CHURCH SERVICES: JULY and AUGUST
Saturday Vespers: 6:00pm
Sunday Matins: 8:30 am
SUNDAY DIVINE LITURGY: 9:30 am
July 6-12 Project Mexico Team departs for Tijuana
July 19-25 Metropolis of Boston Camp in New Hampshire
July 24 - Church Golf Tournament
Aug 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13 Supplication Service (Paraclesis) to the Virgin Mary (7:30pm)
Aug 6 - Holy Transfiguration Divine Liturgy (9:30am)
Aug 8-14 - SON ROCK Vacation Church Camp
for ages 4-12 at Sts. Constantine & Helen Church (5:30pm-8:30pm), including an Excursion to Purgatory State Park and a Picnic at Buffemville Lake.
Aug 15 - Falling Asleep of the Virgin Mary Divine Liturgy (9:30am)
FR. LUKE'S MESSAGE
My Dear and Beloved Family of God,
“Do not let any unwholesome talk proceed out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building other people up, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)
What a beautiful and practical piece of advice from the Apostle Paul. Think a moment about how we interact with others. When we meet them, does our encounter with others make a positive difference in their day? Do we build others up with our words and our expressions and our overall demeanor, or do we bring them down in some way. Or maybe our encounter simply make no difference at all in their day?
Our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to be “a light” to others. If we are truly walking with Christ, and allowing His Spirit and Presence to fill our hearts, than we should be overflowing with His love. This automatically means that His light should shine through us. In other words, when people come into contact with us, they should experience a taste of our Lord Jesus Himself.
Think about this for a moment. When we meet someone who is filled with joy, smiling and positive, sincerely saying things that make us feel good and build us up, how do we feel? It is often contagious. Even if we are in a sour mood, our mood can quickly change.
And yet, the opposite is just as true. When we meet a pessimistic person, who is criticizing everything and everyone, who is finding fault here and there, and who is tearing us down, we quickly get defensive and enter into their foul mood.
Mother Teresa would often tell her sisters, the Missionaries of Charity, “Don’t let anyone ever come to you and enter into your presence without feeling the love of God. Let them leave their interaction with you feeling loved and feeling better.”
That is another way of saying what St. Paul advised in the opening verse. May our encounter with others build up, be helpful, and impart grace to the hearers.
Imagine how our day would go if each time we met someone we consciously tried to say something positive, something complimentary, something that would build them up. If we tried to offer encouraging words that would be helpful to them in that particular moment, how different their day would go. In fact, we would quickly realize how much people would love to be in our presence! Can we consciously struggle to become instruments of our Lord, bearers who carry His grace to all those we encounter?
It can all begin in such a simple way - with a smile. Sincere smiles are contagious! Smiles beget smiles. The shortest distance between two people is with a smile. And the smile transcends everyone language and culture.
Mother Teresa encouraged, “Smile at each other. Smile at your wife and husband. Smile at your children. Smile at each other. It doesn’t matter who it is. And that smile will help you grow up in greater love for one another.”
Smiling. Greeting someone with a cheerful voice. Saying something positive and encouraging. Offering a blessing with our demeanor, our expressions, our words, and our actions.
There is a beautiful letter than St. Nektarios wrote to one of his spiritual children, the Abbess Xenia. In it he advised her on how to shepherd the nuns in her monastery, but it is obviously good advise for each of us in the world. He writes, “Realize that your cheerfulness gladdens the faces of the Sisters and renders the convent a paradise… The joy and cheerfulness of the sisters depends upon you, and it is your duty to preserve this joy in their hearts. Do this even at times by forcing yourself. Become for them a cause of cheerfulness… When you gladden the heart of your neighbor, you may be sure that you please God much more than when you occupy yourself with extreme forms of askesis (i.e. prostrations, prolonged prayer and fasting).”
Of course, it is not always easy to smile at others and to encourage them. Some people are just mean and hurtful and filled with negativity. Sometimes it is quite difficult to smile at another, yet to smile is the beginning of love. We smile and encourage and build up and impart grace because we know that God is doing the same to us!
Our challenge and calling is not to react to others, but to be proactive in sharing the love that God instills in our own lives. This obviously implies that we must first experience our Lord’s love for us. We must be filled with His grace!
If we want to become “Christ-bearers”, carriers of God’s grace and love to others, than each and every day we must take the time to dwell in His presence. We must create the time, preferably in the morning before we begin each day, and allow ourselves to be filled with God’s love and presence. We must stand before Him in prayer, read His love letter to us, which is the Holy Scriptures, and invite His Holy Spirit to come and abide richly in us. After doing this, we are then prepared to go out into the world and bring His love to everyone we meet!
By filling ourselves with God’s presence we are then equipped to see the beauty in every person we meet, and call out that beauty.
“Do not let any unwholesome talk proceed out of your mouth, but only what is helpful for building other people up, that it may impart grace to the hearers.”
I pray we all become such instruments in God’s hands!
With much love and gratitude in our
Lord Jesus Christ,
+Luke
BOOK REVIEW
GO FORTH:
Stories of Mission and Resurrection in Albania
by Fr. Luke A. Veronis
Here you will find one of the most interesting and engaging collections of real life personal experiences ! The stories engage you with all of the drama and pathos of a contemporary struggle against the real and violent forces of evil and for the astounding rebirth of an almost extinguished Christian community in a small nation of southeastern Europe - Albania.
Most Orthodox Christians are unaware of the rich history of missions in their Church. An even more closed door is the actual life of Orthodox missionaries. What in fact do Orthodox missionaries do? Well, if you are curious enough to find out, I heartily recommend to you this book, which is a collection of very human, very inspiring, very interesting, and very attention- grabbing missionary stories. After reading this book, you will have most of your questions answered, and will have entered into the real life experiences and reflections of a modern day Orthodox missionary.
Perhaps the reason for most Orthodox Christian indifference to Orthodox Christian missions , is that following the fifteenth century, most Orthodox Churches found it almost impossible to do what Jesus Christ told us to do: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). The reason for this lack of mission sensitivity was the stifling conditions of the Muslim oppression of the Church that reached to the beginnings of the 19th century . When, at long last the Ottoman Empire came to an end, there was, with the exception of Orthodox Russia, an almost total lack of comprehension of anything related to missions by Orthodox Christians. Four centuries in the self-preservation mode had left the Orthodox, clergy and laity, without a missionary consciousness.
All this began to change radically about 50 years ago in the minds and hearts of a small number of clergy and laity in Greece . One of the leading figures in this tiny movement was a young Greek clergyman, Anastasios Yannoulatos. He and his associates began a revival of Orthodox mission consciousness with the publication (at first mimeographed and only later printed) of a magazine titled “ Porefthendes .” The periodical was also issued in English, with the title, “ Go Ye!” which essentially is also the title of this book, “Go Forth!” In one sense, Fr. Veronis’ book is a fruition of the aspirations of that first effort in re-kindling Orthodox interest in mission.
Fr. Luke Veronis, the son of one of the most distinguished missionary minded Priests of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese , Fr. Alexander Veronis, has moved forward in advancing the sense of mission in the Orthodox Church in the United States and Canada . In Go Forth he has provided a beautiful, moving and truly inspiring collection of personal stories describing both the triumphs and successes, as well as the painful failures and disappointments of a modern day missionary. It is almost impossible to stop reading these stories, one after another, that describe realistically his missionary experiences. Page after page describes real life efforts, real human encounters, real suffering, real victories and real experiences of God in the mundane realities of a dirt poor nation struggling to overcome and realize a spiritual reawakening.
Fr. Luke became interested in Orthodox missions as a student at Holy Cross School of Theology in Brookline , MA . Soon after graduation he responded to the missionary calling by serving as a missionary in Africa where he got to know Archbishop Anastasios. Later, in 1994 he followed Anastasios to Albania . The Albanian Orthodox Church , along with all religious expression had been almost exterminated by the four decade ruthless, atheistic communist rule of Enver Hoxha . With the end of the communist rule in 1992, the resurrection of the church commenced, hence, the sub-title of this engaging book “Stories of Mission and Resurrection in Albania .
One of the most inspiring characteristics of this volume is how effortlessly and unobtrusively Fr. Luke garners spiritual lessons from the multitude of authentic stories of the struggles and ordinary yet courageous and uplifting relationships of his and his family’s life as missionaries.
You will not be able to put this book down easily once you start reading. A goodly number of photographs adorn the volume giving it a concrete and human context. On the cover of the book is a photograph of Fr. Luke offering the Paschal light at a Resurrection Service held outdoors at one of the main boulevards of the capital city of Tirana with 20,000 people joyfully receiving the light of the resurrection with the candles in their hands.
If you look very carefully at the front cover, pictured in the bottom corner there is a woman receiving the light, She is smiling with radient joy in sharing in Christ’s Resurrection. I predict if you read this book, you will share in that same joy!
(order at http://www.conciliarpress.com/go-forth.html or www.amazon.com)
Review by Fr. Stanley S. Harakas
Archbishop Iakovos Professor of Orthodox Theology, Emeritus
Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline , MA
