March & Lenten Services

+Mar. 9: Vespers of Forgiveness.  This service marks our entrance into the season of Great Lent, and includes the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness.  Everyone who plans to receive Holy Communion on Pascha should participate in this service.

+Mar. 10-13: Great Compline with the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete.  The Canon of St. Andrew is considered the most penitential Orthodox service, and helps us prepare to receive the greatest possible benefit from Lent by breaking through all pretense and forcing us to contemplate the depth of our fall.  This is not done for the sake of any spiritual masochism, but so that we may come to recognize the extremity of our need for a Savior, who came into the world to save only sinners.

+Mar. 15: Memorial Saturday Divine Liturgy.  This has been the least well-attended Lenten service in our parish, but it is quite important insofar as these Liturgies involve our annual commemoration of all the departed fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of this parish, who are remembered by name during the Litany for the Departed.  There is also a blessing of kolivo at the conclusion of the service.

+Mar. 16: Sunday of Orthodoxy with Icon Procession.  On the first Sunday of Great Lent we commemorate the end of two centuries of heretical iconoclasm.  Everyone should bring an icon to church for a procession, whether an icon of your patron saint or an image that has some significance in your family.  We will begin our procession after the choir sings “Blessed be the name” (2x).  We will walk once around the church, and venerate the icon of Orthodoxy Sunday as we re-enter the temple to conclude the Liturgy.

+Mar. 16 & etc.: Pan-Orthodox (Mission) Vespers.  On each Sunday of Great Lent, the clergy and faithful of our Colorado parishes gather at a single church for Vespers and fellowship.  Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers will be celebrated in Denver at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Assumption, with Metropolitan Isaiah presiding.  Fr. Barnabas will have space in his car for anyone wanting to go to this and other services.  He will even draft passengers if it comes to that.  The remainder of the schedule is as follows:

*St. Gregory Palamas (Mar. 23): Our turn to host.  Homilist: Fr. Anthony Karbo.
*Veneration of the Cross (Mar. 30): Holy Theophany, 2770 N. Chestnut St. in Colorado Springs.  Homilist: Fr. Barnabas Powell.
*St. John Klimakos (Apr. 6): Archangel Michael, 2215 Paseo Rd. in Colorado Springs.  Homilist: Fr. Lawrence Gaudreau.
*St. Mary of Egypt (Apr. 13): St. Mary’s, 19485 N. Calhan Hwy. in Calhan.  Homilist: Fr. Dennis Schutte.

+Mar. 19 & etc.: Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.  The Holy Gifts that are distributed at this service have been consecrated at the prior Sunday Liturgy.  In order to prepare for receiving Holy Communion, we should say our usual rule of pre-Communion prayers and keep a strict fast from noon onward.  If we must have a lunch for the sustenance of our bodies, it should be a light meal taken before noon.  The Presanctified Liturgy begins at 5:00 pm with the Ninth Hour, and a potluck meal will follow.  Please bring a Lenten dish to share.  Father plans to show a series of short documentaries during or after each meal.  These films depict the struggle of Orthodox Christians in Kosovo and are from a collection called Days Made of Fear.

+Mar. 25: Annunciation to the Theotokos.  One of the Twelve Great Feasts of the liturgical year, the Annunciation marks the beginning of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Catechumens
God willing, five people will be enrolled as catechumens prior to the Hours on Forgiveness Sunday.  Pierre, Saturnina and Nicole de Chabert will be Chrismated on Holy Saturday, while Haley Pantleo and Riley Perry will be baptized (along with the newborns Sophia and Sava) on Lazarus Saturday.  We will pray for them throughout Lent, and welcome them into this parish.

(E)Mailing List
If you do not receive announcements about events in this parish and in the wider world of Front Range Orthodoxy, this means Father does not have your email address.  Please email him (barnabaspowell"at"yahoo.com) and he will add you to the list.  Just write “Parish List” in the subject line.  Also, when any of your contact information changes (address, phone number), please let Father know right away so he can keep in touch with you.  Finally, if you currently receive a paper copy of The Messenger, you can opt instead to get a monthly email letting you know when the next issue is available online.  Just visit our website, orthodoxpueblo.org, click on “Newsletter” and follow the instructions.  The Messenger is always available in a printer friendly version.

January Treasurer’s Report

Parishioner Profile: Barbara Negomir

Having been a member of the parish for roughly half of its existence, Barbara is a living link between St. Michael’s past and present.  The daughter of George Negomir and Mary Perechinsky, she was born in Pueblo and baptized at St. Michael’s as an infant.  From a young age, Barbara had a great love for music.  Though she never received any “formal” training to speak of, Barbara began to sing in the church choir at nine years of age, thus receiving the type of training that countless generations of God’s people have received from time immemorial.  Barbara has fond memories of Father Peter Pripisnoff, the second longest tenured priest of this parish, who was a great influence on her in her youth.  Though he was much loved, and loved the parishioners in turn, she recalls that Father Peter could be quite strict, especially when it came to chastising disruptive children.  He would even interrupt services at times to single out particularly unruly ones. 

Even in those days of the 1950s and 60s, children were increasingly fewer in number and the parish demographics were beginning to age.  Asked what accounted for this loss, Barbara posits a number of factors: the lack of opportunities for being together outside of services (such as the Greeks had with GOYA), the lack of parental involvement in education (“The idea was that if you were an altar boy, you would automatically know all about the Church.  You knew what was done, but not why”), the language barrier (services were in Slavonic and Father Peter preached in Russian), infighting between cliques in the parish (“Those annual meetings would go into the evening, and sometimes came to fisticuffs”), and social pressures to assimilate into the predominant religious paradigms of the day (“We were a small portion of the population.  If you wanted to be anybody or go anywhere, you associated with other faiths”).  As time went on and their peers fell away, few of Barbara’s generation remained in the Church.

The constant turnover of clergy was another disruptive factor in parish life, although some in the parish were contributing factors to this turnover.  Nonetheless, the arrival of Father John Chupeck, the first American born priest of St. Michael’s, brought some necessary if controversial change.  The young Father John introduced English and the Revised Julian Calendar, reforms which brought back some of the youth for a time.  After Father John left, it was one priest after another, and what kept Barbara going was the feeling that “This is my church.”

Backing up a little, Barbara left Pueblo for a time to attend Colorado State College (now UNC) in Greeley, where she majored in English, Speech and French.  There was no Orthodox parish anywhere near Greeley in those days, but Father Peter strongly encouraged her to attend the local Episcopalian church, rather than no church at all.  This was the first time Barbara encountered anything like a youth group, and she was made to feel very welcome.  Many of the Episcopalians were familiar with Orthodoxy, and “they made me feel at home,” she recalls.  They never attempted to convert her, and she even learned some things about her own faith during this time.  “I can’t imagine going though four years of college without a church,” she concludes.

Returning to Pueblo, Barbara went on to teach French, English and Speech for twenty years at East HS, from which she retired in 1980.  She especially loved coaching forensics during this time.  Through her love of singing, Barbara was able to travel to Germany and Austria with the Pueblo Choral Association, and to the USSR a few times (twice with an OCA tour).  “It was heart wrenching to be on a city tour and go by a building that used to be a church but was now something else,” she recalls.  Her most powerful experience during these trips came in 1998, the Millennium of Orthodoxy in Rus, when she attended Liturgy on St. Vladimir’s day at St. Vladimir’s Cathedral in Kyiv and venerated the relics of St. Barbara.

Barbara has been with St. Michael’s through thick and thin.  She recalls a time when it was feared that a padlock would be put on the doors and the church closed down for good.  Her hope now is that the parish will continue to grow, although this will involve a major change in its cultural heritage.  “It is inevitable,” she realizes, “that the parish will eventually consist of all new people.”  Thanks to Barbara and those with her who have preserved the Church to pass it on to all of us.

Using the Calendar
Question about how and when to fast are common even for those who have been Orthodox all their lives.  The key to answering these questions lies in the PINK DAYS.  Whenever there is a PINK DAY, this means some kind of fasting is to take place.  For example, Mar. 2nd is Meatfare, which is followed by a week of PINK DAYS that have “Meat Fast” written in blue.  This means that during the week of Meatfare, we can eat anything but meat (even dairy is allowed on Wednesdays and Fridays of this week).  Meatfare is the last day we can eat meat until Pascha.  Coffee hour that Sunday should always be a Meatluck.  The next Sunday is Cheesefare, the last day to eat dairy products (milk, cheese, eggs, etc.) until Pascha.  Coffee hour that Sunday should therefore be a Cheeseluck.  From that day until Pascha, we assume that every PINK DAY connotes abstinence from meat, dairy, wine (alcohol) and olive oil unless “Wine & Oil” or “Fish, Wine & Oil” is written in blue.  If we see “Wine & Oil” (as on the weekends) or “Fish, Wine & Oil” (as on Annunciation), this means we can have the things written in blue because there is something celebratory about the day.  Wine, Oil and Caviar are permitted on Lazarus Saturday, a major feast but not one of the Twelve Great Feasts.  When a PINK DAY has “Strict Fast” written on it, this means our goal should be to eat nothing but bread, water and perhaps some vegetables because the day is very solemn.  This occurs on Holy Friday, for example, when Christ lies in the tomb.  Finally, when we see no PINK DAYS during a week, such as Bright Week, this means fasting is prohibited.

Attendance
We have been keeping track of the number of people present on Sundays for the last four months and can report the following monthly averages: November (49), December (38), January (48), February (45).  This amounts to a quarterly average of 45, with the high being the Sunday of His Grace’s visit (65+), and the low being the Sunday after Nativity (32).

Recommended Reading
The Icon As Scripture, by Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, is a fascinating read for those wanting to learn more about the didactic role of sacred images.  Among the interesting points made are: 1) as theosis transfigures the body as well as the soul, icons of saints are not to be realist-style portraits full of pathos, but revelations of deified man, 2) in Western icons of the Last Judgment, Satan and his demons get their jollies though tormenting sinners, while in Orthodox icons God’s love, depicted as a River of Fire, is the source of “punishment”, and 3) the inverse perspective is not naïve but intentional, bringing the viewer in.

December Treasurer’s Report                       

Recommended Reading
When a living saint sets out to write about the life of another saint who has already gone to his eternal reward, we can expect to be edified and greatly inspired by the result.  This is precisely what you will experience through reading The Life of St. Sava, by Nikolai Velimirovic ($13 in the bookstore).  The greatest saint of Orthodox Serbia did not win a crown of victory through any military conquest, but rather through forsaking all wealth and power in order to follow Christ.  Rastko was the son of an earthly king, yet the desire to serve his heavenly father led him to run away from the court and be tonsured a monk on Mount Athos under the name Sava.  When the king learned of his son’s act, inexplicable from a worldly standpoint, he was initially displeased.  Yet he himself would eventually abdicate the throne and follow his son Sava into monastic life.  Together, they set an example for a dynasty that would produce an inordinate number of saints.

As a monk, the former prince was enabled to accomplish far more for the spiritual and even temporal welfare of his people than he could have as a secular leader.  Recognizing that an autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church would greatly aid the struggle for the soul of the Serbian people in the face of inroads by Rome and by Gnostic heresies, Sava won that independence from the Ecumenical Patriarch and became the first Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church.  As Archbishop, Sava brought peace between his brothers, who were warring over succession to the throne.  He also battled heretics and schismatics with the Gospel rather than by military might, inspiring many to freely return from Romanism and Bogomilism.  Through his personal sanctity, he maintained peace between Serbia and her neighbors.  Together with his father, he built magnificent temples in which to worship God, including Hilandar, the Serbian monastery on Athos.  As a pilgrim, he traveled to the Holy Land, Egypt and even Baghdad, where he gave alms for the welfare of the Christian flocks struggling under Muslim rule.  Finally, Sava established Serbia’s first schools, for which he remains today a patron of education.  All these deeds and more are presented in St. Nikolai’s book, written in an easily comprehensible style with short chapters that make it amenable to daily reading…if you can put it down.

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