Jesus Christ taught us to love and serve all people, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. To understand that, we need to look no further than to the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Every time we celebrate the Divine Liturgy, it is offered "on behalf of all, and for all." As Orthodox Christians we stand against racism and bigotry. All human beings share one common identity as children of God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatian 3:28)

Members of our Parish Council are:
Greg Jankura - Vice President
Susan Davis- President
Sharon Hanson - Member at Large
Luba Martins - Member at Large
Susan Egan - Treasurer
Dn Timothy Skuby - Secretary

Pastoral Care - General Information

Emergency Sick Calls can be made at any time. Please call Fr Steven at (860) 866-5802, when a family member is admitted to the hospital.
Anointing in Sickness: The Sacrament of Unction is available in Church, the hospital, or your home, for anyone who is sick and suffering, however severe. 
Marriages and Baptisms require early planning, scheduling and selections of sponsors (crown bearers or godparents). See Father before booking dates and reception halls!
Funerals are celebrated for practicing Orthodox Christians. Please see Father for details. The Church opposes cremation; we cannot celebrate funerals for cremations.

Information about the use and specifications of the two AEDs is now available in our shared folder. 

AED Information

https://stalexischurch-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/schosk_stalexischurch_onmicrosoft_com/Eoho5v1X51tEmw3bUs5J9YsBEBjgYBWxaO7hPjToHkPYLQ?e=5LtoV2

There is a guided tour in how to use the AED, which I recommend that you all view. Please contact me directly if you have any further questions.

Living the Mission

We will be returning to our 'book study' on Tuesday, April 2nd. The reading material can be found at this link, on our shared folder. We will be going over Fr Thomas Hopko's article on the Orthodox Parish in America. I also encourage you to read Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-37.

The following is a brief synopsis of the last Parish Council meeting held on 26 March 2024.

Financial Report for February: While for the month of February we had a deficit of $1,096, mostly due to purchasing 472 gallons at $3.59/gallon ($1,694), due to our strong January and several parishioners paying their pledge in full, we continue to be in the black by approximately $7,700.

Choir: The choir continues preparing for Pascha by holding rehearsals. All interested singers are invited and welcome to attend.

Outreach: We are again conducting the Zoe for Life campaign which will run until May 12th. It was noted that coins/change are not the only things that could be used to fill up the baby bottles, checks and paper money may also be used.

Soup Kitchen – our next date is April 10th. Please see Susan Eagan or Luba Martins if you are willing to donate your time, purchase food or help in any way.

Spring Clean-Up Date: Saturday April 20th. Please save the date as we prepare both the inside and the outside of the church for our Paschal celebration.

Please pray for Sarah, Aaron, Evelyn, Victor and Blanche who are in need of God's mercy and healing.

• Pray for: All those confined to hospitals, nursing homes, and their own homes due to illness; for all those who serve in the armed forces; widows, orphans, prisoners, victims of violence, and refugees;
• All those suffering chronic illness, financial hardship, loneliness, addictions, abuse, abandonment and despair; those who are homeless, those who are institutionalize, those who have no one to pray for them;
• All Orthodox seminarians & families; all Orthodox monks and nuns, and all those considering monastic life; all Orthodox missionaries and their families.
• All those who have perished due to hatred, intolerance and pestilence; all those departed this life in the hope of the Resurrection.

Please let Fr. Steven know via email if you have more names for which to pray.

• Departed:
• Clergy and their families: Dn Timothy & Maureen
• ​Catechumen: Robert, Abbie, Matthew, Joseph, Mary, Kevin and Lynn
• Individuals and Families: Susan, Luba, Suzanne, Gail Galina, Evelyn, Rosemary, John, Karen, Oleg, Lucia, Victor, Melissa, Christine, Sebastian, Olga, Daniel & Dayna 
• Birthdays and Name’s Days this Month: Zachary and Michael Neiss, Kyra Elliot, Matthew Kuziak
• Anniversaries this Month: 
• ​Expecting and Newborn: Malcolm, Anastasia and their unborn child
• ​Traveling: Maria Christine
• ​Sick and those in distress:

SECOND SUNDAY OF LENT — Tone 2. St. Gregory Palamas.Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Kiev Caves Lavra.Repose of St. Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to the Americas (1879). St. Hypatius the Wonderworker, Bishop of Gangra (ca. 336). Repose of St. Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia (1461). Ven. Hypatius the Healer, of the Kiev Caves (Far Caves—14th c.). Ven. Apollonius, Ascetic, of Egypt (4th c.). Hieromartyr Avdas, Bishop of Persia, and Martyr Benjamin the Deacon (418-424). Ven. Hypatius, Abbot of Rufinus in Chalcedon (ca. 446). Appearance of the “Ivḗron” (Iberian) Icon of the Mother of God.

• Again we pray for those who have lost their lives because of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East: that the Lord our God may look upon them with mercy, and give them rest where there is neither sickness, or sorrow, but life everlasting.
• Again we pray for mercy, life, peace, health, salvation, for those who are suffering, wounded, grieving, or displaced because of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East.
• Again we pray for a cessation of the hostilities against Ukraine and the Middle East, and that reconciliation and peace will flourish there, we pray thee, hearken and have mercy.

Tone 2 Troparion (Resurrection)

When You descended to death, O Life Immortal,
You slew hell with the splendor of Your Godhead.
And when from the depths You raised the dead,
all the powers of heaven cried out://
“O Giver of life, Christ our God, glory to You!”

Tone 4 Troparion (St. Innocent)

O Holy Father Innocent,
in obedience to the will of God,
you accepted dangers and tribulations,
bringing many peoples to the knowledge of truth.
You showed us the way;
now by your prayers help lead us//
into the Kingdom of Heaven!

Tone 2 Kontakion (Resurrection)

Hell became afraid, O almighty Savior,
seeing the miracle of Your Resurrection from the tomb!
The dead arose! Creation, with Adam, beheld this and rejoiced with You,//
and the world, my Savior, praises You forever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,

Tone 2 Kontakion (St. Innocent)

Your life, O holy Father Innocent, apostle to our land,
proclaims the dispensation and grace of God!
For, laboring in dangers and hardships for the Gospel of Christ,
you were kept unharmed and exalted in humility.//
Pray that He may guide our steps in the way we should go!

now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.


Tone 4 Kontakion (from the Lenten Triodion)

Now is the time for action!
Judgment is at the doors!
So let us rise and fast,
offering alms with tears of compunction and crying:
“Our sins are more in number than the sands of the sea;
but forgive us, O Master of all,//
so that we may receive the incorruptible crowns!”

(Instead of “It is truly meet…,” we sing the following)

Hymn to the Theotokos

All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace:
the assembly of angels and the race of men.
O sanctified temple and spiritual paradise,
the glory of virgins,
from whom God was incarnate and became a Child –
our God before the ages.
He made your body into a throne,
and your womb He made more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O Full of Grace.
Glory to you!

Communion Hymn

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the highest!
The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance! He shall not fear evil
tidings! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
SAINT GREGORY PALAMAS SUNDAY
11 March 1990

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
In one of the Psalms we can read the following words: Those who have sown with tears will reap with joy... If in the course of weeks of preparation we have seen all that is ugly and unworthy in us mirrored in the parables, if we have stood before the judgement of our conscience and of our God, then we have truly sown in tears our own salvation. And yet, there is still time because even when we enter into the time of the harvest, God gives us a respite; as we progress towards the Kingdom of God, towards the Day of the Resurrection, we still can, at every moment, against the background of salvation, in the face of the victory of God, turn to Him with gratitude and yet, brokenheartedness, and say, ‘No, Lord! I am perhaps the worker of the eleventh hour, but receive me as Thou promised to do!’
Last week we have kept the day of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, the day when the Church proclaimed that it was legitimate and right to paint icons of Christ; it was not a declaration about art, it was a deeply theological proclamation of the Incarnation. The Old Testament said to us that God cannot be represented by any image because He was unbottomed mystery; He had even no Name except the mysterious name which only the High Priest know. But in the New Testament we have learned, and we know from experience that God has become Man, that the fullness of the Godhead has abided and is still abiding forever in the flesh; and therefore God has a human name: Jesus, and He has got a human face that can be represented in icons. An icon is therefore a proclamation of our certainty that God has become man; and He has become man to achieve ultimate, tragic and glorious solidarity with us, to be one of us that we may be one of the children of God. He has become man that we may become gods, as the Scripture tells us. And so, we could last week already rejoice; and this is why, a week before, when we were already preparing to meet this miracle, this wonder of the Incarnation, softly, in an almost inaudible way, the Church was singing the canon of Easter: Christ is risen from the dead! - because it is not a promise for the future, it is a certainty of the present, open to us like a door for us to enter through Christ, the Door as He calls Himself, into eternity.
And today we remember the name of Saint Gregory Palamas, one of the great Saints of Orthodoxy, who against heresy and doubt, proclaimed, from within the experience of the ascetics and of all believers, proclaimed that the grace of God is not a created Gift - it is God Himself, communicating Himself to us so that we are pervaded by His presence, that we gradually, if we only receive Him, open ourselves to Him, become transparent or at least translucent to His light, that we become incipiently and ever increasingly partakers of the Divine nature.
This is not simply a promise; this is a certainty which we have because this has happened to thousands and thousands of those men and women whom we venerate as the Saints of God: they have become partakers of the Divine nature, they are to us a revelation and certainty of what we are called to be and become.
And today one step more brings us into the joy, the glory of Easter. In a week’s time we will sing the Cross - the Cross which was a terror for the criminals, and has become now a sign of victory and salvation, because it is to us the sign that God’s love has no measure, no limits, is as deep as God is deep, all-embracing as God is all-embracing, and indeed, as tragically victorious as God is both tragic and victorious, awe-inspiring, and shining the quiet, joyful light which we sing in Vespers.
Let us then make ourselves ready to meet this event, the vision of the Cross, look at it, and see in it the sign of the Divine love, a new certainty of our possible salvation; and when the choir sings this time more loudly the canon of the Resurrection, let us realise that step by step God leads us into a victory which He has won, and which He wants to share with us.
And then we will move on; we will listen to the Saint who teaches us how to receive the grace which God is offering, how to become worthy of Him; and a step more - and we will see the victory of God in Saint Mary of Egypt and come to the threshold of Holy Weak. But let us remember that we are now in the time of newness, a time when God's victory is been revealed to us, that we are called to be enfolded by it, to respond to it by gratitude, a gratitude that will make us into new people - and also with joy! And joy full of tears in response to the love of God, and a joy which is a responsible answer to the Divine love. Amen!