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SCRIPTURE READINGS THIS WEEK
Feb 8th After feast of the Meeting; Great Martyr Theodore Stratelates; Prophet Zechariah
3 John 1:1-15 Luke 19:29-40; 22:7-39
Feb 9th Leave taking of the Meeting; Martyr Nicephorus of Antioch
Jude 1:1-10 Luke 22:39-42; 45-23:1
Feb 10th Hieromartyr Haralambos, Bishop of Magnesia; Martyr Porphyrius and Company
Joel 2:12-26 Joel 3:12-21
Feb 11th Hieromartyr Blaise, Bishop of Sebaste; Righteous Theodora
Jude 1:11-25 Luke 23:2-34, 44-56
Feb 12th St. Meletius, Bishop of Antioch; St. Kristo the Gardner from Albania
Zechariah 8:7-17 Zechariah 8:19-23
Feb 13th Cheesefare Saturday; Commemoration of Departed Righteous Monastics
Romans 14:19-26 Matthew 6:1-13
Activities/Services this Week:
Rossford/Toledo Book Club: Monday, February 8th, 10 AM at Dedes home
Council Meeting: Tuesday, February 9th, 6:30 PM, at the church
Great Vespers: Saturday, January February 13th, 5 PM, at the church
*There will be no Compline this week on Wednesday*
The Sanctuary Lamp is burning this week for the health of Marie Gresko celebrating her 80th birthday and Rachel Olmstead celebrating her birthday.
Last Sunday, January 31st, 41 Adults and 16 Youth attended Divine Liturgy.
For the month of February, please bring cans of chili in whatever amount you can afford to donate for the All Saints Food Pantry. On February 4th, 5 boxes of pancake/waffle mix were taken to the food pantry along with a $53.00 financial donation. Thanks to those who were so generous.
The next meeting of the Rossford/Toledo Book Club will be on Monday, February 8th, 10 AM at the home of Mary Dedes in Toledo. We will discuss Chapters 12 and 13 of “Bread, Water, Wine, & Oil; an Orthodox Experience of God”. The Bowling Green Book Club will meet next on Thursday February 25th, at 6:30 PM at Grounds for Thought on Main St. in Bowling Green. We will study Chapter Eight and Nine of the same book. Please read the material so we can properly discuss it.
Greg Kostraba will be performing as part of the trio "Quelque Chose" at Rosary Cathedral, 2535 Collingwood Blvd. in Toledo, on Sunday, February 7th at 3:00 p.m. This free concert includes music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Charles Koechlin, Sir Lennox Berkeley, Johann Friedrich Nisle, and the story of Ferdinand the Bull. A free will offering to support the Concert Series will be taken. Ample parking is available.
Today is Meat fare Sunday. According to our fasting guidelines for Lent this is the last Sunday we partake of any meat products until Pascha. During the upcoming week, dairy products are allowed even on Wednesday and Friday. Next Sunday is Cheese fare Sunday and Forgiveness Sunday. We will begin the season of Great Lent with Forgiveness Sunday Vespers around 12:30 PM after social hour on February 14, 2010. The schedule for the first week of Lent can be found in the February calendar of the newsletter.
Our church will be hosting the Pan Orthodox Vesper service on Sunday, February 28th, at 6 PM. The presentation that day will be, “College life and Orthodox presence on Campus.” A panel of Orthodox Christian College Students will share their thoughts on the above theme. The panel will consist of: Jessica Precop, Sarah Kersey, Michael Moussa, and Anastasia Widmer. Lenten potlucks will follow all of the Lenten Vespers services. For those times, go to our web page or see the newsletter.
The St. Anna’s Women’s Guild will hold its monthly meeting on Sunday, February 21st, after the Divine Liturgy.
Clarification on commemoration of hierarchs: Fr. Paul spoke to Fr. Don Freude our diocesan chancellor earlier in the week and Fr. Don did clarify that in the Bulgarian Diocese we are to commemorate both the locum tenems, Bishop Melchizedek and Metropolitan Jonah as the primate of the OCA during the divine services.
February 7th is Scout Day! May years to Joel Cohen and Austin Timofeev who are currently active in Cub Scout & Boy Scouts of America. We will sing many years for them today and anyone else in our parish that is active in the Scouts.
Sunday of Meat fare/Sunday of the Last Judgment
It is love again that constitutes the theme of “Meat fare Sunday. The gospel lesson for the day is Christ’s parable of the Last Judgment. When Christ comes to judge us, what will be the criterion of his judgment? The parable answers: love – not a mere humanitarian concern for abstract justice and the anonymous “poor”, but concrete and personal love for the human person, any human person, that God makes me encounter in my life. This distinction is important because today more and more Christians tend to identify Christian love with political, economic, and social concerns; in other words, they shift from the unique person and its unique personal destiny, to anonymous entities such as “class,” “race,” etc. Not that these concerns are wrong. It is obvious that in their respective walks of life, in their responsibilities as citizens, professional men, etc., Christians are called to care, to the best of their possibilities and understanding, for a just, equal, and in general more humane society. All this, to be sure, stems from Christianity and may be inspired by Christian love. But Christian love as such is something different, and this difference is to be understood and maintained if the Church is to preserve her unique mission and not become a mere “social agency,” which definitely she is not.
Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself. For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the “other” – his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity – and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal “root” of a human being, truly the part of God in him? …There is not “impersonal” love because love is the wonderful discovery of the “person” in “man” of the personal and unique in the common and general…To a social activist, the object of love is not “person” but man, and abstract unit of a not less abstract “humanity.” But for Christianity, man is “lovable” because he is person.
…The parable of the Last Judgment is about Christian love…Thus, on whether or not we have accepted this responsibility, on whether we have loved or refused to love, shall we be judged. For “inasmuch as you done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto me…”
Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent, SVS Press, Pp. 24-26
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