Christ is among us!
1. VIGIL LIGHT: This week vigil light is offered to God’s glory by Alexis Hickerson in memory of +Robert Hickerson.
2. Reposed in the Lord: +Frances Harvey. Please remember her in your prayers. ETERNAL MEMORY!
3. Dear parishioners and guests, after each Divine Liturgy, coffee and hard rolls are available in the church hall.
4. The Annual Meeting of the Ukrainian National Association Branch 414 will be held on Sunday, February 25, 2018, at 12:00 noon in St. Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Catholic Church Hall.
All members are invited to attend in order to elect a delegate to attend the convention in May of 2018.
5. SOROKOUSTY: will be celebrated next Sunday, February 25 at 10:00 a.m. 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. Let us remember all our loved ones who have gone to their heavenly reward. Eternal Memory!
The next All Souls commemoration will be on March 4 and 11, and May 19.
6. Replica of the Shroud of Turin will be displayed in St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, East 7th Street in NYC from February 17th to February 25th of this year. Father Emilian Dorosh invites all faithful to take opportunity to venerate God by praying by the Shroud of Turin.
7. By the threefold discipline of fasting, prayer and almsgiving the Church keeps the Great Fast/Lent from Monday, February 12, after the Cheesefare Sunday to the day before Easter, Holy Saturday, March 31. The following regulations apply, in general to all Ukrainian Catholics of the Stamford Eparchy between ages 21 to 60: Abstinence from meat and dairy products on the first day of the Great Fast, February 12, and Good Friday, March 30. The following regulations apply, in general, to all Ukrainians Catholics of the Stamford Eparchy between ages 14 to 60: Abstinence from meat is to be observed on all Fridays of the Great Fast. Abstinence from meat is suggested and encouraged on all Wednesdays of the Great Fast. The following are exempt from abstinence: 1. The poor who live on alms; 2. The sick and the frail; 3. Convalescents who are returning to their strength; 4. Pregnant women, and women who are nursing their children; and 5. Persons who perform hard labor. Meat is to be understood as including not only the flesh, but also those parts of warm-blooded animals that cannot be rendered, i. e., melted down, e.g., the liver, lungs, blood, etc. meat gravy or soup made from meat is included in this prohibition. Dairy products are to be understood as comprising products derived from mammals and birds, but not regarded as meat, e. g., cheese, lard, butter, milk, eggs, etc. Eucharistic Fast: A fast of one hour from food(prior to service begging time) should be kept by those receiving the Eucharist at the evening celebration of the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, as well as, the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great.
The readings from Genesis on the Fridays of the Great Fast point like an arrow to the covenant made on Good Friday, when our Lord gave his body and blood as a new covenant for the life of the world.
The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution, Book Talk with Marci Shore
In this book, Marci Shore evokes the human face of the Ukrainian Revolution. Grounded in the true stories of activists and soldiers, parents and children, Shore blends a narrative of choices with a historian’s reflections on what revolution is and what it means. She sets her portraits of individual revolutionaries against the past as they understand it — and the future as they hope to make it. In so doing, she strives to provide a lesson about human solidarity in a world where the boundary between reality and fiction is ever more effaced.
For our prayer today…
We are at the beginning the season of Great Lent. May I commend to you these titles for your spiritual reading and meditation (listed in no particular order):
Archpriest David Petras reviews some hallmarks of the liturgical observance and prayer.