The Saint Nicholas of Myra Bulletin
AUTUMN 2010: VOLUME 2
A word from the Rector
During our Annual Meeting on 3 October 2010, the mission chose the officers who will serve for the next year. Mark Mueller has been voted to serve as our new Warden. Sinziana Dumitrescu continues to serve as our Secretary and Matushka Liudmila will continue to be our Treasurer. May the Lord prosper their endeavours!
- A question has arisen about how all our members can participate in the Divine Liturgy. Our chapel is relatively small, so in to help the choir concentrate on its singing, I would ask that the congregation sing along only for “Holy God”, the Creed, Our Father, and the Communion Hymn. This will help reduce the “echo effect”, and allow the choir a chance to hear how they sound.
- I am very pleased that this edition of our mission bulletin contains an article contributed by one of the faithful. I hope that this will encourage others to submit their reflections on spiritual matters and on the life of our community. – Fr. Nicholas
Faith & Film Night
Date: November 19, 2010
Time: 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Film: The Apostle (1997, 134 min, PG-13)
Place: Christ the Saviour Church, 823 Manning St.
On Friday, November 19, 2010 at 6:30 p.m., Saint Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Mission community will be hosting another Faith & Film Nights in the lower church hall at Christ the Saviour Church.
The purpose of the Faith & Film series is to get together as a community and to watch a film in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. After watching the film, we will then have the opportunity to discuss the spiritual themes found in the film with Father Nicholas.
We hope that the Faith & Film series will increase our ability to see our culture through the eyes of the Orthodox faith, and, encourage theological reflections on film.
Mission Update
On 10th October, we served a Thanksgiving Prayer Service, with a blessing of harvest fruits. It was a chance to remember how much God has blessed us. Our visitors that Sunday were heard to say that by the time we had finished with all our prayers it felt as though they has attended three services!
Learning to Pray
“… [U]p to the age of 15 life had been very hard, we had no common roof and I was at boarding school which was rough and violent. All the members of my family lived in different corners of Paris. It was only when I was about 14 that we all gathered under a common roof and that was real happiness and bliss—it is odd to think that in a suburban house in Paris one could discover perfect happiness but it was so. This was the first time that we had had a home since the revolution”.—Metropolitan Anthony Borisovitch Bloom, Archbishop of Sourozh [1]
This semester the Orthodox Christian Fellowship at the University of Toronto, for which Fr. Nicholas has been a faithful chaplain these last three years, is reading a small book, entitled Beginning to Pray, by Metropolitan Anthony of blessed memory. The first discussion group was held at the Multifaith Centre on Monday, October 4th, and its book selection seems very useful. I can well remember, as a “cradle-convert” of 18, that I had only the vaguest notion of prayer; my father confessor at the time would ask me a question like, “How is your prayer life?”, and of course I could make no reply.
Reading and reflecting on the first part of the book, two things struck me as of particular relevance to missionary work in a city such as Toronto.
The first was the precise character of the metropolitan’s expression of gratitude to God. In the quotation above, he is referring to the fact that the better part of his childhood and youth had been up-ended by revolution and exile. For my part I have heard stories of how my grandparents and their cousins attempted to give material aid to our remaining family back in Czechoslovakia, and about what my grandfather witnessed during the “Great Patriotic War”; but I only ever knew them as stories. A comfortable home, good schools and food, were all things I could take more or less for granted growing up—so much so, that I could criticize them, and fail to be grateful. And yet here is young Anthony, insisting that perfect happiness is attainable even in ordinary and less-than-exalted circumstances. I once heard Metropolitan Kallistos say that gratitude—the exclaimed doxology—is the beginning and the end of every prayer. We can be happy wherever we may be, provided we remember to be thankful.
The second thing that struck me was the precise character of Metropolitan Anthony’s expression of humility. The word humility, he points out, “comes from the Latin word humus which means fertile ground…. Humility is the situation of the earth. The earth is always there, always taken for granted, never remembered, always trodden on by everyone, somewhere we cast and pour out all the refuse, all we don’t need. It’s there, silent and accepting everything and in a miraculous way making out of all the refuse new richness in spite of corruption, transforming corruption itself into a power of life and a new possibility of creativeness, open to the rain, ready to receive any seed we sow and capable of bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed”. [2]
Lessons learned: remember to say thank-you; and imitate the ground. – Nicholas Sivulka Wheeler
[1] Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, with introduction by Timothy Wilson (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), pp. 7-8.
[2] Ibid., p. 35.
AUTUMN 2010: VOLUME 1
A word from the Rector
After a several month hiatus, I have decided to renew the effort of distributing this newsletter on a quarterly basis. I would like to issue this newsletter on a monthly basis, however, in order to do so we need volunteers to write articles. With that said, I would like to call upon our member community to participate more in the life of the mission.
Several of our members have approached me on more than one occasion to discuss how we might increase our church membership and regular attendance. It would certainly be a blessing to our community to have more faithful worshipping with us Sunday mornings. The first thing, however, is for us to demonstrate our own faithfulness and willingness to regularly attend services and do our part to contribute to the life of the community. If we participate in the life of the community on our own terms without giving any thought to sacrificing time and providing financial support to the limited activities of our mission, we will get nowhere fast. At times, we have lacked an adequate supply of candles and wine for the altar. Our monthly donations (given by regular attendees) seldom cover the operating costs of the mission. We should all take an active interest in ensuring that this situation does not continue. In other words, how can we expect our little community to grow when we ourselves do not take proper care of it?
Over the past few weeks, we have heard parables from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: the Lord and his vineyard, the Wedding Feast, and the parable of the Talents. These narratives should remind us always to be ready to offer practical support for the Orthodox Christian faith, particularly our parish. Nobody else will take care of and support our mission for us.
I pray that God will grant us growth “in life and faith and spiritual understanding”. All of us should be examining our conscience and asking ourselves what more we can do to support the parish that we have in our care. If your conscience calls you to volunteer your time and talents for mission activities or to make a donation for a specific need at the parish, then I urge you to do it. One of our parishioners recently volunteered to organise and officiate over a “Faith and Film Night” at the mission. This is one example of the kind of contribution that can help make a difference in our community.
I would like to close with an appeal to everyone – and to remind myself – that our faithfulness to Christ and self-sacrifice will bear fruit in the end. If we are looking to see more growth at the mission without extending ourselves in any real way, we are destined to be disappointed. – Fr. Nicholas
Faith & Film Night
Date: October 22, 2010
Time: 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Film: Picture of Dorian Gray (1945, 110 min, PG)
Place: Senior Common Room, Brennan Hall
On Saturday, October 23, 2010 at 7:00 p.m., Saint Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Mission community will be hosting its first of a series of monthly Faith & Film Nights in the chapel at St. Basil’s Church.
The purpose of the Faith & Film series is to get together as a community and to watch a film in a fun and relaxed atmosphere. After watching the film, we will then have the opportunity to discuss the spiritual themes found in the film with Father Nicholas.
We hope that the Faith & Film series will increase our ability to see our culture through the eyes of the Orthodox faith, and, to encourage theological reflections on film.
Mission Update
Thanks be to God that we had such a lovely fruit crop this year. Our parish community presented many beautiful peaches and nectarines at the Blessing of First Fruits for the Feast of the Transfiguration on Sunday, August 8, 2010.
The following week we saw a nice new crop of honey for the Dormition of the Holy Theotokos. On the 22nd of August, we celebrated the blessing of fresh bread. How can we not see that the Lord cares for us?
Mission Picnic
On Sunday, September 5, 2010 we held our fourth annual picnic for the St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Mission.
This year we held the picnic at the Holy Transfiguration Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Campbellville, Ontario.
It was such a blessing to get together and to be so close to nature for a few hours. We also had a chance to see the beautiful monastery church. May God bless all those who participated in this event and brought food to share with everyone else who attended. We had food in such abundance that all of us had leftovers for the next two days.
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