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.

There are just two weeks left before the start of Holy Week; please make arrangements to offer your confession before the start of this holiest of weeks. The schedule of services for Holy Week has been published on our parish calendar. If you need a letter "excusing" you from your secular obligations during this Week, please talk with Fr Steven.

Our annual parish clean up is schedule for Saturday, April 20th, for both the interior and exterior of the property. Remember; "many hands make for light work." 

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The steps are:
On renunciation of the world
On detachment
On exile or pilgrimage; concerning dreams that beginners have
On blessed and ever-memorable obedience (in addition to episodes involving many individuals)
On painstaking and true repentance which constitutes the life of the holy convicts; and about the Prison
On remembrance of death
On joy-making mourning
On freedom from anger and on meekness
On remembrance of wrongs
On slander or calumny
On talkativeness and silence
On lying
On despondency
On that clamorous mistress, the stomach
On incorruptible purity and chastity, to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat
On love of money, or avarice
On non-possessiveness (that hastens one Heavenwards)
On insensibility, that is, deadening of the soul and the death of the mind before the death of the body
On sleep, prayer, and psalmody with the brotherhood
On bodily vigil and how to use it to attain spiritual vigil, and how to practise it
On unmanly and puerile cowardice
On the many forms of vainglory
On mad pride and (in the same Step) on unclean blasphemous thoughts; concerning unmentionable blasphemous thoughts
On meekness, simplicity, and guilelessness which come not from nature but from conscious effort, and about guile
On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual perception
On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues; on expert discernment; brief summary of all aforementioned
On holy stillness of body and soul; different aspects of stillness and how to distinguish them
On holy and blessed prayer, the mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer
Concerning Heaven on earth, or Godlike dispassion and perfection, and the resurrection of the soul before the general resurrection
Concerning the linking together of the supreme trinity among the virtues; a brief exhortation summarizing all that has said at length in this book

Ascending the Heights - A Layman's Guide to The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Fr. John Mack ISBN 1-888212-17-9

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

Many years to Christine Jankura on the ocassion of her birthday.

Memory Eternal to Alla Hamisevich on the Anniversary of her repose.

• 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: Gregory
• 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: Maureen Skuby, Nina Naumenko, Christine Jankura, Valery Danilack-Fekete, Sarah Senetcen
• Anniversaries this Month: 
• ​Expecting and Newborn: Anastasia, Malcolm and their unborn child
• ​Traveling: Maria Christine
• ​Sick and those in distress: Mabel, Joan

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT — Tone 4. St. John Climacus (of The Ladder). St. Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome (655). Martyrs Anthony, John, and Eustathius of Vilnius (Lithuania—1347). Martyr Ardalion the Actor (4th c.). Martyr Azades the Eunuch and 1,000 Martyrs of Persia (ca. 341).

• 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 4 Troparion (Resurrection)

When the women disciples of the Lord
learned from the angel the joyous message of Your Resurrection,
they cast away the ancestral curse
and elatedly told the apostles:
“Death is overthrown!
Christ God is risen,//
granting the world great mercy!”

Tone 4 Troparion (St. Alexis)

O righteous Father Alexis,
our heavenly intercessor and teacher,

divine adornment of the Church of Christ! 

Entreat the Master of All to strengthen the Orthodox Faith in America, 

to grant peace to the world and to our souls great mercy.

Tone 1 Troparion (St. John Climacus)

O dweller of the wilderness and angel in the body,
you were a wonderworker, O our God-bearing Father John.
You received heavenly gifts through fasting, vigil and prayer,
healing the sick and the souls of those drawn to you by faith.
Glory to Him Who gave you strength!
Glory to Him Who granted you a ^crown!//
Glory to Him Who grants healing to all!

Tone 4 Kontakion (Resurrection)

My Savior and Redeemer
as God rose from the tomb and delivered the earth-born from their chains.
He has shattered the gates of hell,
and as Master,//He has risen on the third day! 

Tone 5 Kontakion (St. Alexis)

Let us, the faithful praise the Priest Alexis,
a bright beacon of Orthodoxy in America, a model of patience and humility,
a worthy shepherd of the Flock of Christ.
He called back the sheep who had been led astray
and brought them by his preaching to the Heavenly Kingdom.

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

Tone 4 Kontakion (St. John Climacus)

The Lord truly set you on the heights of abstinence,
to be a guiding star, showing the way to the universe,//
O our father and teacher John

now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Tone 6 Kontakion (Steadfast Protectress)

Steadfast Protectress of Christians, 
Constant Advocate before the Creator; 
despise not the entreating cries of us sinners, 
but in your goodness come speedily
to help us who call on you in faith. 

Hasten to hear our petition and to intercede for us,

O Theotokos, for you always protect those who honor you!

(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 JOHN OF THE LADDER
9 April 1989

In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Lent is a time of repentance, a time when our heart of stone must be made by the power of God into a heart of flesh, from insensitive to become perceptive, from cold and hard to become warm and open to others, and indeed, to God Himself.
Lent is a time of renewal when like spring, everything become new again; when our life that had gone into a twilight becomes alive with all the intensity which God can communicate to us, humans, by making us partakers of His Holy Spirit, by making us partakers, through the Holy Sacraments and the direct gift of God, of the Divine nature.
It is a time of reconciliation, and reconciliation is a joy: it is God's joy, and it is our joy; it's a new beginning.
Today is the day of Saint John of the Ladder, and I want to read to you a few phrases of his which are relevant to the particular time of the year in which we live:
“Repentance, that is our return to God is renewal of our baptism; it is our effort to renew our covenant with God, our promise to change our life. It is a time when we can acquire humility, that is peace; peace with God, peace with ourselves, peace with all the created world. Repentance is born of hope and rejection of despair. And one who repents, is one who deserves condemnation - and yet, goes away from the tribunal without shame, because repentance is our peace with God. And this is achieved through a worthy life, alien to the sins we committed in the past. Repentance is cleansing of our conscience. Repentance implies carrying off all sadness and pain.”
And if we ask ourselves how we can achieve it, how we can come to this, how we can respond to God Who receives us as the father received the prodigal son, a God Who has waited for us, longingly, Who, rejected, never turned away from us - how can we respond to Him? Here is a short word about prayer :
“Don't use in prayer falsely wise words; because it is often the simple and uncomplicated whispering of children that rejoices our heavenly Father. Don't try to say much when you speak to God, because otherwise your mind in search of words will be lost in them. One word spoken by the publican brought Divine mercy upon him; one word filled with faith saved the thief on the cross. The use of the multiplicity of words when we pray disperses our mind and fill it with imaginations. One word spoken to God collects the mind in His presence. And if a word, in thy prayer, reaches you deeply, if you perceive it profoundly - dwell in it, dwell in it, because at such moments our Angel guardian prays with us because we are true to ourselves and to God”.
Let us remember what Saint John of the Ladder says, even if you forget the short comments (which I introduced) to make his text more readily understandable. Let us remember his words because he was a man who knew what it means to turn to God, to stay with God, to be God’s joy and to rejoice in Him. He is offered us in this time, when we are ascending towards the days of the Passion, he is offered us as an example of what grace Divine can do to transform an ordinary, simple human being into a light to the world.
Let us learn from him, let us follow his example, let us rejoice in what God can do by His power in a human being, and let us confidently, with faith, with an exulting and yet serene joy follow the advice, listen to God begging us to find a way of life and telling us that with Him, in Him we will be alive, because He is the Truth but also the Way and also Life eternal. Amen.