Jesus Christ teaches us to love and serve all people, regardless of their ethnicity or nationality. To understand this, 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)

To Our Guests
Throughout our services, we use the more formal "thy" and "thou" or what is commonly referred to as King Jamesean English.  The Lord's Prayer is recited as follows:

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy Name,
Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, as on earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,
Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One.

Please join us after Liturgy for refreshments and hospitality.

Pastoral Care - General Information

Emergency Sick Calls can be made at any time. Please call Fr Steven at (860) 322-2906, 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.

Members of our Parish Council are:

Marlene Melesko - President
Sarah Senetcen - Member at Large
Boris Doph - Treasurer
Dierdre Cottergarfield - Vice President
Luba Martins - Secretary

Mission Statement
St. Alexis Orthodox Christian Church is a local English speaking community of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) on the shoreline of Connecticut.

St. Alexis exists to:

• Call all people to Christ
• Worship as a community 
• Experience the joy of Christ in our lives 
• Share this joy with those around us 
• Educate people about the Truth and Presence of Orthodoxy 
• We offer the love of Christ to those in need, both in word and action.

AED Use

Video instructions for the use of the Automated Electronic Defibulators can be found here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Qas3q7O3mletF8ceJOq9g4uQzReii8GG&usp=drive_fs

Filesharing

https://sites.google.com/stalexischurch.net/parish/home

If you are asked to enter a username and password, please contact Fr Steven via email.

If you would like to update yourself on the current status of the Strategic Planning, please use the following link.

https://sites.google.com/stalexischurch.net/parish/strategic-planning

Again we pray that we may be made worthy of founding in our Diocese a monastery in honor
of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, let us pray to the Lord!

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 and dispossesed, 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, predjudice; pestilence and natural disaster; 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:  Maria
• Clergy and their families: Fr Sergei B, Fr Vladimir, Fr Vladimir, Fr John, Fr Alexander
• ​Catechumen: Joshua Figueroa
• Individuals and Families: Luba, Suzanne, Rosemary,  Daniel & Dayna, Kristen, Victor, Susan, Gregory, Nina
• Birthdays and Name’s Days this Month: Michael Kuziak (8/4), Douglas Kuziak (8/12), Stasia PenkoffLedbeck (8/16), Samual Jankura (8/18), Kyle Hollis (8/23), Susan Egan (8/24), Anastasia Littlefield (8/30)
• Anniversaries this Month:  Valery and Jason Danilack-Federer (7/7) Anne & Fr Steven Hosking (8/24), Maureen and Dn Timothy Skuby (8/30)
• ​Expecting and Newborn:  
• Traveling: 
• Sick and those in distress: Nancy, Boris, Glenn, John, Joan, Sharon, William, Sharon, Alexander, Olga, Christine, Tatianna, Stormy, Vassily

Today’s commemorated feasts and saints

11th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — Tone 2. Afterfeast of the Dormition. Translation of the Image “Not-made-by-hands” of our Lord Jesus Christ from Edessa to Constantinople (944). (Third “Feast of the Savior in August”). Holy Unmercenary Physician Diomedes (298). Ven. Cherimon (Chæremon) of Egypt (4th c.). 

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.

Again we pray thee, O Lord our God: We are all called to be the branches of the spiritual vine that grew from the seeds of the Orthodox Faith that our missionary fathers, Herman and Innocent and their companions, planted and nurtured among the native peoples of Alaska, a vine that bears fruit to this day throughout our land, as we imitate the virtues of those husbandmen, of the many saints known only to God, of the Martyr Peter the Aleut, and of our Mother Olga of Kwethluk; through their intercessions, O Lord, hear us and have mercy!

Again we pray thee, O God our Savior: Look with favor upon us, the families and spiritual children of the peoples who came to our land from the old world and brought with them the Orthodox Faith, which they held fast and nurtured in their labors in the mines and mills and on the farms of this new land, and among the challenges of its great cities; we pray thee, O Lord, hear us and have mercy!

Again we pray thee, O Lord our God: We have thy Mother as the Protectress of Orthodox Christians in our North American lands; as we joyfully celebrate her patronage and her miracles, we pray thee, O Lord, through her intercessions, in all our challenges, hear us and have mercy!

Tone 2    Troparion    (Resurrection)
When Thou didst descend to death, O Life immortal,
Thou didst slay hell with the splendor of Thy Godhead.
And when from the depths Thou didst raise the dead,
all the powers of heaven cried out://
“O Giver of life, Christ our God, glory to Thee!”

Tone 2    Troparion (Image)
We venerate Thy most pure image, O Good One;
and ask forgiveness of our transgressions, O Christ our God.
Of Thine own will Thou wast pleased to ascend the Cross in the flesh
and deliver Thy creatures from bondage to the Enemy.
Therefore with thankfulness we cry aloud to Thee:
“Thou hast filled all with joy, O our Savior,//
by coming to save the world.”

Tone 1    Troparion    Dormition)
In giving birth thou didst preserve thy virginity.
In falling asleep thou didst not forsake the world, O Theotokos.
Thou wast translated to life, O Mother of Life,//
and by thy prayers thou dost deliver our souls from death.

Tone 2     Kontakion    (Resurrection)
Hell became afraid, O almighty Savior,
seeing the miracle of Thy Resurrection from the tomb!
The dead arose! Creation, with Adam, beheld this and rejoiced with Thee,// 
and the world, my Savior, praises Thee forever.

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

Tone 2    Kontakion (Image)
Uncircumscribed Word of the Father,
as we behold the victorious image of Thy true incarnation,
not made by hands, but divinely wrought
in Thine ineffable and divine dispensation towards us,//
we honor it with veneration.

now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Tone 2    Kontakion    (Dormition)
Neither the tomb, nor death, could hold the Theotokos,
who is constant in prayer and our firm hope in her intercessions.
For being the Mother of Life,//
she was translated to life by the One Who dwelt in her virginal womb.

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

The Angels, as they looked upon the Dormition of the Virgin, 
were struck  with wonder, 
seeing how the Virgin went up from earth to heaven.
 
The limits of nature are overcome in thee, O Pure Virgin:
for birthgiving remains virginal, and life is united to death;
a virgin after childbearing and alive after death,
thou dost ever save thine inheritance, O Theotokos.

COMMUNION HYMN

Praise the Lord from the heavens, praise Him in the highest! 
O Lord, we will walk in the light of Thy countenance, and will exult in Thy Name forever. Alleluia (3X)

Saint John of Kronstadt
Sermon on the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos
August 15
“Magnify O my soul, the honourable Translation of the Mother of God from earth to heaven.” (Refrain for the 9th Ode of the Canon)

Let us be happy, beloved brothers and sisters that we belong to the Holy Orthodox Church, worthily and rightly glorifying the Most Holy Sovereign Theotokos on this eminent day out of all the days of the year with special solemnity. There exists on earth many societies and entire governments that do not consider the need nor the obligation to call upon and glorify the Queen of heaven and earth, the Mother of Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, and other saints and angels; to submissively serve Her lovingly, as the true Mother of God. Sadly in Russia nowadays we have heretics (among us) who actively dishonor the Mother of God, the saints, their icons, their relics and their festivals. O, if only they also unanimously with us glorified the worthy Queen of heaven and earth!

Today the Holy Church solemnly glorifies the honorable Dormition or translation of the Mother of God from earth to heaven. A wonderful translation - she died without serious illness, peacefully. Her soul is taken up in the divine hands of Her Son and carried up into the heavenly abode, accompanied by the sweet singing of angels. And then, her most pure body is transferred by the apostles to Gethsemane where it is honorably buried, and on the third day it is resurrected and taken up to heaven. You see this on the icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos. On it is represented the life-bearing body of the Theotokos laying on a bier, surrounded by the apostles and hierarchs, and in the center of the icon the Lord holding in His hands the most pure soul of the Theotokos. The translation of the Mother of God is a paradigm of the translation in general of the souls of Christians to the other world.

We say that our dead have “fallen asleep” or “passed away.” What does this mean? This means that for the true Christian there is no death. Death was conquered by Christ on the cross. But there is a translation, i.e, a rearrangement of his condition, i.e. his soul is in another place, in another age, in another world beyond the grave, eternal, without end, that is what is meant by “falling asleep”. It is as if it were a temporary dream after which, by the voice of the Lord and the fearful yet wonderful trumpet of the Archangel, all the dead shall live and come forth each to his place: either to the resurrection of life or to the resurrection of condemnation (John 5:29). This is what the Christian means by translation. We should be ready for this translation, for the day of the general resurrection and judgment, for this indescribable world event, recorded in the Holy Scriptures.

This preparation for the meeting of the heavenly King before the dread judgment seat, after death, is essentially the person’s preparation throughout the whole of his life. This preparation means a change in all his thoughts, and the moral change of all his being, so that the whole man would be pure and white as snow, washing clean everything that defiles the body and spirit, so that he is adorned with every virtue: repentance, meekness, humility, gentleness, simplicity, chastity, mercifulness, abstention, spiritual contemplation, and burning love for God and neighbor.

Our preparation for meeting the heavenly King, and for the inheritance of eternal life in heaven, should consist of these things. The heavenly King desires souls adorned with immutable virtue, souls prepared so that the Very Lord Himself could abide in them. Do not marvel that the Very Lord wants to live in us. In fact the human soul is more spacious than the heavens and the earth, for it exists in the image of God. And if one removes sins from the soul, the Lord of all will settle in it and will fill it with Himself. “We will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23), says the Lord about the souls who love Him.

And so, ye participants in the Christian feasts, and especially the present feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God, ye who are brightly adorned with every virtue and translated to the heavenly kingdom, to Her Son and God, proclaim to each and every one about preparing their souls to be the dwelling place of the Lord, about continual repentance, and about the incorruptible adornment of Christian virtue. Let your death also be unashamed and peaceful, serving as the pledge of a good answer at the dread judgment seat of Christ. Amen.