Publish-header
St. Anna Greek Orthodox Church
Publish Date: 2017-01-15
Bulletin Contents
Lepers
Organization Icon
St. Anna Greek Orthodox Church

General Information

  • Phone:
  • (908) 968-4004
  • Fax:
  • (908) 968-4002
  • Street Address:

  • 85 Voorhees Corner Road,

  • Flemington, NJ 08822


Contact Information






Services Schedule

Weekly Services

(Please note schedule subject to change.  Please call church office to confirm times.)

Sunday Services:  Orthros 8:15 am; Divine Liturgy 9:15  am.  Followed by Sunday School and Fellowship Hour in our Community Center.

Weekly Feastday / Major Saint Day Liturgies:  9 am Orthros followed by Divine Liturgy.


Past Bulletins


Saints and Feasts

Lepers
January 15

12th Sunday of Luke


17_anthony2
January 17

Anthony the Great

Saint Anthony, the Father of monks, was born in Egypt in 251 of pious parents who departed this life while he was yet young. On hearing the words of the Gospel: "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast, and give to the poor" (Matt. 19:21), he immediately put it into action. Distributing to the poor all he had, and fleeing from all the turmoil of the world, he departed to the desert. The manifold temptations he endured continually for the span of twenty years are incredible. His ascetic struggles by day and by night, whereby he mortified the uprisings of the passions and attained to the height of dispassion, surpass the bounds of nature; and the report of his deeds of virtue drew such a multitude to follow him that the desert was transformed into a city, while he became, so to speak, the governor, lawgiver, and master-trainer of all the citizens of this newly-formed city.

The cities of the world also enjoyed the fruit of his virtue. When the Christians were being persecuted and put to death under Maximinus in 312, he hastened to their aid and consolation. When the Church was troubled by the Arians, he went with zeal to Alexandria in 335 and struggled against them in behalf of Orthodoxy. During this time, by the grace of his words, he also turned many unbelievers to Christ.

Saint Anthony began his ascetic life outside his village of Coma in Upper Egypt, studying the ways of the ascetics and holy men there, and perfecting himself in the virtues of each until he surpassed them all. Desiring to increase his labors, he departed into the desert, and finding an abandoned fortress in the mountain, he made his dwelling in it, training himself in extreme fasting, unceasing prayer, and fierce conflicts with the demons. Here he remained, as mentioned above, about twenty years. Saint Athanasius the Great, who knew him personally and wrote his life, says that he came forth from that fortress "initiated in the mysteries and filled with the Spirit of God." Afterwards, because of the press of the faithful, who deprived him of his solitude, he was enlightened by God to journey with certain Bedouins, until he came to a mountain in the desert near the Red Sea, where he passed the remaining part of his life.

Saint Athanasius says of him that "his countenance had a great and wonderful grace. This gift also he had from the Saviour. For if he were present in a great company of monks, and any one who did not know him previously wished to see him, immediately coming forward he passed by the rest, and hurried to Anthony, as though attracted by his appearance. Yet neither in height nor breadth was he conspicuous above others, but in the serenity of his manner and the purity of his soul." So Passing his life, and becoming an example of virtue and a rule for monastics, he reposed on January 17 in the year 356, having lived altogether some 105 years.


Athncyrl
January 18

Athanasios and Cyril, Patriarchs of Alexandria

In the half-century after the First Ecumenical Council held in Nicea in 325, if there was one man whom the Arians feared and hated more intensely than any other, as being able to lay bare the whole error of their teaching, and to marshal, even from exile or hiding, the beleaguered forces of the Orthodox, it was Saint Athanasios the Great. This blazing lamp of Orthodoxy, which imperial power and heretics' plots could not quench when he shone upon the lampstand, nor find when he was hid by the people and monks of Egypt, was born in Alexandria about the year 296. He received an excellent training in Greek letters and especially in the sacred Scriptures, of which he shows an exceptional knowledge in his writings. Even as a young man he had a remarkable depth of theological understanding; he was only about twenty years old when he wrote his treatise "On the Incarnation." Saint Alexander, the Archbishop of Alexandria, brought him up in piety, ordained him his deacon, and after deposing Arius for his blasphemy against the Divinity of the Son of God, took Athanasios to the First Council in Nicea in 325. Saint Athanasios was to spend the remainder of his life laboring in defense of this Holy Council. In 326, before his death, Alexander appointed Athanasios his successor.

In 325, Arius had been condemned by the Council of Nicea; yet through his hypocritical confession of Orthodox belief, Saint Constantine the Great was persuaded by Arius's supporters that he should be received back into the communion of the Church. But Athanasios, knowing well the perverseness of his mind, and the disease of heresy lurking in his heart, refused communion with Arius. The heresiarch's followers then began framing false charges against Athanasios. Finally Saint Constantine the Great, misled by grave charges of the Saint's misconduct (which were completely false), had him exiled to Tiberius (Treves) in Gaul in 336. When Saint Constantine was succeeded by his three sons Constantine II, Constans, and Constantius, in 337, Saint Athanasios returned to Alexandria in triumph. But his enemies found an ally in Constantius, Emperor of the East, and he spent a second exile in Rome. It was ended when Constans prevailed with threats upon his brother Constantius to restore Athanasios (see also Nov. 6). For ten years Saint Athanasios strengthened Orthodoxy throughout Egypt, visiting the whole country and encouraging all: clergy, monastics, and lay folk, being loved by all as a father. After Constans's death in 350, Constantius became sole Emperor, and Athanasios was again in danger. On the evening of February 8, 356, General Syrianus with more than five thousand soldiers surrounded the church in which Athanasios was serving, and broke open the doors. Athanasios's clergy begged him to leave, but the good shepherd commanded that all the flock should withdraw first; and only when he was assured of their safety, he also, protected by divine grace, passed through the midst of the soldiers and disappeared into the deserts of Egypt, where for some six years he eluded the soldiers and spies sent after him.

When Julian the Apostate succeeded Constantius in 361, Athanasios returned again, but only for a few months. Because Athanasios had converted many pagans, and the priests of the idols in Egypt wrote to Julian that if Athanasios remained, idolatry would perish in Egypt, the heathen Emperor ordered not Athanasios's exile, but his death. Athanasios took a ship up the Nile. When he learned that his imperial pursuers were following him, he had his men turn back, and as his boat passed that of his pursuers, they asked him if he had seen Athanasios. "He is not far," he answered. After returning to Alexandria for a while, he fled again to the Thebaid until Julian's death in 363. Saint Athanasios suffered his fifth and last exile under Valens in 365, which only lasted four months because Valens, fearing a sedition among the Egyptians for their beloved Archbishop, revoked his edict in February, 366.

The great Athanasios passed the remaining seven years of his life in peace. Of his fifty-seven years as Patriarch, he had spent some seventeen in exiles. Shining from the height of his throne like a radiant evening star, and enlightening the Orthodox with the brilliance of his words for yet a little while, this much-suffering champion inclined toward the sunset of his life, and in the year 373 took his rest from his lengthy sufferings, but not before another luminary of the truth -- Basil the Great -- had risen in the East, being consecrated Archbishop of Caesarea in 370. Besides all of his other achievements, Saint Athanasios wrote the life of Saint Anthony the Great, with whom he spent time in his youth; ordained Saint Frumentius first Bishop of Ethiopia; and in his Paschal Encyclical for the year 367 set forth the books of the Old and New Testaments accepted by the Church as canonical. Saint Gregory the Theologian, in his "Oration On the Great Athanasios", said that he was "Angelic in appearance, more angelic in mind; ... rebuking with the tenderness of a father, praising with the dignity of a ruler ... Everything was harmonious, as an air upon a single lyre, and in the same key; his life, his teaching, his struggles, his dangers, his return, and his conduct after his return ... he treated so mildly and gently those who had injured him, that even they themselves, if I may say so, did not find his restoration distasteful."

Saint Cyril was also from Alexandria, born about the year 376. He was the nephew of Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, who also instructed the Saint in his youth. Having first spent much time with the monks in Nitria, he later became the successor to his uncle's throne in 412. In 429, when Cyril heard tidings of the teachings of the new Patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, he began attempting through private letters to bring Nestorius to renounce his heretical teaching about the Incarnation. When the heresiarch did not repent, Saint Cyril, together with Pope Celestine of Rome, led the Orthodox opposition to his error. Saint Cyril presided over the Third Ecumenical Council of the 200 Holy Fathers in the year 431, who gathered in Ephesus under Saint Theodosius the Younger. At this Council, by his most wise words, he put to shame and convicted the impious doctrine of Nestorius, who, although he was in town, refused to appear before Cyril. Saint Cyril, besides overthrowing the error of Nestorius, has left to the Church full commentaries on the Gospels of Luke and John. Having shepherded the Church of Christ for thirty-two years, he reposed in 444.


BACK TO TOP

Hymns of the Day

Resurrectional Apolytikion in the Plagal First Mode

Let us worship the Word who is unoriginate * with the Father and the Spirit, and from a Virgin was born * for our salvation, O believers, and let us sing His praise. * For in His goodness He was pleased * to ascend the Cross in the flesh, and to undergo death, * and to raise up those who had died, * by His glorious Resurrection.

Seasonal Kontakion in the First Mode

Your birth sanctified a Virgin's womb and properly blessed the hands of Symeon. Having now come and saved us O Christ our God, give peace to Your commonwealth in troubled times and strengthen those in authority, whom You love, as only the loving One.
BACK TO TOP

Gospel and Epistle Readings

Epistle Reading

Prokeimenon. Plagal First Mode. Psalm 11.7,1.
You, O Lord, shall keep us and preserve us.
Verse: Save me, O Lord, for the godly man has failed.

The reading is from St. Paul's Letter to the Colossians 3:4-11.

BRETHREN, when Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience. In these you once walked, when you lived in them. But now put them all away; anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.


Gospel Reading

12th Sunday of Luke
The Reading is from Luke 17:12-19

At that time, as Jesus entered a village, He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said: "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us." When He saw them He said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus's feet, giving Him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus: "Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" And He said to him: "Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well."


BACK TO TOP

Wisdom of the Fathers

Having met the Savior, therefore, the lepers earnestly besought Him to free them from their misery, and called Him Master, that is. Teacher. No one pitied them when suffering this malady, but He Who had appeared on earth for this very reason, and had become man that He might show pity to all, He was moved with compassion for them, and had mercy on them.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, Homilies 113-116. B#42, pp. 465-466, 4th Century

And why did He not rather say, I will, be you cleansed; as He did in the case of another leper, but commanded them rather to show themselves to the priests? It was because the law gave directions to this effect to those who were delivered from leprosy (Lev. 14-2); for it commanded them to show themselves to the priests, and to offer a sacrifice for their cleansing.
St. Cyril of Alexandria
Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke, Homilies 113-116. B#42, pp. 465-466, 4th Century

BACK TO TOP

Ministry News

Agia_anna

TODAY Fellowship Hour is sponsored by the Kaldes family.

CHURCH CALENDAR

Please contact Father Anastasios on his mobile phone to schedule House Blessings this month.

January 17:  Feast Day of St. Anthony, Orthros & Divine Liturgy, 9 am

January 17:  St. Athanasios Great Vespers at St. Athanasios Church in Paramus, NJ, 7 pm. PRESIDED BY HIS EMINENCE, METROPOLITAN EVANGELOS OF NEW JERSEY.

January 18:  Sts. Athanasios and Cyril Patriarchs Alexandria, Orthros & Divine Liturgy, 9 am

Happy Name Day to all who celebrate this week!

 

January 25:  St. Gregory the Theologian - Orthros & Divine Liturgy, 9 am

January 30:  Three Hierarchs - Orthros & Divine Liturgy, 9 am

 

Education:  No Greek School on Monday, January 16 due to the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr holiday.

PTO: A huge thank you to those that contributed to help the Martin Luther King Youth Center in Bridgewater.  The PTO will deliver the items, which include board games, backpacks and school supplies to the center on behalf of St. Anna. Again, thank you for all your generous donations!

 

 

Apokriatiko Glendi – February 18, 2017, 7 pm – 11 pm

REGISTER NOW!!  The Parish Council and Philoptochos are jointly sponsoring St. Anna’s Apokriatiko Glendi (Mardi Gras), an evening of music, dancing, food and family fellowship.  Please support this fundraiser for our beloved St. Anna, as it is part of our parish’s history on our path towards continuing growth.  Tickets are $50 for adults, $25 for children under 18 and free for children under five.  You have choices to sign up to attend – every Sunday after church or contact Margaret Panageas at 908-246-7527 or Arge Mardakis at 908-253-0484.  We look forward to hearing from you.

 

 

PC Corner

  • 2017 PC members were elections were ratified by HE and sworn in.  The Executive Board was voted upon and has been established as follows: 

John Kaldes – President

John Douvris – 1st Vice President

Costa Tsatsos – 2nd Vice President

Peter Zannikos – Treasurer

Jorge Ferreira – Assistant Treasurer

Arge Mardakis – Recording Secretary

Joanne Diver – Corresponding Secretary

Michael Kypridakes, Dean Soteropoulos, Cliff Gilman, Bill Panageas, Nikolas Kritharis, Larry Tattoli

  • 2017 is an exciting year as we mark our 15th anniversary (first incorporated in 2002).
  • In the next few weeks the PC will invite all the ministry heads to a 2017 planning session so that we can efficiently manage the church calendar.
  • PC priority will be given to "Nicholas and Anna Memorial Hall" dedication event, donor recognition and launch of iconography project, all tentatively planned for May 7.  Please MARK THIS DATE and plan not to miss it. If you are interested in helping with this event, please contact  Diana Grina or John Douvris.

The St. Anna Event Request Form can be accessed on the website, for anyone who would like to hold an event at the Church, Community Center, or gym.

 

Fellowship Hour sponsors needed!  Please sign up outside the Church office, or contact Dr. Nikolaos Kritharis at nikolaos.kritharis.dmd@gmail.com or 201-572-3420. 

 

 

 

 

 

BACK TO TOP

Bulletin Inserts

BACK TO TOP

Stewardship

STEWARDSHIP:  Stewardship is the sharing of the talents and treasures that God has provided for us.  An Orthodox Christian Steward is an active participant in the life of the Church. The parish encourages all who accept the Orthodox Faith to become practicing Stewards.

 
2017 Stewardship Status:  We have 62 Pledges totaling $119,950 for an average of $1,935 and $21,982 received to date.   It is important that all families complete a stewardship card to be considered a steward.

We need everyone’s participation to exceed this year’s stewardship pledge budget of $165,000.  If the remaining stewards from 2016 give at the same level as last year we could exceed our budget and reach a record high number of stewards.

…Remember a rich man is not one who has much, but one who gives much…

 

BACK TO TOP