A New Church Year, A Fresh StartOur Church, like our daily lives, is full of calendars and cycles. Just like our annual calendar has a distinctive start to the new year each January 1st, our ecclesiastical new year starts on September 1st each year. Historically, this was the time of harvest, preparations for the coming winter and the following year. It was a time of thankfulness for God's provisions for the previous year, seeing His sovereignty to enable us to complete another year, and entreat Him to bless this coming year.

As we look back at the past year, we may have a hard time finding our Lord with so many challenges and sufferings we, and our world, have experienced. Some of us have been thoroughly beat down by real hardships and illnesses, confused by information overload, or feeling like failures or guilty telling ourselves we should have done more. We may have stepped back from coming to church regularly to try to just survive.

As a priest of almost one year now, I share more in the struggles that all of you face and I lament with what you in your sorrows and trials. Yet despite all of pain and anguish we have all faced, here we stand, as a community of faithful Christians seeking Christ's will and His mercy. Through our small community and fellowship with one another we have been able to stay sane and be able to see glimpses of Christ through the darkness around us. Through the Divine Liturgy, we have been nourished by the True Life of Christ to experience something beyond this shadowy world. Through confession we have been able to pour out our sins, struggles, and fears to receive guidance and forgiveness.

With the coming of the new Church year, the Church offers us another blessing, a fresh start. A fresh start to reconnect with Christ, with one another and return to His Church regardless of what happened last year. Not to fulfil some religious obligation, not because the priest is telling you to, and not because it will magically make all our problems go away but because it is the one place where we can find Truth and Life. Amidst the shifting sands of our life and the chaos in the world, it is the only rock to cling to for stability. It is the place that welcomes all of us, no matter where we are, becoming a hospital for our torn souls. 

May we all take this blessed opportunity of a fresh start to come to the Lord with our fears and the tragedy in of lives. To put on the armor of light to stand with the Lord to face the new year in the ark of salvation, His Church; with each other, with the saints and Angels, and with our Holy Mother, the Theotokos.

In Christ,
Fr. Steve

In August each year we enter into a unique, 2 week period of fasting (8/1-8/14) and preparation to celebrate the dormition (the falling asleep) of Christ's mother, the holy Theotokos (8/15). The small Paraklesis service to the Theotokos is offered frequently during this 2 week period to supplicate the Theotokos for her prayers just as we would ask anyone else to pray for us. For some of who are newer to Orthodoxy, this is a feast that may seem unfamiliar to us and we may not be sure how to approach this beautiful and grace filled feast.

To help all of us learn and deepen our understanding of this beautiful feast day, I would like to invite everyone to come to a special presentation about this feast day and the tomb of the Theotokos. In 2018 I was blessed to be able to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and one of the holy sites we visited was the tomb of the Theotokos. I will be offering brief perspectives from historical, biblical, patristic, and liturgical viewpoints on this incredible feast along with walking you through pictures of the tomb of the Theotokos so you can get a glimpse into this incredible holy site.

The presentation will be offered on Wednesday, August 11th at ~6pm, after Paraklesis (the service starts at 5pm).

I hope everyone is able to attend so we can all learn and grow together!

In Christ,
​
Fr. Steve

​How do we participate in the Divine Liturgy? This liturgy, the work of the people, is so rich many books are written about its depth of meaning and history. It has developed over the centuries into what we do today but with the same sense of otherworldliness. By God’s grace we ascend into the heavens. There is an action happening that we should become more and more aware of to aid us in our level of participation in it. In answering the question about how to participate in it, the first two steps might be attending the services as often as possible and paying attention, the latter sometimes being a challenge because of the “dirt” of the world we have on us when we enter.

If you were to attend a hockey match, your appreciation of the contest would depend on the degree to which you understand the rules and strategy of the game. Likewise, as we understand the action of the Diving Liturgy, we will enhance our participation and come to understand that the nave (the inside of the church where the laity stand) is not filled with observers only. The laity do not simply watch with their spiritual eyes the priest rise to the heavens with the angels accompanying him; no, they go with him to be with the Lord Who is serving the Liturgy as the Great High Priest.

This is key, but it is not the end of the story. There are specific things the laity does to take part in the Liturgy, the first being preparation. One should speak with one’s priest about how to prepare before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. This is not a matter of reading a book about the Liturgy but includes some kind of prayerful preparation. If we fail on this aspect, we will be playing catch-up during the service and, similar to being at the hockey match, might miss the scoring of a goal.

During the Liturgy, there are various actions the laity can take part in. There are times when we cross ourselves out of reverence, to perhaps increase our attentiveness and promote inner sobriety. We thus place ourselves in a position of humility before the Almighty God Who has made this liturgical provision for us out of love and mercy. We can offer prayers for loved ones far or near. There are times to make a low bow if one is able out of humility. We should sing the responses with the choir; this should be done with reverence and listening, so as to follow the leader, so to speak, and not try to impress others near us with our beautiful voice or disrupt the beautiful flow of the service.

We can gradually learn the hymns by listening to the choir, singing softly with them so they can teach us. We recite certain parts of the Liturgy, such as the Trisagion Prayers, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed. We read the pre-Communion Prayers with the chanter. Some use a prayer rope as a reminder to pay attention. The icons around the nave can also aid us in the same way.

Let us arrive on time, and hopefully for Orthros, out of respect for our Lord and Savior, Who at the perfect time allowed Himself to be crucified for us. Familiarity is very helpful. So regular attendance during all liturgical seasons should be our regimen. Reading the day’s Scripture readings, learning the hymns, and reciting the spoken parts as a community can be very enriching to our soul.

As we take part in the Diving Liturgy, we do just that. Each time, we move one Liturgy closer to eternity and take a nano-step toward becoming, by God’s grace, a restored image of the Creator.

In Christ,

Fr. Steve

Christ is Risen!

As we enter into this beautiful, bright, and joyful season of the Resurrection I think it is appropriate for us to stop and truly reflect on the reality of the Resurrection. It is tempting and easy to go back to 'normal' life after Holy Week and Pascha or to possibly have the 'Pascha blues' since we miss the intense spiritual struggle of Great Lent, Holy Week, and Pascha.

The reality of the Resurrection however doesn't mean that we 'backslide' in our spiritual life but that the Resurrection, and it's potency, becomes the new reality in which we live. We take courage in the Eternal Conqueror who has marked permanent victory over all evil, sin, death, and the devil, as well as whatever challenges are before us. We continue to press on in our faith knowing that the worst tragedies that we struggle with have ultimately been swallowed up by the Resurrection. This of course doesn't mean that we do not experience the sufferings and sorrows of life but that their reach is temporary. That despite the darkness and pain we experience here and now will end when we meet our Resurrected Lord.

To finish my reflection upon the reality of the Resurrection, I would like to share a beautiful except from one of my favorite little books which can be an ever present remembrance for us whenever we look at the icon of our parish, the icon of the Holy Resurrection: 

"The icon which depicts the Descent into Hades shows Christ already in glory as he voluntarily descends into the place of greatest darkness, into the place of the greatest separation. It is not called "the descent into hades", but "The Resurrection".

But what does all this mean today when the descent into Hades is an ever-present reality? It means, I believe, that God is now absent nowhere, in no situation. Even when men wish to exclude Him, God is still present. He is present crucified in all the evil of the world. This is the only answer to the mystery of evil.

What is God doing? He is crucified in all the horror of the world and yet, at the same time, he Resurrects us, offering us the power of the Resurrection, that powerful hand held out lays hold of us, not by the hand, because one can give or not give one's hand, but by the wrist. Christ's hand seizes Adam by the wrist, seizes Eve by the wrist in that extraordinary meeting of the two Adams, the first and the last.

That hand is always there, in the darkest of shadows. We must understand that the Christian God, the God to whom I wish to bear witness, is not some sort of celestial potentate who crushes us. As St. Paul says in the epistle to the Philippians, God has 'emptied Himself'. He has destroyed Himself out of love for us. He has emptied Himself, has poured Himself out unto death, even the death of the cross. That God should open Himself in order to make us enter into Him, that is the mystery of the Descent into Hades.

…He descends into the lowest place imaginable, into the deepest darkness in existence in order to destroy the power of darkness and the abode of demonic forces."

From the book 'No Matter How Deep the Darkness, He Descends Deeper Still' by Fr. Anthony Coniaris