Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
Publish Date: 2025-05-18
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Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church

General Information

  • Phone:
  • (228) 388-6138
  • Street Address:

  • 255 Beauvoir Rd.

  • Biloxi, MS 39531


Contact Information




Services Schedule

Service schedule varies.  The current schedule can be found in the bulletin or parish website.

 


Past Bulletins


Father Paisius McGrath, Presbyter

Christos Anesti! Greetings to the faithful members and families of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. May our Risen Lord continue to bless and guide us as we journey towards Holy Pentecost!

Today on the 4th Sunday after Holy Pascha on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, we reflect once again on the truth of Jesus Christ being the only satisfying water of life. In today's Gospel Reading from Saint John 4:5-42, we hear the familiar story of our Lord's discussion with Saint Photini at the well in Samaria. Here once again, we hear that our Lord is the living water which fills the thirsty souls of all who come to Him. Just as we heard in the Healing of the Paralytic last Sunday and in Mid Pentecost a few days ago, Christ Jesus is the only true spiritual living water necessary to quench the spiritual thirst. By drinking of this spiritual water, we not only satisfy our thirst but also gain the one thing needed to grow in faith and spiritual life!

 

       Your Pastor,
 
       Father Paisius R. McGrath

 

 

  

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Gospel and Epistle Readings

Epistle Reading

Prokeimenon. 4th Tone. Psalm 103.24,1.
O Lord, how manifold are your works. You have made all things in wisdom.
Verse: Bless the Lord, O my soul.

The reading is from Acts of the Apostles 11:19-30.

In those days, those apostles who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to none except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number that believed turned to the Lord. News of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad; and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose; for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a large company was added to the Lord. So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church, and taught a large company of people; and in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians. Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabos stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world; and this took place in the days of Claudius. And the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brethren who lived in Judea, and they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.


Gospel Reading

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
The Reading is from John 4:5-42

At that time, Jesus came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink." For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?" For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?" Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here." The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly." The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." The woman said to him, "I know that the Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things." Jesus said to her, "I who speak to you am he."

Just then his disciples came. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but none said, "What do you wish?" or, "Why are you talking with her?" So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city and said to the people, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" They went out of the city and were coming to him.

Meanwhile the disciples besought him, saying "Rabbi, eat." But he said to them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know." So the disciples said to one another, "Has anyone brought him food?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, then comes the harvest'? I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman's testimony. "He told me all that I ever did." So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard ourselves, and we know that this is indeed Christ the Savior of the world."


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Saints and Feasts

May 18

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

One of the most ancient cities of the Promised Land was Shechem, also called Sikima, located at the foot of Mount Gerazim. There the Israelites had heard the blessings in the days of Moses and Jesus of Navi. Near to this town, Jacob, who had come from Mesopotamia in the nineteenth century before Christ, bought a piece of land where there was a well. This well, preserved even until the time of Christ, was known as Jacob's Well. Later, before he died in Egypt, he left that piece of land as a special inheritance to his son Joseph (Gen. 49:22). This town, before it was taken into possession by Samaria, was also the leading city of the kingdom of the ten tribes. In the time of the Romans it was called Neapolis, and at present Nablus. It was the first city in Canaan visited by the Patriarch Abraham. Here also, Jesus of Navi (Joshua) addressed the tribes of Israel for the last time. Almost three hundred years later, all Israel assembled there to make Roboam (Rehoboam) king.

When our Lord Jesus Christ, then, came at midday to this city, which is also called Sychar (John 4:5), He was wearied from the journey and the heat, and He sat down at this well. After a little while the Samaritan woman mentioned in today's Gospel passage came to draw water. As she conversed at some length with the Lord and heard from Him secret things concerning herself, she believed in Him; through her many other Samaritans also believed.

Concerning the Samaritans we know the following: In the year 721 before Christ, Salmanasar (Shalmaneser), King of the Assyrians, took the ten tribes of the kingdom of Israel into captivity, and relocated all these people to Babylon and the land of the Medes. From there he gathered various nations and sent them to Samaria. These nations had been idolaters from before. Although they were later instructed in the Jewish faith and believed in the one God, they worshipped the idols also. Furthermore, they accepted only the Pentateuch of Moses, and rejected the other books of Holy Scripture. Nonetheless, they thought themselves to be descendants of Abraham and Jacob. Therefore, the pious Jews named these Judaizing and idolatrous peoples Samaritans, since they lived in Samaria, the former leading city of the Israelites, as well as in the other towns thereabout. The Jews rejected them as heathen and foreigners, and had no communion with them at all, as the Samaritan woman observed, "the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans" (John 4:9). Therefore, the name Samaritan is used derisively many times in the Gospel narrations. After the Ascension of the Lord, and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the woman of Samaria was baptized by the holy Apostles and became a great preacher and Martyr of Christ; she was called Photine, and her feast is kept on February 26.


May 21

Constantine and Helen, Equal-to-the Apostles

This great and renowned sovereign of the Christians was the son of Constantius Chlorus (the ruler of the westernmost parts of the Roman empire), and of the blessed Helen. He was born in 272, in (according to some authorities) Naissus of Dardania, a city on the Hellespont. In 306, when his father died, he was proclaimed successor to his throne. In 312, on learning that Maxentius and Maximinus had joined forces against him, he marched into Italy, where, while at the head of his troops, he saw in the sky after midday, beneath the sun, a radiant pillar in the form of a cross with the words: "By this shalt thou conquer." The following night, our Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him in a dream and declared to him the power of the Cross and its significance. When he arose in the morning, he immediately ordered that a labarum be made (which is a banner or standard of victory over the enemy) in the form of a cross, and he inscribed on it the Name of Jesus Christ. On the 28th Of October, he attacked and mightily conquered Maxentius, who drowned in the Tiber River while fleeing. The following day, Constantine entered Rome in triumph and was proclaimed Emperor of the West by the Senate, while Licinius, his brother-in-law, ruled in the East. But out of malice, Licinius later persecuted the Christians. Constantine fought him once and again, and utterly destroyed him in 324, and in this manner he became monarch over the West and the East. Under him and because of him all the persecutions against the Church ceased. Christianity triumphed and idolatry was overthrown. In 325 he gathered the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, which he himself personally addressed. In 324, in the ancient city of Byzantium, he laid the foundations of the new capital of his realm, and solemnly inaugurated it on May 11, 330, naming it after himself, Constantinople. Since the throne of the imperial rule was transferred thither from Rome, it was named New Rome, the inhabitants of its domain were called Romans, and it was considered the continuation of the Roman Empire. Falling ill near Nicomedia, he requested to receive divine Baptism, according to Eusebius (The Life of Constantine. Book IV, 61-62), and also according to Socrates and Sozomen; and when he had been deemed worthy of the Holy Mysteries, he reposed in 337, on May 21 or 22, the day of Pentecost, having lived sixty-five years, of which he ruled for thirty-one years. His remains were transferred to Constantinople and were deposed in the Church of the Holy Apostles, which had been built by him (see Homily XXVI on Second Corinthians by Saint John Chrysostom).

As for his holy mother Helen, after her son had made the Faith of Christ triumphant throughout the Roman Empire, she undertook a journey to Jerusalem and found the Holy Cross on which our Lord was crucified (see Sept. 13 and 14). After this, Saint Helen, in her zeal to glorify Christ, erected churches in Jerusalem at the sites of the Crucifixion and Resurrection, in Bethlehem at the cave where our Saviour was born, another on the Mount of Olives whence He ascended into Heaven, and many others throughout the Holy Land, Cyprus, and elsewhere. She was proclaimed Augusta, her image was stamped upon golden coins, and two cities were named Helenopolis after her in Bithynia and in Palestine. Having been thus glorified for her piety, she departed to the Lord being about eighty years of age, according to some in the year 330, according to others, in 336.


May 25

Sunday of the Blind Man

The Lord Jesus was coming from the Temple on the Sabbath, when, while walking in the way, He saw the blind man mentioned in today's Gospel. This man had been born thus from his mother's womb, that is, he had been born without eyes (see Saint John Chrysostom, Homily LVI on Matthew; Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book V:15; and the second Exorcism of Saint Basil the Great). When the disciples saw this, they asked their Teacher, "Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?" They asked this because when the Lord had healed the paralytic at the Sheep's Pool, He had told him, "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee" (John 5:14); so they wondered, if sickness was caused by sin, what sin could have been the cause of his being born without eyes. But the Lord answered that this was for the glory of God. Then the God-man spat on the ground and made clay with the spittle. He anointed the eyes of the blind man and said to him, "Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam." Siloam (which means "sent") was a well-known spring in Jerusalem used by the inhabitants for its waters, which flowed to the eastern side of the city and collected in a large pool called "the Pool of Siloam."

Therefore, the Saviour sent the blind man to this pool that he might wash his eyes, which had been anointed with the clay-not that the pool's water had such power, but that the faith and obedience of the one sent might be made manifest, and that the miracle might become more remarkable and known to all, and leave no room for doubt. Thus, the blind man believed in Jesus' words, obeyed His command, went and washed himself, and returned, no longer blind, but having eyes and seeing. This was the greatest miracle that our Lord had yet worked; as the man healed of his blindness himself testified, "Since time began, never was it heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind," although the Lord had already healed the blind eyes of many. Because he now had eyes, some even doubted that he was the same person (John 9:8-9); and it was still lively in their remembrance when Christ came to the tomb of Lazarus, for they said, "Could not this man, who opened the eyes of the blind man, have caused that even this man should not have died?" Saint John Chrysostom gives a thorough and brilliant exposition of our Lord's meeting with the woman of Samaria, the healing of the paralytic, and the miracle of the blind man in his commentaries on the Gospel of Saint John.


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Hymns of the Day

Apolytikion of Great and Holy Pascha in the Plagal 1st Tone

Christ is risen from the dead, by death, trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs He has granted life.

Resurrectional Apolytikion in the 4th Tone

When the women Disciples of the Lord had learned from the Angel the joyful message of the Resurrection and had rejected the ancestral decision, they cried aloud to the Apostles triumphantly: Death has been despoiled, Christ God has risen, granting His great mercy to the world.

Apolytikion for Mid-Pentecost in the Plagal 4th Tone

At Mid-feast give Thou my thirsty soul to drink of the waters of piety; for Thou, O Saviour, didst cry out to all: Whosoever is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. Wherefore, O Well-spring of life, Christ our God, glory be to Thee.

Seasonal Kontakion in the Plagal 4th Tone

Though You went down into the tomb, You destroyed Hades' power, and You rose the victor, Christ God, saying to the myrrh-bearing women, "Hail!" and granting peace to Your disciples, You who raise up the fallen.
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Wisdom of the Fathers

Here is love! Here is teaching! Here is acquiescence! Here is a model! ... Those who love they also serve. If you want to find out how great your love is towards God, then measure your obedience to the will of God, and you will immediately learn.
Bishop Nicolai Velimirovic
Prolog, 7 Sept., B #80, 706.

The example of the good Samaritan shows that we must not abandon those in whom even the faintest amount of faith is still alive.
St. Ambrose of Milan
Two Books of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Concerning Repentance, Chapter 11

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Upcoming Services and Events

  • Upcoming Services and Events

    May 18 to May 26, 2025

    Sunday, May 18

    4th Sunday of Pascha

    Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

    9:30AM Orthros

    10:00AM Divine Liturgy

    12:30PM Children's Saint George Program

    Tuesday, May 20

    6:00PM Great Vespers with Artoklasia

    Wednesday, May 21

    Saints Constantine and Helen

    9:30AM Orthros

    10:00AM Divine Liturgy

    6:00PM Daily Vespers with Talk and Potluck Meal

    Thursday, May 22

    6:00PM Parish Bible Study

    Saturday, May 24

    5:00PM Great Vespers

    6:00PM Byzantine Chant Class

    Sunday, May 25

    5th Sunday of Holy Pascha

    Sunday of the Blind Man

    3rd Finding of Head of Saint John the Baptist

    9:30AM Orthros

    10:00AM Divine Liturgy

    11:30AM Memorial for Departed Veterans

    12:30PM Catechuman Class

    Monday, May 26

    Memorial Day

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Announcements

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

This morning we offer a Mnimosino (Memorial) Service for the annual commememoration of the Pontus Greek Genocide which is commemorated each year on May 19.  We pray for a blessed repose for the hundreds of thousands of Greeks living in the Pontus region of Asia Minor killed between 1914-1923.  May the Lord our God grant a blessed repose to His departed servants and may their memory be eternal!
 
This morning we continue in the celebration of the Feast of Mid Pentecost from this past Wednesday.  On this Feast we celebrated the Small Blessing of Water and we encourage everyone to take a drink of the Holy Water blessed on this Feast.
 
This week we celebrate the Feast of Saints Constantine and Helen, Equals to the Apostles, with Great Vespers with Artoklasia at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 20 and Orthros and Divine Liturgy on Wednesday, May 21. Come and pray with us.
 
We invite everyone to join us each week on Thursday evenings at 6:00 p.m. for our Parish Bible Study. This week we will be studying  the Book of 3 Maccabees in the Old Testament.
 
The Parish Council would like to remind you that if you are giving financial offerings to the Parish but have not filled out a Holy Trinity Membership Pledge Form, you should complete that for full membership and particpation in the Parish.
 

HOLY TRINITY SCHEDULE THIS WEEK

Tuesday, May 20, Great Vespers with Artoklasia 6:00 p.m.
 
Wednesday, May 21, Leavetaking of Mid Pentecost/ Saints Constantine and Helen, Equals to the Apostles, Orthros 9:30 am Divine Liturgy 10:00 a.m.
Daily Vespers and Talk 6:00 p.m.  Potluck Meal
 
Thursday, May 22, Parish Bible Study 6:00 p.m.
 
Saturday, May 24, Great Vespers 5:00 p.m.
Byzantine Chant Class 6:00 p.m. 
 
Sunday, May 25, 5th Sunday of Holy Pascha/Sunday of the Blind Man/3rd Finding of Head of Saint John the Baptist, Orthros 9:30 a.m. Divine Liturgy 10:00 a.m.  Memorial Service for Departed Veterans 11:45 a.m.  Catechumen Class 12:30 p.m.
 

The Ministry of Holy Trinity is enabled, thanks be to God, by the faithful support of the following stewards of our Parish:

Abrahem Samander
Adam & Shauna Angel
Akaterina Vamvakas
Alijah King
Angelos and Elizabeth Vamvakas
Brad & Mandy Sartor
Carl & Nancy Malek
Chris Mavromihalis
Chrissanthi Beach
Colleen Collins
Crystal & Cassidy Anderson
Edward S. Maikranz
Eleni Vganges
George & Janie Mavromihalis
George & Sheila Yurchak
George J. Vaporis
George L. Contas
Gus Ravenous
Guy Bowering
Jeff & Christie Maung
Irene Adeline
Irene Koskan
Jaime Ross
John & Donna Collins
Louis and Linda Peters
Malama Thrasivoulou
Mousa Maloof
Mihnea C. & Viorica M Ionescu
Nada D. Harris
Nataliya Petrovska Kirkby
Nicoletta Conner
Panagiotis "Peter" & Maria Loukatos
Rodney and Karen Bridges
Seth Willison
Spiro Vganges
Tim Gilmore
Trent & Rachel Milan
William Patrick Weaver
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Bulletin

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