Going to attend Divine Liturgy at an Albanian Orthodox Church

[furay]

http://www.stnicholasma.org/

^ Lord willing I will be going to the above Church this Sunday. Should be a great time... I'm more than a little excited... :smile:

[Hail Mary]

http://www.stnicholasma.org/

^ Lord willing I will be going to the above Church this Sunday. Should be a great time... I'm more than a little excited... :smile:

Very cool! Please come back and relate your experiences!

[furay]

All I can say at this point is that Sunday I saw in action what it means to truly be a follower of Christ.

Forgive me everyone for I am a sinner.

[furay]

Dum dum that I am, I didn't bring my camera with me on Sunday... so I didn't get to take my picture with Fr. John or anyone else for that matter. But, yesterday before we headed for home I managed to snag a few pics of the Church's exterior. Beautiful Temple. :smile:

[George Blaisdell]

http://www.stnicholasma.org/

^ Lord willing I will be going to the above Church this Sunday. Should be a great time... I'm more than a little excited... :smile:

That should prove wonderful, Peter...

I am leaving for the 45 minute drive to St. Anthony's monastery when I close this post - To stay for two nights and receive Thursday morning... And ask some questions... And receive some guidance, God willing... A visit yesterday proved it to be a veritable Garden of Eden in the Desert...

109F in the shade, yesterday...

Nothing like the low desert in AZ in the summer...

More when I emerge...

Arsenios

[furay]

That should prove wonderful, Peter...
It did prove wonderful, Arsenios. Sunday was amongst the best days of my life... Divine Liturgy was beautifully done in English and afterwards I got to spend an hour conversing with Fr. John and Rd. Stephen. I now know what the radiating love of Christ looks like in action. I've been very blessed.

I am leaving for the 45 minute drive to St. Anthony's monastery when I close this post - To stay for two nights and receive Thursday morning... And ask some questions... And receive some guidance, God willing... A visit yesterday proved it to be a veritable Garden of Eden in the Desert...
That is so very awesome! I am praying for your safety and spiritual enlightenment. If there is anyone that I know that deserves to drink from the Everlasting Spring that St Antony's offers, surely it is you! If you're ever up for it, I'd love to get a full report. You must be one happy man. :smile:
Be well, dear friend.

-Peter

[Jawa Man]

The Albanian Church I go to in New York city is also called Saint Nicholas! It's a small world.

[potato sundae]

I'm going to Great Vespers this Saturday at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I'm psyched as can be; it's my first time visiting an Orthodox church.

Hopefully my experience can be as good as yours sounds, Furay!

--Chuck

[furay]

The Albanian Church I go to in New York city is also called Saint Nicholas! It's a small world.
Ah! I had forgotten that your Church in NYC was Albanian. Too cool! The Albanian Archdiocese is a really interesting "sub-slice" of the OCA. I guess St Nicholas the Wonderworker is really big in Albanian circles... kind of like St George is to the Greek Archdiocese in America. :smile:


I'm going to Great Vespers this Saturday at St. Elias Antiochian Orthodox Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I'm psyched as can be; it's my first time visiting an Orthodox church.

Hopefully my experience can be as good as yours sounds, Furay!

--Chuck
I hope you have a blessed time, Chuck - I'll be praying that you will. Btw, I've been through La Crosse a few times via train... pretty area. Be well. :smile:

[George Blaisdell]

It did prove wonderful, Arsenios. Sunday was amongst the best days of my life... Divine Liturgy was beautifully done in English and afterwards I got to spend an hour conversing with Fr. John and Rd. Stephen. I now know what the radiating love of Christ looks like in action. I've been very blessed.


Sigh....

Thank-you...

I will be posting something on the topic of the Ascetic Theology of the Desert Fathers on another thread - That will provide an overview on the praxis of the faith, and its means of salvation, that results in the extraordinary grace that is so available and is so present in the Orthodox Church...


That is so very awesome! I am praying for your safety and spiritual enlightenment. If there is anyone that I know that deserves to drink from the Everlasting Spring that St Antony's offers, surely it is you! If you're ever up for it, I'd love to get a full report. You must be one happy man. :smile:
Be well, dear friend.


Well, I made it back. Not without some serious [demonic] backlash on the trip home, mind you, but rolled back in to Cle Elum with no air conditioning, a zero reading on the oil pressure, new master cylinder for the clutch, and new slave cylinder too, and an alternator belt that had been the power steering belt that had come into pieces, tearing up wiring to the oil pressure gauge and the A/C unit - Bad always happens following good - The fathers warn us that whenever we receive extraordinary grace, we can expect something bad to happen, because the demons hate us getting anything good... But nothing too bad...!!

The place is awesome beyond belief - Or should I say within it... Two nights and two days were all I had to spend there. Services start at 3AM till 6AM or so, then breakfast, then 3 hours snooze, then up for labors till lunch, and then labors till Vespers, at around 4, then supper, and to bed or vigil services, and private prayer rule, to be up and praying at 2:30 for us pilgrims, but midnight for the monks, I think...

And beautiful beyond measure - some 7 chapels on the grounds, and they make the liturgical wine for a LOT of Churches - I brought back 2 cases for my two Churches, the women's monastery and Holy Cross... Being the 'mule' is a wonderful thing...

And the Greeks!!!

They are soooooooooooo wonderfully Greek!! Kids, adults, all of them...

And the monks - They don't hardly even talk with you, so focused are they, and then, when they do, you are the ONLY person in the whole world for them... And when it finishes, they turn and are utterly attentive to their next task... I have only seen intimations of it, except at the other [women's] monastery in Goldendale, but I never spent enough time there to 'get' what I was seeing...

You know, whenever I give someone advice, and especially if I am being critical of them, I always ask myself if that advice would not be better directed at myself, and every time, this is the case... And I often advise the troubled in the faith to take their dairy hares [eg themselves] to a monastery for healing... And man oh man... Did I need this trip... I am not who I was... The help there that I received, the very real and spiritual help, well beyond the range of counselling and advice and insight, is really not expressible in words - Yet is palpable and real in the ontology of this struggling soul that I am given to heal in contention against the 'powers and principalities' etc...

Arsenios

ps - All of us here at T-Web were prayed for at St. Anthony's...

[furay]

:stunned:

[Jawa Man]

Today in Greek Church cool stuff happened. Another bishop was in town. Not just any bishop, though. This is the first metropolitan of Spain and Portugal. He was born in New York though. Anyway he was invited to do the Liturgy. At coffee hour I talked with him a little bit. It was pretty cool. I also found out something about the priest there. His spiritual father (if I understood him right) was the recently deceased Archbishop Iakovos of North and South America.

Wow, all this in a small town.

[George Blaisdell]

Today in Greek Church cool stuff happened. Another bishop was in town. Not just any bishop, though. This is the first metropolitan of Spain and Portugal. He was born in New York though. Anyway he was invited to do the Liturgy. At coffee hour I talked with him a little bit. It was pretty cool. I also found out something about the priest there. His spiritual father (if I understood him right) was the recently deceased Archbishop Iakovos of North and South America.

Wow, all this in a small town.

J-Man - I gotta tell ya!

ORTHODOXY is a small town! It is in the early and pioneering stages, and everybody knows everybody, pretty much everywhere... The American Orthodox Church is just a fledgling beginning to sink deep roots, and the movers and the congregations and the people in it all know one another, and if not, they know someone who does... It is that small.

Do you know that Iakovos in the Greek spells Jacob? Yet the Bible takes it in English as James? I haven't figured that one out yet...

They roomed me with a 17 year old Macedonian kid who was hibernating in his room listening to his walkman on the headset... Until he ended up sleeping on the sofa outside the room that night - It seems that I snore kinda loud... He said he woke up and thought "SOME THING was coming..."

heeheehee!! They put another windo rattler in with me the next night, and we created sonoric symphonies into the morning hours... The rumors of their harmonics were being spread abroad only in Greek, so I was spared further direct embarassment...

Arsenios

[furay]

Do you know that Iakovos in the Greek spells Jacob? Yet the Bible takes it in English as James? I haven't figured that one out yet...
Saw this posted at the Euphrosynos Cafe (http://euphrosynoscafe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=234&start=35):
King James in the 1600's wanted to be named after an Apostle. So, instead of changing his own name to that of an Apostle, he decided to change the name of an Apostle to his own. He took the name of the Apostle Iakovos, and told his translators that when they translate the Gospels and the Epistles, to change the name of the Apostle Iakovos and put his name instead. Therefore, we read in all English versions the names of the Apostles Peter, JAMES, and John. Also, the Epistle of the Apostle Iakovos is now wrongly translated as the Epistle of the Apostle James. Iakov in the Greek is Jacob in English.

Iakovos is the greekicized, or Greek rendering, of Iakov. All three
Evangelists who wrote in Greek wrote the name of the Apostle as Iakovos,
which is different from Iakov, and therefore we are very justified when
translating the name Iakovos, by keeping it as Iakovos in English. The early
Greek translators of the Evangelist Matthew also used the word Iakovos.

They roomed me with a 17 year old Macedonian kid who was hibernating in his room listening to his walkman on the headset... Until he ended up sleeping on the sofa outside the room that night - It seems that I snore kinda loud... He said he woke up and thought "SOME THING was coming..."
:lmbo: