Moleben for the Conversion of the Non-Orthodox: first Sunday of the month, after coffee hour
On Saturday, October 13, our parish will be hosting a spiritual retreat just for high school students. It goes from to . The event is free and lunch will be provided. The speaker will be Fr. Jason Kappanadze who spoke at the Nativity Lent retreat last year. All of the participants agreed that he was an excellent speaker. So, high schoolers, mark your calendars!
Attention college students! OCF chapters are forming at the University at Buffalo, ErieCountyCommunity College and CanisiusCollege. Please pick up a flyer and let your friends know! Contact Alexandra Danakas at peanutlady88@aol.com or Rose Danakas at acesflamingstar@aol.com if you want to be on the OCF email list.
There will be an OCF “Mini-Retreat” on Friday, October 13 at UB (North), 322 Clemens Hall. Fr. Jason Kappanadze will be the speaker, and the event is free.
Protection of the Mother of God parish in Rochester celebrates its patronal feast on Sunday, October 14. Metropolitan Laurus, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, will serve the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy there. The meeting of the bishop is at . There is a festive meal after Liturgy: Adults $10.00 and children $5.00.
There will be no services here at Sts. Theodore on that Sunday, but we will be serving Vigil here as usual. Fr. Peter will hear confessions during this Vigil.
The iconographer Fr. Anthony Salzman will be giving a slide lecture on the history, theology and technique of iconography at the HellenicChurch of the Annunciation on Thursday, October 25 at . Admission is free.
St. Stephen’s Serbian Orthodox Church in Lackawanna is celebrating their 90th anniversary. This is a great opportunity to join in prayer with our brothers and sisters there. Vespers will be served on Friday, October 26, at and Hierarchical Divine Liturgy on Saturday, October 27, at .
Last year’s Kids Night was a great success, so we are doing it again this year! We will serve Vespers for St. John of Kronstadt, and then downstairs we will bob for apples and play other great games.
Our parish is participating in the fall campaign of “40 Days for Life”, a nationwide, non-denominational pro-life organization. The campaign extends from September 26 to November 4 and consists of prayer, peaceful “vigils” near abortion clinics, and raising awareness through church presentations, lawn signs and petition drives. Everyone is free to participate as much or as little as they wish, but we can all be praying for abortion to become a relic of the past in Western New York. As Orthodox Christians we will not be praying together with the heterodox, but we will be serving molebens both in the parish and, Lord willing, at the on-site vigils. For more information see our parish coordinator, Andrea Sullivan, and the website 40daysforlife.com/buffalo.
ØGlory to God for our new windows!
ØMany thanks to Marina Shevtsova for donating the new gold chalice cover set.
ØFr. Peter will be out of town October 1-5. Fr. Gregory Naumenko has agreed to be on call in case of emergencies. His home number is (585) 224-0554.
ØWe are finally learning to check the Bills’ schedule before planning a meeting. So the Parish Council will meet on October 28 at coffee hour.
ØDon’t forget to set your clocks back one hour on Saturday, November 4.
ØThis fall’s Russian Bazaar will be on November10 and 17from to . Please see Cathy Fudala to see how you can help out.
The reunification of the Russian Orthodox Church is having positive and often surprising consequences. Far from making the Church more narrowly Russian, measures have been taken to make Church life more universally Orthodox in its practice. For one thing, the Moscow Patriarchate has just declared that the Third Sunday after Pentecost will now be dedicated to All Saints of the British Isles. I know of no other local Orthodox Church which has a feast devoted to saints outside of their own nationality! Second, the Russian Church Abroad has recently blessed the use of the Liturgy of St. Mark, which was the traditional liturgy in Egypt until the end of the 12th century. (ROCOR has already been using the Jerusalem Liturgy of St. James on St. James Day.) So we can see a definite trend toward the RussianChurch seeing itself as more universally Orthodox, beyond the human bounds of ethnicity.
How should we at Sts. Theodore respond to these developments? We should continue our praiseworthy tradition of transcending ethnicity and nurture it even further. We celebrate our Russian roots, but we also take seriously our mission to communicate the Orthodox Faith to the community, which is why our parish was founded as the first English-language mission in ROCOR forty years ago. Our parish has had a strong presence at local Pan-Orthodox events, and now that we are once again in full communion with our sister parishes, we can expect this presence to be stronger still. This month’s Messenger shows how strong our ties are becoming with other parishes with lectures, youth retreats and parish feasts. Let us show our love for our brothers and sisters across jurisdictional lines and join forces to reach the community through evangelism, service to the poor, and supporting pro-life activities.
Glory to God that “there is neither Jew nor Greek (nor Russian, nor Lebanese, nor Serbian, nor Ukrainian), for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians ).
Fr. Peter
September 24/October 7: The Holy Protomartyr Thecla, Equal to the Apostles
Thecla was born in Iconium of eminent but pagan parents. As a girl of eighteen, she was betrothed to a young man at the same time that the Apostle Paul arrived in Iconium with Barnabas to preach the Gospel. Hearing Paul's testimony for three days and nights, Thecla converted to the Christian Faith, and vowed to live in virginity. Her mother, seeing that she was now ignoring her betrothed and no longer thought of marriage, tried to dissuade her, and then beat her and tortured her by starvation. Finally, this wicked mother turned Thecla over to the judge and demanded that Thecla be burned. The judge threw her into the fire, but God preserved her unharmed. Then, Thecla followed the Apostle Paul, and went to Antioch with him. Attracted by Thecla's external beauty, a certain elder of the city wanted to take her for himself by force, but Thecla escaped his grasp. The pagan elder accused her to the eparch as a Christian who disdained marriage. The eparch condemned her to death, and had her thrown to wild beasts, but the wild beasts did not touch the body of this holy virgin. Amazed by this, the eparch asked her: “Who are you and what kind of power is in you, that nothing can harm you?” Thecla replied: “I am a servant of the Living God.” The eparch then released her, and she departed to preach the Gospel. She succeeded in converting many to the true Faith, among whom was Tryphena, a prominent and honorable widow. Then, having received the blessing of the Apostle Paul to do so, Thecla withdrew to a secluded place near Seleucia. There she lived a life of asceticism for a long time and, by healing the sick with wonderworking power, she converted many to Christianity. The doctors and soothsayers in Seleucia were envious of her, and sent some young men to defile her, hoping that the loss of her virginity would also mean the loss of her miraculous power. Thecla fled from these arrogant young men, but as they were about to catch her, she prayed to God for help. A large rock opened up and hid this holy virgin and bride of Christ. This rock was her refuge and her tomb. St. John Chrysostom says of this wonderful Christian heroine and saint: “It seems to me that as I see this blessed virgin, in one hand she offers Christ virginity, and in the other hand, martyrdom.”
October 1/14: The Protection of the Most-holy Theotokos
From time immemorial, the Church has celebrated the Most-holy Theotokos as the patroness and protectress of the Christian people, who, by her intercessory prayers, implores God's mercy for us sinners. The help of the Most-holy Mother of God has been clearly shown numerous times, to individuals and to nations, in peace and in war, in monastic deserts and in densely populated cities. The event that the Church commemorates and celebrates today confirms the Theotokos' consistent protection of Christian people. On October 1, 911, during the reign of Emperor Leo the Wise, there was an All-night Vigil in the BlachernaeChurch of the Mother of God in Constantinople. The church was full of people. St. Andrew the Fool-for-Christ was standing in the rear of the church with his disciple Epiphanius. At in the morning, the Most-holy Theotokos appeared above the people, holding her omophorion outstretched as a protective covering for the faithful. She was clothed in gold-encrusted purple, and shone with an ineffable radiance, surrounded by apostles, saints, martyrs and virgins. St. Andrew said to Blessed Epiphanius: “Do you see, brother, the Queen and Lady of all praying for the whole world?” Epiphanius replied: “I see, Father, and am struck with amazement!” The Feast of the Protection was instituted to commemorate this event, and to remind us that we can prayerfully receive the unceasing protection of the Most-holy Theotokos in any time of difficulty.
October 8/21: The Venerable Pelagia the Penitent
Pelagia was a repentant sinner. She was born to pagan parents in Antioch, and was endowed by God with great physical beauty. Pelagia used her beauty to the destruction of her own soul and those of others. She became very wealthy as a result of her prostitution. Once, while walking past the Church of the Holy Martyr Julian, in which Bishop Nonnus was preaching, she stopped in and heard a sermon on the Dread Judgment and the punishment of sinners. Those words so shook her and changed her that she immediately felt revulsion for herself, acquired true fear of God, repented of all her sins and fell down before St. Nonnus with the plea that he baptize her: “Have mercy on me, a sinner, holy Father. Baptize me and teach me repentance-I am a sea of iniquity, an abyss of destruction, a net and weapon of the devil.” Thus this penitent begged the hierarch of Christ with tears, and he baptized her. At her baptism, Blessed Romana, the deaconess of the church, was her godmother. Romana, as her spiritual mother, grounded her well in the Christian Faith. But Pelagia was not satisfied with baptism alone. She was keenly aware of the multitude of her sins and, pricked by her conscience, decided on a great ascetic labor. She left her enormous, sinfully gained wealth to the poor, and secretly went to Jerusalem as the monk Pelagius. There, she shut herself up in a cell on the Mount of Olives, and began the difficult ascesis of fasting, prayer and all-night vigils. After three years, St. Nonnus's deacon, James, visited her and found her still alive, but when he visited her again several days later, he found that she had reposed, and he honorably buried her body. St. Pelagia entered into rest in about the year 461. Thus, this formerly terrible sinner pleased God by her repentance and labor, was forgiven of her sins, and became sanctified. And her purified and enlightened soul was deemed worthy of the Kingdom of God.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council was held in 787 at Nicaea during the reign of the devout Empress Irene and her son, Constantine, in the time of Patriarch Tarasius. This Council finally confirmed the veneration of icons, justifying it by Holy Scripture, by the witness of the Holy Fathers, and by the undeniable example of miracles manifested through the holy icons. Adding to examples of miracles previously cited, Bishop Constantine of Cyprus recounted this: One day, a certain shepherd from the town of Constantia drove his flock to pasture, and there saw an icon of the Most-holy Theotokos, all decorated with flowers by the faithful. “Why render so much honor to a rock?” said the shepherd, who had obviously been brought up in iconoclasm. He struck the icon with his iron shepherd's cane, and damaged the right eye of the image of the Mother of God. As soon as he turned away, he stumbled over that same cane and gouged out his own right eye. Thus injured, he returned to the city, crying out tearfully that the punishment of the Theotokos had befallen him. This Council also decreed that the holy relics of a martyr be placed, without fail, in the Antimension. Three hundred and sixty-seven Fathers participated in this Council. May the Lord also have mercy on us and save us by their prayers.
