From Vespers for the Baptist:

The dance of the devil’s disciple

Was rewarded with your head, O Forerunner.

Oh, banquet of blood!

Would that you had never sworn, deceitful Herod!

Better for you to lie, than shed righteous blood!

But let us bless the Baptist, as is his due,//

And honor him as the greatest born of women!

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Today:  9:00 am Matins; 9:30 Divine Liturgy, Pot-Luck Brunch & “Animals and Spirituality” with Br. Stavros of New Skete

Tuesday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Thursday: 6:00pm Vespers

Saturday: 6:00 pm Vespers & Panikhida

Sunday:  8:45 am Baptism; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy & Pot-Luck Brunch

Looking Ahead:

• Holy Cross Eve, Monday 9/13 Vespers & Litia @ 6:00 pm

• Holy Cross Day (Strict Fast), Tuesday 9/14 Divine Liturgy at 6:00 pm

• Inquirers’ Classes begin Saturday, 9/18 @ 5:00 pm

• Church School Classes begin Sunday, 9/19 following Divine Liturgy

• Late Vocations Classes will be on hold for a brief time…more information in September.

• Saturday, September 25, 9:30 am to 2:00 pm OCA Department of Christian Education workshop “A Pan-Orthodox Vision of Christian Education” which will focus on resources and techniques, age levels, learning styles and classroom groupings.  Matushka Valerie Zahirsky and Matushka Alexandra Safchuk (DCE co-Chairs) will be with us.

• Sunday, September 26, 1:30 pm St. Nicholas “Sole Supporters” Team for the Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon Walk (Willamette Park — 1k or 5k).

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St. Basil’s prayer for the animals and the earth

O God, increase in us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brethren the animals to whom You have given the earth as their home in common with us.

We remember with shame that in the past we exercised human dominion with ruthless cruelty, so that the voice of the earth, which should have ascended to You in song, has been a groan of travail.

May we realize that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for You, and that they love the sweetness of life.

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The Divine Liturgy (sung today) composed by Bishop Hilarion Alfeev

“Music in church should be an avenue to deeper prayer, not a distraction. Music plays a very important role in the Orthodox liturgy. The quality of the choir and the repertoire that it chooses is something of importance for me.

“Being formed as a musician from my very early years, I cannot completely dissociate myself from music when it is sung in the church, and even as I am reading liturgical prayers, I continue to hear the singing.

“My main aim in composing the setting of The Divine Liturgy was to write such music that would not distract from prayer either for me or my parishioners.

“Singing in the church should be oriented towards prayer and should not be turned into a concert, as often happens.

“The best examples of a truly prayerful singing could be found in Russian Znamenny chant, an equivalent of the Western Gregorian chant. This unison chant is simple, but it is meaningful and moving.”

Metropolitan Hilaron  (born in 1966) is currently the Chair of the Department of External Church Relations for the Patriarchate of Moscow.  In addition to being a gifted musician (violin, piano and composition), he is a noted theologian, church historian.  He studied under Metropolitan Kallistos Ware at Pembroke College in Oxford.

1. “Four Poems by Federico Garcia Lorca” for voice and piano (1984).

2. “The Divine Liturgy” for mixed choir (2006).

3. “The All-Night Vigil” for soloists and mixed choir (2006).

4. The “St Matthew Passion” for soloists, choir and orchestra (2006).

5. The “Christmas Oratorio” for soloists, boys’ choir, mixed choir and symphony orchestra (2007).

6. “Memento” for symphony orchestra (2007).

7. “A Song of the Ascents”. A symphony on the Psalms for choir and orchestra (2008).

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/

St. Eulalia the Martyr of Spain (Mosaic from Ravenna)

Today:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy, Brunch, Church School Meeting, Parish Council

Tuesday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Thursday: 6:00 pm Vespers & Choir

Saturday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Sunday:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy, BP Screening, Brunch, “Animals & Spirituality” with Br. Stavros from New Skete

Looking Ahead:

• Holy Cross Eve, Tuesday 9/13 Vespers & Litia @ 6:00 pm

• Holy Cross Day (Strict Fast), Tuesday 9/14 Divine Liturgy at 6:00 pm

• Inquirers’ Classes begin Saturday, 9/18 @ 5:00 pm

• Church School Classes begin Sunday, 9/19 following Divine Liturgy

• Late Vocations Classes will be on hold for a brief time…more information in September.

• Saturday, September 15, 9:30 am to 2:00 pm OCA Department of Christian Education workshop “A Pan-Orthodox Vision of Christian Education” which will focus on resources and techniques, age levels, learning styles and classroom groupings.  Matushka Valerie Zahrsky and Matushka Alexandra Safchuk (DCE co-Chairs) will be with us.

• Sunday, September 26, 1:30 pm St. Nicholas “Sole Supporters” Team for the Parkinson’s Resources of Oregon Walk (Willamette Park — 1k or 5k).

Dormition by El Greco

Today:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Festal Divine Liturgy & Brunch

Tuesday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Thursday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Saturday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Sunday:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy & Brunch

The first four Christian centuries are silent regarding the end of the Virgin Mary’s life, though it is asserted, without surviving documentation, that the feast of the Dormition was being observed in Jerusalem shortly after the Council of Ephess in 431.

At the point in the later fifth century when the earliest Dormition traditions surface in manuscripts, and the sudden appearance of three distinct narrative traditions describing the end of Mary’s life: he has characterized them as the “Palm of the Tree of Life” narratives, the “Bethlehem” narratives, and the “Coptic” narratives.

There are similarities between the traditional depictions of the Dormition of the Theotokos in Byzantine iconography and the account of the death of the Egyptian Desert Father, Sisoes the Great.  In both Christ is seen coming to receive the soul of the dying saint surrounded by an aureola or cloud of blinding light and accompanied by the angels and prophets.  In Byzantine iconography the other Christ is shown surrounded by such a cloud of light are those of also seen in icons of the Transfiguration, the Resurrection / Descent into Sheol and the Last Judgment.  In some icons of the Dormition the Theotokos is depicted at the top of the icon in a similar aureola before the opening gates of heaven.  This is reminiscent of contemporary accounts of the deaths of the Desert Fathers and Mothers accompanied by sudden burst of light.  This fact could have come to influence the development of the iconography of the Dormition.  Some people consider the Resurrection (and subsequent image not-made-by-hands of the Savior) to be the result of an instantaneous flash of atomic fusion, as can be seen in Hiroshima to this day.

There are no coincidences.

The Maccabean Martyrs (2 Maccabees 6 & 7)

Today:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy & Lenten Brunch

Tuesday:  6:00 pm Readers’ Vespers

Thursday:  6:00 pm Readers’ Vespers

Saturday:  6:00 pm Vespers

Sunday:  8:30 am Matins; 9:30 am Divine Liturgy & Lenten Brunch

Monday through Friday, August 9 – 14 Iconography Workshop with Heather MacKean.

Dormition Lent begins today and lasts until the Divine Liturgy on Sunday the 15th of August.

A note about the Fests of August and September:

The Feat of the Transfiguration (August 6) precedes the Feast of the Holy Cross (September 14) by exactly 40 days.  When the Church chose to juxtapose these two commemorations, they did so with a conscious effort to make the connection mentioned in all of the Gospels.  Read through Luke 9, for example.  You will notice that the narrative of the Transfiguration is sandwiched, as it were, between two prophecies of the Passion (made by the Savior).  There is a definite connection and context between the Crucifixion and the Transfiguration (note, also the hymnography [“…so when they beheld You crucified…”] and lessons for August 6).  A tone point the Transfiguration was celebrated during Great Lent so as to connect the two events.  (See the hymnography and lessons for the middle Sunday of Great Lent, where a vestige of the Feast remains.)  The ancient Church sought to underscore this with a 40-day preparation for the Feast of the Holy Cross, inaugurated by the Feast of the Transfiguration.  This connection gets lost (or at least eclipsed) by the addition to the liturgical calendar of the “supernova” Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos (August 15) to which was eventually added a 2-week preparatory fast, during the middle of which is celebrated the Transfiguration.  Then the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos (September 8th) was added to the liturgical calendar, which further obscures the original intent and commemoration of the Transfiguration / Crucifixion theme.

The texts and lessons for the above-mentioned feasts can be found at

http://www.anastasis.org.uk/menaion.htm — for the August / September dates

and at

http://www.anastasis.org.uk/sunday_of_the_cross.htm — for the mid-Lent Sunday.