The Liturgical Guide and Bulletin for Sunday, April 16 2023
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April 16, 2023
Great and Holy Pascha
Mary Magdalene, and the other women who were present at the burial of our Saviour on Friday evening, returned from Golgotha to the city and prepared fragrant spices and myrrh, so that they might anoint the body of Jesus. On the morrow, because of the law which forbids work on the day of the Sabbath, they rested for the whole day. But at early dawn on the Sunday that followed, almost thirty-six hours since the death of the Life-giving Redeemer, they came to the sepulchre with the spices to anoint His body. While they were considering the difficulty of rolling away the stone from the door of the sepulchre, there was a fearful earthquake; and an Angel, whose countenance shone like lightning and whose garment was white as snow, rolled away the stone and sat upon it. The guards that were there became as dead from fear and took to flight. The women, however, went into the sepulchre, but did not find the Lord’s body. Instead, they saw two other Angels in the form of youths clothed in white, who told them that the Saviour was risen, and they sent forth the women, who ran to proclaim to the disciples these gladsome tidings. Then Peter and John arrived, having learned from Mary Magdalene what had come to pass, and when they entered the tomb, they found only the winding sheets. Therefore, they returned again to the city with joy, as heralds now of the supernatural Resurrection of Christ, Who in truth was seen alive by the disciples on this day on five occasions.
Our Lord, then, was crucified, died, and was buried on Friday, before the setting of the sun, which was the first of His “three days” in the grave; observing the mystical Sabbath, that “seventh day” in which it is said that the Lord “rested from all His works” (Gen. 2:2-3), He passed all of Saturday in the grave; and He arose “while it was yet dark, very early in the morning” on Sunday, the third day, which, according to the Hebrew reckoning, began after sunset on Saturday.
As we celebrate today this joyous Resurrection, we greet and embrace one another in Christ, thereby demonstrating our Saviour’s victory over death and corruption, and the destruction of our ancient enmity with God, and His reconciliation toward us, and our inheritance of life everlasting. The feast itself is called Pascha, which is derived from the Hebrew word which means “passover”; because Christ, Who suffered and arose, has made us to pass over from the curse of Adam and slavery to the devil and death unto our primal freedom and blessedness. In addition, this day of this particular week, which is the first of all the rest, is dedicated to the honour of the Lord; in honour and remembrance of the Resurrection, the Apostles transferred to this day the rest from labour that was formerly assigned to the Sabbath of the ancient Law.
Liturgical Guide
Apolytikion for Great and Holy Pascha in the Plagal First Mode
Χριστός ἀνέστη ἐκ νεκρῶν, θανάτῳ θάνατον πατήσας, καί τοῖς ἐν τοῖς μνήμασι ζωήν χαρισάμενος.
Christ is risen from the dead, by death, trampling down upon death, and to those in the tombs He has granted life.
Hypakoe of Great and Holy Pascha in the Fourth Mode
Προλαβοῦσαι τὸν ὄρθρον αἱ περὶ Μαριάμ, καὶ εὑροῦσαι τὸν λίθον ἀποκυλισθέντα τοῦ μνήματος…
When they who were with Mary came, anticipating the dawn, and found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre, they heard from the Angel: Why seek ye among the dead, as though He were mortal man, Him Who abideth in everlasting light? Behold the grave-clothes. Go quickly and proclaim to the world that the Lord is risen, and hath put death to death. For He is the Son of God, Who saveth the race of men.
Reading is under copyright and is used with permission, all rights reserved by: Holy Transfiguration Monastery
Seasonal Kontakion in the Plagal Fourth Mode
Εἰ καὶ ἐν τάφῳ κατῆλθες ἀθάνατε…
Though You went down into the tomb, You destroyed Hades’ power, and You rose the victor, Christ God, saying to the myrrh-bearing women, “Hail!” and granting peace to Your disciples, You who raise up the fallen.
Reading is under copyright and is used with permission, all rights reserved by: Narthex Press
Epistle Reading
Prokeimenon. Plagal Fourth Mode. Psalm 117.24,29
This is the day which the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Verse: Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his mercy endures for ever.
The reading is from Acts of the Apostles 1:1-8
In the first book, O Theophilos, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commandment through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And while staying with them he charged them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom of lsrael?” He said to them, “it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.”
Gospel Reading
John 1:1-17
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John bore witness to him, and cried, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.'”) And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
PROT. NO. 221
+ B A R T H O L O M E W
By God’s Mercy
Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch
To the Plenitude of the Church:
May the Grace, Peace and Mercy of Christ Risen in Glory be with you All
Most honorable brother Hierarchs,
Dearly beloved children,
Having arrived with God’s grace at the all-saving Resurrection of the Lord, through which the power of death was abolished and the gates of paradise were opened to the entire human race, we address to all of you our paschal greetings and heartfelt wishes, as we proclaim the cry “Christ is Risen” that gives joy to the world.
In all of its dimensions, the life of the Church is invigorated by the ineffable joy of the Resurrection. The “experience of resurrection” is witnessed in the labors of the Saints and Martyrs of our faith, as well as in the liturgical and sacramental life, the proclamation of the Gospel “to the ends of the earth”, the devotion and spirituality of the faithful, their sacrificial love and Christian conduct, but also in their expectation of a world where “death will no longer exist, nor will there be mourning, wailing or suffering” (Rev. 21,4).
In and through the Resurrection, everything lies in a state of motion toward perfection in the Kingdom of God. This eschatological drive has always provided Orthodox Christians in the world with dynamism and perspective. Despite the claims of the opposite, as a result of the eschatological orientation of its life, the Church never compromised with the presence of evil in all its expressions in the world. Nor did it deny the reality of pain and death. Nor again did it ignore the ambiguity of human affairs. And finally, it never considered the struggle for a more just world as something foreign to its mission.
Still though, the Church always knew that pain and the cross are not the ultimate reality. The experiential quintessence of the Christian life is the conviction that, through the Cross and through the “narrow gate”, we are led to the Resurrection. This faith is reflected in the fact that the core of church life, the Divine Eucharist, is essentially linked with the Resurrection of Christ. In the Orthodox tradition, as the late Metropolitan John of Pergamon emphasizes, the Divine Eucharist “is filled with joy and light … because it is not grounded in the Cross and an idealization of passion, but in the Resurrection as the transcendence of the passion of the Cross”*. The Holy Eucharist transports us to Golgotha not so that we may remain there, but so that we may be led through the Cross to the ever-radiant glory of the Kingdom of God. The Orthodox faith is the overcoming of the utopian salvation “without the Cross” and of the existential shipwreck of the Cross “without the Resurrection”.
Our participation in the Resurrection of Christ through the sacrament of the Church is on the one hand a tangible abolition of every utopianism and of the false paradise promising unimpeded self-indulgence, while at the same time a definitive transcendence of hopeless self-enslavement in supposed unsurpassable negativity, because the Cross of Christ gives birth to the Resurrection, to the “endless delight”, to “the enjoyment of eternal glory”. The annihilation of death through the Cross and Resurrection of our Savior elevates our life to its divine-human essence and its heavenly destiny.
In Christ, we know and live that the present life is not our entire life, that our biological death does not constitute an end or obliteration of our existence. The biological boundaries of life do not define its truth. After all, the sense that life is an irreversible “journey toward death” leads to existential impasses, to depression and nihilism, to indifference for what truly matters in life. Science, and financial or social progress are unable to offer an essential solution or outlet. Christians are “those who have hope” (1Thess. 4,13), who expect the coming Kingdom of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit as a final reality, as the fullness of life and knowledge, as the fulfilment of joy, not only for the coming generations but for the entire human race from the beginning to the end of the ages.
This vision of history and eternity, the resurrectional nature of Orthodox faith, ethos and culture—namely, the unquestionable fact that the great miracle of Truth is only revealed “to those who venerate the mystery in faith”—is what we are called to witness today within a civilization that rejects the Transcendent and in the context of manifold reductions of the spiritual identity of human existence.
We give glory in chant, hymn and spiritual song to the Lord who rose from the dead and shines eternal life upon all. We participate with joy in “the feast that is common to all”. And we beseech the all-powerful, all-wise and all-merciful Maker and Redeemer of all to bring peace to the world and grant all His saving gifts to humankind, so that His all-honorable and majestic name may be glorified and blessed, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen!
At the Phanar, Holy Pascha 2023
+ Bartholomew of Constantinople
Fervent supplicant for you all to the Risen Lord
* See his Eschatology and History: Works 1: Ecclesiological Studies (Athens: Domos Books, 2016), 498.
Prot. No. 84/2023
Archiepiscopal Encyclical on Great and Holy Pascha
April 16, 2023
Unto the Most Reverend and Right Reverend Hierarchs, Pious Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, Presidents and Members of Parish Councils, Honorable Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, Members of Leadership 100, the Day and Afternoon Schools, Philoptochos Societies, the Youth, Greek Orthodox Organizations, and the entirety of the Christ-named Plenitude of the Holy Archdiocese of America:
Who will roll away the stone for us? (Mark 16:3)
My beloved sisters and brothers in the Risen Lord,
We have finally arrived at the mystery of mysteries, and we approach the Tomb with the holy Myrrh-bearing Women. With them we ask: “Who will roll away the stone for us?” The guards have scattered, the garden is empty, and we have brought all our potions and ointments to complete His anointing for death. But He is the Anointed One — the Christ — and He has no need of any anointing. He has no need of the stone being rolled away in order to leave death behind. As the young man said to them when they went inside: “He is risen! He is not here!” So, then, why was the stone rolled away?
My beloved Christians, the stone is rolled away in every telling of the story, but not so that the Lord can emerge, but so that we might submerge. The tomb is opened so that we might enter and die to ourselves — to our egos and selfishness. And then we may say, as is chanted in the Paschal Liturgy: “Yesterday I was buried with you, O Christ; and today, I arise by Your Resurrection” (Ode 3). The tomb is our place of transformation. The tomb is the very center of our hearts, where we can fulfill the ancient saying: “If you die before you die, then you won’t die when you die.”
Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, let us not ask “who will roll away the stone for us?” Let us make the effort to roll it back ourselves! God will send His Angels to help us if we are struggling. But it is within the tomb of dying to ourselves, and dying to this world, that we are reborn in the Resurrection. The stone is heavy, laden with our sins and our heartbreaks, but God forgives all and asks us to do the same. Forgiveness is the power that lifts the stone and paves our way to love. There is a very real resurrection to be had in this life, which leads to life everlasting. The arising in our hearts of love, compassion, and mercy for everyone and everything is the sign that we are truly the children of the Resurrection. May this Pascha reveal to you this mystery of mysteries — this gateway to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη! Christ is Risen!
† ELPIDOPHOROS
Archbishop of America
April 2023
To the Reverend Clergy & Monastics, Esteemed
Parish Council Members, Beloved Sisters of
Philoptochos, Brother Archons of the Ecumenical
Patriarchate, and our treasured Youth & Young Adults:
Beloved in Christ,
I greet you with paternal love and joy in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
I know that you join me in giving thanks to Almighty God for having been made worthy to celebrate once more His victory over death and the powers of sin.
We live in a world where the message of Christ’s loving sacrifice and His Resurrection from the dead
is needed now more than ever. Through His saving Passion, we understand—as imperfect human beings—what it means to offer boundless love and mercy to our fellow men; and by His salvific Resurrection, we are now given the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as prodigal children returning home to our loving Father. Truly, we worship our Lord’s Passion & Resurrection, not as a simple historical commemoration, but as a miraculous event, which every year renews our world to the possibility of the heavenly spirit in which it was created.
My beloved children, I pray that this glorious season strengthens your minds and hearts in a spirit of radiance and joy, and that you and your spiritual family will carry the unceasing Paschal flame forever.
Pleased to offer you that greatest of greetings,
Χριστὸς ἀνέστη! Christ is Risen!
Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! Truly He is Risen!
I remain, with blessings and joy in our Resurrected Savior,
+ALEXIOS
Metropolitan of Atlanta
Announcements
Agape Luncheon
Καλή Ανάσταση from the elders of our St. Demetrios Community.
Please join us on Tuesday 4/18/23 for a delectable lunch of lamb, potatoes, salad, dessert and ice cream to be prepared by Chef Manos (Mr. Nicholas Manos) and his crew. It is a time of camaraderie, laughter and song. President Gloria Stokes will welcome you. Entrance $8.00. The fun begins at 11:30 AM.
BINGO
SAVE THE DATE: Come to BINGO Friday, April 28, 2023 at 6 PM. Doors open at 5:30 PM. More details to follow.
Save The Date – April 22 & Walk with Us for the Cure
Scholarship News
Applications for the Dr. Helene Tzitsikas Scholarship for students enrolled in higher education as well as applications for St. Stephen’s Summer Camp are open. More information about the Dr. Tzitsikas Scholarship can be found on the St. Demetrios website www.stdemetrios.org.
Information about St. Stephen’s Camp can be found on their website St. Stephen’s Summer Camp – Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta – Atlanta, GA (atlmetropolis.org)
Scholarship applications are available on line at the St. Demetrios website or call the Church Office 954-467-1515 Monday – Thursday. Deadlines for these applications are June 1, 2023.
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2023 Undergraduate and Graduate Scholarships
Applications for scholarships administered by the Office of the Chancellor of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America are available for awards to be made for the 2023-2024 academic year. The deadline for submitting an application for any of these scholarships is May 19, 2023.
The Gioles and Malta Scholarships are available to Undergraduate Students. The Paleologos Scholarship is available to Graduate students. The Trakatellis Scholarship is available to graduates of Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology who are pursuing further academic studies. The Taylor Scholarship offers financial assistance to students pursuing a post-graduate degree in the areas of theology, religious studies, or pastoral training. The Tembelis Scholarship is available to all students studying at Hellenic College-Holy Cross.
Click on the links below to download and print the scholarships instructions and applications.
- 2023 Gioles Scholarship
- 2023 Malta Scholarship
- 2023 Paleologos Scholarship
- 2023 Trakatellis Scholarship
- 2023 Taylor Scholarship
- 2023 Tembelis Scholarship
For more information about any of these scholarship opportunities, please send an email to scholarships@goarch.org or call 212-774-0283.
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Faith Scholarships
Applicants must be graduating high school seniors enrolling in a 4-year accredited U.S. university this fall and a member of a Greek Orthodox parish. Application and eligibility details are available at thefaithendowment.org/scholarships. Application deadline is June 30th, 2023.
Founded in 2004 by a group of visionary Greek American leaders and philanthropists, FAITH: An Endowment for Orthodoxy and Hellenism is an independent 501(c)(3) organization that supports the development of innovative educational, cultural, and scholarship programs that promote Hellenism, an understanding of the Greek Orthodox faith, and the relationship of the two to America’s history and multicultural landscape for young people. FAITH has proudly awarded over 1,950 grants and scholarships to the best and brightest young leaders of the Hellenic-American and Greek Orthodox community.
For any questions or inquiries, please don’t hesitate to call us (212) 803-9363 or email us at info@thefaithendowment.org
End of year Luncheon Meeting
Tickets can be purchased via http:// https://daughters-of-penelope-narcissus-289.square.site/
End of year Luncheon Meeting
Tickets can be purchased via http:// https://daughters-of-penelope-narcissus-289.square.site/
Stewardship
Please fill out a year 2023 pledge form by clicking here https://stdemetrios.org/our-parish/stewardship/stewardship-form/ Or download this form, fill out both sides completely and return it to the office. Thank you!
Calendar
Thursday 4/13 Holy Thursday
9:00am Vesperal Divine Liturgy
After Liturgy Dyeing of eggs
7:00pm Passion Service
Friday 4/14 Holy Friday
9:00am Royal Hours
10:00am Decorating of the Kouvouklion
3:00pm Apokathelosis Service
7:00pm Lamentations Service
Saturday 4/15 Holy Saturday
9:00am Orthros
10:00am Liturgy of St. Basil
11:00pm Resurrection Service followed by the Paschal Divine Liturgy
Sunday 4/16 Great and Holy Pascha
12:00 noon Agape Vespers
Tuesday 4/18
11:30am Agape Luncheon for Seniors
7:00pm Advanced Modern Greek-Zoom
Wednesday 4/19
6:00pm DOP Meeting
Thursday 4/20
7:00pm Advanced Modern Greek-Zoom
Friday 4/21
10:30 AM Adult Beginners Modern Greek (1)- Zoom
Saturday 4/22
10:00am Pap Corps Walk for Cancer at Holiday Park
Sunday 4/23
9:00am Orthros
10:00am Divine Liturgy
After Communion Sunday School and Little Lambs
