Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

            With what divine balance and healthiness does the Church lead Her people… after the deeply penitential mourning of our first week of Great Lent, we come to the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. It is a day filled with joy and gratitude for God and for His Holy Church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. We were greeted this weekend with the holy icons prominently displayed in the center of the church, awaiting our veneration and standing as testament to the triumph of the Church’s honor of the incarnation and the icons. This theme is beautifully expressed and expounded in the following homily: The Joy of a Christian / OrthoChristian.Com

            This week we will celebrate the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Wednesday and Friday evenings at 6pm.

            Saturday at 8am we will have a Memorial Liturgy followed by a Panakhida commemorating our departed loved ones.

            Due to the weekly Presanctified Liturgies on Wednesday, during the Fast we will move our weekly Bible Study to Tuesday evenings. So, this Tuesday at 7pm we will continue our study of the Psalms. The Zoom link is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89738164102. 

Catechism, led by Fr Andrew, will be at 6pm on Thursday evening. The Zoom link is: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81421729353

Our usual Saturday class at 2pm will NOT take place this coming Saturday due to the annual Ladies’ Lenten Retreat taking place that day.

The Ladies’ Lenten Retreat will be held at the home of Thalia Welch from 11:30 – 2:30. Details and the reading material are communicated in Nadia’s weekly announcements.

May God be with all of you and may all of you be with God as we enter now into the second week of the Fast. The many services of the first week are so helpful in getting us off to a good start… now that we move into the second week, it may become more challenging to keep that initial zeal. We need to give ourselves a spiritual booster shot… anticipating this struggle and doing all that we can to remain vigilant and committed to making the best use of this precious time given to us by the Holy Church. May God grant you strength and inspiration!

Sending blessings,

Fr Martin