on the third day, but Jesus is not there. The young man announces to them: “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him” (Mark 16:6). The women are told to announce the resurrection, but they fail to do so, “They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). This too is a challenge to our faith. Where do we seek the Christ? Can we today complete the mission the women were entrusted with, can we proclaim the resurrection? Do we understand the gospel and commit ourselves to the Lord, “who trampled upon death by death.”

Meditation by Archpriest David Petras

#ByzantineCatholicNewHaven
#stmichaelnewhaven