Front Page Stories (Page 3)
The Paschal Message of His Eminence, Archbishop Benjamin 2025
To the Reverend Clergy and Faithful of the Diocese of the West: Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! To the Reverend Clergy and Faithful of the Diocese of the West, Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen! The journey of Great Lent to Pascha is long and arduous by design. Our spiritual lives are revealed at the beginning of that journey as weak and fragile. Our prayer is often perfunctory, mumbled with inattention. Our hearts are shown to be…
Looking Ahead to Holy Week & Pascha
Looking Ahead to Holy Week & Pascha April 13 – 20, 2025 On Lazarus Saturday (April 12), we enter into the special and sacred time of Holy Week and Pascha. Each and every one of us is called to truly “lay aside all earthly cares,” i.e., all activities and concerns that distract from the great mystery which is happening for us and to us. It must be an experience that transcends the fulfilling of an annual religious obligation or custom.…
Archbishop Benjamin’s Lenten Message
2025 Lenten Message of His Eminence, Archbishop Benjamin To the Reverend Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Diocese of the West, Dearly beloved, Once again, we have arrived at the threshold of the Holy Tithe of the year — Great Lent. We are called by the Lord and the Church to set aside these weeks, gird ourselves and begin the journey to the Resurrection. We have spent five Sundays with the Church giving us lessons of preparation for this holy…
Meeting of the Lord
On February 2nd, the Church commemorates an important event in the earthly life of our Lord Jesus Christ (Luke 2:22-40). Forty days after His birth the God-Infant was taken to the Jerusalem Temple, the center of the nation’s religious life. According to the Law of Moses (Lev. 12:2-8), a woman who gave birth to a male child was forbidden to enter the Temple of God for forty days. At the end of this time the mother came to the Temple…
January 26, 2025
Weekly bulletins are distributed every Sunday at the Divine Liturgy. They contain Sunday scripture readings, commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, communicate parish announcements, and highlight divine services in the coming week. You can also download the latest bulletin in PDF format here.
January 5, 2025
Weekly bulletins are distributed every Sunday at the Divine Liturgy. They contain Sunday scripture readings, commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, communicate parish announcements, and highlight divine services in the coming week. You can also download the latest bulletin in PDF format here.
The Blessing of Water
In the Book of Genesis, we read that creation began when the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. (Gen. 1:2) Throughout the Bible, water plays an important and a ‘mystical role’ in human existence and in man’s relationship with God the Creator. Water has the capacity to produce death, as recounted in the story of Noah and the ark (Gen. 6); or to produce life, as noted in the story of Moses’ striking the rock in…
December 29, 2024
Weekly bulletins are distributed every Sunday at the Divine Liturgy. They contain Sunday scripture readings, commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, communicate parish announcements, and highlight divine services in the coming week. You can also download the latest bulletin in PDF format here.
December 15, 2024
Weekly bulletins are distributed every Sunday at the Divine Liturgy. They contain Sunday scripture readings, commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, communicate parish announcements, and highlight divine services in the coming week. You can also download the latest bulletin in PDF format here.
Metropolitan’s Message for Thanksgiving 2024
Thanksgiving Day 2024 To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, My Beloved Children in the Lord, First of all, to my flock in the United States of America, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving! The world around us believes—and always has believed—that happiness comes through power, through control, through wealth. The world teaches us that happiness is born of the ability to satisfy one’s own desires. In the Church, however, we know a greater happiness,…
November 24, 2024
Weekly bulletins are distributed every Sunday at the Divine Liturgy. They contain Sunday scripture readings, commemorate birthdays and anniversaries, communicate parish announcements, and highlight divine services in the coming week. You can also download the latest bulletin in PDF format here.
Metropolitan’s Message on the Beginning of the Ecclesiastical New Year
September 1, 202409/004 To the Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, My Beloved Children in the Lord, Joyous feast and happy New Year! Thou hast visited the earth and made it drunk; thou hast abundantly enriched it. The river of God is filled with waters; thou hast prepared their sustenance, for thus is the preparation thereof. – Psalm 64:9 The world observes its civil New Year in the midst of the Northern Hemisphere’s winter, in the cold…