This is the Day that the Lord has Made
“Yesterday I was in anguish with Christ on the cross; today I am glorified with Him. Yesterday I was buried with Him; today I arise together with Him.” – St. Gregory of Nazianzus
Go to any cemetery any place in the world. There you will find buried beneath the earth the remains of the dead. And if time and weather have not erased them, monuments are there, listing the solemn statistics of life and death. How often we see them, the names and the dates of the deceased. “Here lies …. Born on this date …. Died on this date ….”
But there is one grave, and one only, in all the world that is different. It is the tomb of Christ. It has no remains, it is empty. There is no monument on this grave. If there was it would have emblazoned on it the words: “He is not here. He is risen!”
Christ is risen! That is the cry that we will hear at Easter at our Holy Trinity Church, echoing over and over again. Notice that we use the present tense in this declaration. We will not say “Christ was risen”; rather, we declare His resurrection to be a reality each day. This is an event that transcends time and space. Christ IS risen and he is risen among us and we will join together as a community to witness His glorious resurrection.
The haunting services of Holy Week are deliberately designed by the Church to help us relive – in a very real way – the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. On Holy Thursday we hear Christ bid farewell to us in the first Gospel lesson. On Great Friday we relive the agony of the crucifixion. We go through a funeral service involving the burial of Christ. He is placed in the tomb and people come to weep at it. Holy Saturday is a day of apprehension and anticipation. And then on the “day that the Lord hath made” all sadness turns to gladness, all darkness turns to brightness, for Christ is risen from the dead.
The resurrection of our Lord that we shall witness together at Easter my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, tells us that we, along with all those whom we have buried in the good earth, shall one day arise just as Jesus has risen. “Because I live,” Christ said “you shall live also.”
Listen to what one of our early fathers had to say about this feast of feasts. St. John Chrysostom said: “Let all pious men and all lovers of God rejoice in the splendor of this feast. Let all come, the first and the last. Let no one grieve over his poverty, for the Universal Kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep over his sins, for forgiveness has shown from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the death of our savior has set us free.”
The wonderful story of our Lord’s resurrection is graphically told by the writers of the Gospel. During the suffering and death of Christ, most of His apostles and disciples fled in fright. They were afraid lest they too be arrested and put to death. Some, however, were under the cross and still others watched from a distance as the Lord was buried.
Will we watch from a distance? Will we hide this Easter? How will we profess our Christian faith on our paschal journey to our Lord’s resurrection? Will we stay inside? What possible excuse, we who profess to be true believers in Christ, have not to walk with our Lord during this Lenten season and arrive with Him at His glorious resurrection.
For those who remained even though they were afraid and in hiding, Jesus appeared to them after His resurrection. They fell back in fright as if they have seen a ghost. But Jesus spoke to them, showed them His wounded hands and feet, even ate with them. They in turn cried out, “Christ has risen!”
Let us also remain together on our spiritual journey through Great Lent. Let us be with Jesus through His passion, His death, and His resurrection. That we may also witness His wounded hands and feet as He appears to us in our hearts and that we may feast with Him in Holy Communion. Let us be together one and all as the community of the Holy Trinity Church, so that we may cry out all together as did the apostles: “Christ is Risen!”

To His Glorious Resurrection,

Rev. Fr. John Cusulos
Protopresbyter

Parish News

Vasilopita

The Vasilopita fundraiser for St. Basil’s academy was a wonderful success. Thank you to Effie Manley for making the bread. We raised $135.00 for the academy!

Easter

Easter is drawing near at an alarming speed! Pascha is on April 12, 2015. Preparation for Holy Week as well as our annual Easter dinner will soon be underway. Please think about how you can offer your services as we prepare for this event. Most importantly, please take steps to arrange your daily schedule to be able to attend services and worship together during this most sacred and spiritual time.

For those who would like to read more about Great Lent as well as our journey through Christ’s Passion and Pascha, here is a link to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese website: http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/pascha.

Tickets for the dinner will be available for purchase beginning March 22nd. They will be available at church or by calling Jenny Gaviotis at 389-3416. Dine-in seating is limited to 122 people. We will give parish members the first opportunity to purchase tickets; however, ticket sales will be opened to the public on April 2nd. We are also offering 15 take-out tickets. ALL TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED IN ADVANCE! There will not be any tickets available at the door! To obtain an accurate count for food purchase, sales will STOP on April 4th and no more tickets will be sold after this date. All tickets must be paid for before April 4th. We will not be making any exception to this rule as it makes it very difficult for our cooks and preparation committee. Prices are $20.00 per adult; children from 6-12 years old are $10.00 and children 5 and under are free. When purchasing tickets please advise if you have children 5 & under attending as they must be counted in our seating total. PLEASE GET YOUR TICKETS EARLY!! We cannot stress enough that if you have not purchased your tickets by the deadline, you will not be able to attend the dinner.

There is a ton of work and several activities that will require everyone’s participation to make this Holy Week and Pascha celebration a success! Please give careful consideration as to how you can help! We need people to help with giving the church a really good cleaning upstairs. We will do this on Lazarus Saturday when we have completed the palm crosses. We need help with chanters, altar boys, readers, food prep (Friday, April 10th and Saturday, April 11th, times TBA), and set-up of the church hall for the dinner (Friday April 12th, time TBA). A schedule of the services of Holy Week will be mailed out the third week of March.

Future Fundraisers

We are participating in International Day again this year on Saturday, July 11th. Please start planning now as to how you can help. This is a huge undertaking and with everyone’s involvement we can again, make this a very successful event.
The committee is looking at the feasibility of possibly doing a one day Greek Festival. Watch future newsletters for details on that. We need to look at alternative fundraisers other than the annual bake sale.