Mark your calendars! Stewardship Sunday is January 25th! We will have a guest speaker and a light luncheon will be offered by the Parish Council after the Divine Liturgy. Please plan to attend!
The G.O.Y.A. meeting will be today, Sunday, January 18th.
Mark you calendars! The Ladies Philoptochos will be holding a Social Luncheon on Sunday February 22nd, after the Divine Liturgy.
The next Bible Study will be held on Wednesday, January 28th.
Please call or e-mail Fr. John in the church office with your news for the bulletin, this will help alleviate any duplications or conflicts with the master schedule of events.
For those parishioners who wish to have their houses blessed this Epiphany season, please contact Fr. John to schedule a convenient time.
Let us not forget our people in the nursing homes, hospitals or separated from our community. If you know of anyone in this situation please contact Fr. John.
In the interest of accuracy please issue separate checks when making donations to different funds.
An account has been established to support our permanent priest. To help build this account and our community, please see Bill Winkler with your donations to this fund.
Coming nearer to God is always a discovery both of the beauty of God and of the distance there is between Him and us. ‘Distance’ is an inadequate word, because it is not determined by the fact that God is holy and that we are sinful. Distance is determined by the attitude of the sinner to God. We can approach God only if we do so with a sense of coming to judgment. If we come having condemned ourselves; if we come because we love Him in spite of the fact that we are unfaithful, if we come to Him loving Him more than a godless security, then we are open to Him and He is open to us, and there is no distance; the Lord comes close to us in an act of compassionate love. But if we stand before God wrapped in our pride, in our assertiveness, if we stand before Him as though we had a right to stand there, if we stand and question Him, the distance that separates the creature and the Creator becomes infinite. There is a passage in the Screwtape Letters in which C. S. Lewis suggests that distance, in this sense, is a relative thing: when the great archangel came before God to question Him, the moment he asked his question, not in order to understand in humility but in order to compel God to give account, he found himself at an infinite distance from God. God had not moved, nor had Satan, and yet without any motion, they were infinitely far apart (Letter XIX).
Whenever we approach God the contrast that exists between what He is and what we are becomes dreadfully clear. We may not be aware of this as long as we live at a distance from God, so to speak, as long as His presence or His image is dimmed in our thoughts and in our perceptions; but the nearer we come to God, the sharper the contrast appears. It is not the constant thought of their sins, but the vision of the holiness of God that makes the saints aware of their own sinfulness. When we consider ourselves without the fragrant background of God’s presence, sins and virtues become small and somewhat irrelevant matters; it is against the background of the divine presence that they stand out in full relief and acquire their depth and tragedy.
(From the book “Living Prayer” by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.)
Parish Council Members
Steve Giannopoulos, President John Manolis, Vice-president
Sandy Winkler, Treasurer Christine Fulmore, Secretary
Maxine N. Calamos Michael Euripides
George Kartoudi Daniela Langa
Robert Morrison Nicholas Pappas
