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| Source: www.standrewsgreekorthodoxcathedral.co.uk |
Dear Parish Faithful,
"God is wonderful in His saints, the God of Israel!"
Ps. 68:36
I hope that everyone - or nearly everyone - has picked up the new ecclessiastical/church calendar for 2025. If not, there are about 20 copies left in the church hall. Remember to pick one up on Sunday! Such a calendar, in contrast to our "secular" calendar, is probably something new for our inquirers, catechumens and neophytes. My intention is still to spend some time describing the structure of the calendar in an upcoming post-Liturgy discussion.
For the moment, I can say that the church calendar gives us the opportunity to structure our own domestic lives around the rhythms of the Church - scriptural readings, festal commemorations, fasting days, etc. And this is clearly a different rythym, with even a different perception of time, that allows for the sanctification of time and not simply its fleeting character, as day after day fades into oblivion. Time is Kingdom-directed, which is why we begin every celebration of the Divine Liturgy with this wonderful exclamation: "Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!" Perhaps the church calendar grants us some perception of our Kingdom-directed lives.
For the moment, as I look over the calendar, what immediately strikes me about January is the endless flow of days on which we commemorate some of the great and most well-known saints of the Church. We have already commemorated St. Basil the Great (1/1); St. Seraphim of Sarov (1/2); Ven. Genevieve of Paris (1/3; and Amma Syncletica (1/5); all as a kind of build-up to the Great Feast of Theophany (1/6). And to follow, allow me to mention a few more of the most notable holy men and women of the Church commemorated in January: St. Gregory of Nyssa (1/10); St. Nina of Georgia, Equal-to-the-Apostles (1/14); Ven. Godbearing Anthony the Great (1/17); St. Maximus the Confessor (1/21); St. Gregory the Theologian (1/25); and Ven. Ephraim and Isaac of Syria (1/28). Quite an impressive month of "holy" (the actual word behind our word "saint") men and women who chose the Kingdom of God over any other possible choice. Time itself allows us the opportunity to become aware of and connected with these great figures - our friends from the past who are now present to us an intercessors.
All of the saints, therefore, intercede before the throne of God on our behalf. They are with us and not cut off from us by death. Rather, they are now more alive than ever and being “in Christ” are present wherever Christ is present. The earthly lives of the saints become sources of inspiration and models of emulation for us, teaching by examples of faith, hope and love; of long-suffering, perseverance and patience; of lives steeped in prayer, almsgiving and fasting. They do not discourage us because they attained what may seem unattainable to us; but rather they encourage us to struggle to overcome our weaknesses as men and women who did precisely that in their own lives. They were not born saints or privileged from birth. They became saints by co-operating with the grace of God. We, in turn, simply need to become what we already are: saints of God through Baptism and Chrismation and membership in the Church!
