Tag Archive for: Community

The Family and the Church – The Cup of Joy

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Fr. Christopher Metropulos
January 27, 2013

Book Reference
Can you Drink the Cup?
By Henri J. M. Nouwen

Opening thoughts and basis for discussion

Bring people, a joy and peace they are not able to find anywhere else.

We all need a deeper relationship with someone.

Cup of life, Cup of sorrow- joys, sadness and gladness, mourning and dancing are never separated.

Icon of the Resurrection explained

Show two depictions of Crucifixion

Scripture

When I lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all the people to myself (John 12:32)
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer before entering His glory? Luke 24:26

The Key

We keep forgetting this truth and become overwhelmed by our own darkness. We need to become angels for one another.

Drinking the Cup

When guests arrive to our house the first thing we usually do is ask , would you like something to drink? It breaks the ice and often an atmosphere of friendship and of intimacy is created. Refusing it is avoiding intimacy. Offering the drink leads to opening up a conversation. Often times we may not expect or ever be able to hear.
“Often when we wish to comfort people we say: “Well , it is sad this has happened to you, but try to make the best of it.” But “making the best of it” is not what drinking the cup is about. Drinking our cup is not simply adapting ourselves to a bad situation and trying to use is as well as we can. Drinking our cup is hopeful, courageous, and self-confident way of living. It is standing in the world with head erect, solidly rooted in the knowledge of who we are, facing the reality that surrounds us and responding to it from our hearts.”

Spiritual greatness does not come from flying with the angels but rather walking through life with someone who needs our comfort and love. Living in a Christian community allows this to take place.

Encounter with Mother Theresa in Denver, Co.

Question: How do we appropriate the love of God given to us?

Cup of Salvation

Friendship – What is good about our life is that you make so many friends. What is hard about our life is that so many friends leave.

Drinking the cup of sorrow and joy is only possible when it brings us health, strength, freedom, hope, courage- new life. Nobody will drink the cup of life when it makes us sick and miserable.

How do we drink the cup of salvation?
To the bottom

Living a complete life is drinking our cup until it is empty, trusting that God will fill it with everlasting life.

The Answer

The cup that Jesus speaks about is neither a symbol of victory nor a symbol of death. It is a symbol of life, filled with sorrows and joys that we can hold, lift, and drink as blessing and a way to salvation.

Weekly Sunday Bulletin – 12th Sunday of Luke

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[WSB Cover:http://stdemetrios.org/weekly-sunday-bulletin-12th-sunday-of-luke/, Liturgical:http://stdemetrios.org/liturgical-12th-sunday-of-luke/, Announcements:http://stdemetrios.org/announcements-12th-sunday-of-luke/]

The Ten Lepers

Apolytikion in the First Tone

The pastoral flute of your theology conquered the trumpets of orators. For it called upon the depths of the Spirit and you were enriched with the beauty of words. Intercede to Christ our God, O Father Gregory, that our souls may be saved.
(St. Gregory the Theologian  January 25th)

Parish Council on Duty:

Peter Angelakos, John Argiropoulos, Anna Merkel, Medon Michaelides, Chris Nichols, Peter Synoyannis, Eleni Varvoutis

Here is the study guide for this weeks adult class taught by Fr. John

The Family and the Church – The Cup of Community

/in /by
Fr. John Codis
January 20, 2013

Book Reference
Can you Drink the Cup?
By Henri J. M. Nouwen

Opening thoughts and basis for discussion

We all have a cup that we must lift up that carries within itself our pains, sorrows, frustrations, happiness, and joy. Whether our glass is half full or half empty we all have a cup that we must live with and lift up.

When we lift our cup together we encourage and create community. “Community is a fellowship of people who do not hide their joys and sorrows but make them visible to all in a gesture of hope.” Pg.63 Community is a fellowship of little people who together make God visible in the world.

The Eucharist is the sacred mystery that creates all things new again. It transforms our whole life into one with Christ and one another.

Do not “Do it Yourself!” Do whatever you are planning to do with someone else.

Lifting Our Life Together with All

Life is full of ups and downs, joys and sorrows – but we do not need to live them alone. On the contrary we should be living them together! We want to lift our cups together and celebrate the truth that the wounds of our individual lives become sources of healing when we live them as part of a fellowship of love.

Lifting up the cup is an invitation to affirm and celebrate life together. We are not created to be separate from one another, we are individual parts of the one body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

When we are fully able to embrace our own lives, we discover that what we claim we also to want to proclaim. We are too often inclined to keep out lives hidden. How can we be part of the one body of Christ if we do not completely embrace our lives and embrace the lives of those around us and together lift our cups which in essence forms the community, the one body of Christ.

The Cup of Blessings

We too often look around us to see and become fearful of the immense suffering of humanity. Why don’t we look around and see that this suffering has been created by the fall of humanity and completely turned around and saved by Christ on the cross.
Humanity has experienced the ultimate joy, that is the incarnation of the Word, God manifested in the flesh, born as none other than a baby. The nativity impacts us when we allow that joy of the birth of Christ to enter into ourselves and make it manifest in our daily lives.
The Eucharist is that sacred mystery through which what we lived as a curse we no live as a blessing.

Conclusion

Do not “Do it Yourself!” Do whatever you are planning to do with someone else.

We need community! A community in which confession and celebration are always together and constantly in our hearts. We must constantly remind ourselves that there is UNITY in community. We are all part of the one mosaic of the body. The body of which Christ is the head. We are the individual parts of the body that are held together by our willingness to lift our cups, with all their imperfections, so that one community may be formed as the image of Christ on earth.