On Wednesday of the 5th week of Lent the Church celebrates a special service known as St. Mary’s Standing. Great penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read in its entirety during that service. This Canon is composed as a conversation of a person with his own soul. It reveals that often we imitate sinners mentioned in the Scripture but do not wish to follow the steps of the righteous ones. It also calls us to bring the fruits of repentance and not to exalt ourselves.

For the first time in our parish practice we held such a celebration at St. George Church on Wednesday, March 29. Our Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov led the service reading the Canon.

Following the service the Rector preached a short sermon stressing the importance of our spiritual life of prayer and repentance, as well as of the awareness of our sinful state.

On March 26, on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Rector of St. George Church, Archpriest Igor Tarasov served the Divine Liturgy in our parish temple. Following the readings from the Sacred Scripture he preached a homily in Russian. An English translation of that homily is as follows:

“Today is the 4th Sunday of Lent, and we have already made more than a half way of our journey towards the Holy Pascha. And today the Church offers us a Gospel story about casting out of an evil spirit and it also honors Venerable John of the Ladder, a holy ascetic man who wrote a book on spiritual perfection. Thus today we have to realize that there are different difficulties and dangers on our way to the Kingdom of God. Realizing them we may understand how to overcome them.”
“First of all, we have to be aware that there exists an enemy of the human race, the devil. He is tempting us and is willing to lead us away from our salvation. In today’s Gospel lesson we heard that the Lord cast out an evil spirit from some young man (Mk. 9, 17-31). Such things happen although rarely – a demon enters into a human body and tortures a man willing to destroy him. And we have to believe that it really happens because in our days many people, even those who call themselves the believers in Christ, refuse to believe in the existence of the devil and evil spirits. However, the cases of direct and physical possession by the demons are not so many. It much more often happens that the enemy is tempting us spiritually and we give in to that temptation, committing a sin and turning away from God. Such thing happened to Adam and Eve.”
“But we have already said in the past that people should not blame the devil for their sins. If we did not consent to commit a sin, the devil would never force us to do it. But he finds different ways and approaches to our heart, to our nature perverted by sin and seduces us to act sinfully.”
“We have to note that the enemy especially attacks those who is attempting to lead a spiritual life and engages in the acts of piety. Ven. John whom we honor today described spiritual perfection as a Ladder leading from earth to heaven. Today we may see the image of that Ladder in the middle of the church. Observing that icon we may see that some people pictured there are climbing the Ladder but some of them fall being snapped by the demons. Some fall being on a higher step. And we see that among them there are monks, priests and bishops. What does it mean? It means that the higher a person ascends in his spiritual life, the more he is overcome by the evil forces.”
“The destiny of Judas Iscariot is a perfect example of that. He was one of the 12 Apostles chosen by the Lord. He was close to Jesus Christ. But this could not preserve him from being tempted, and in his case the devil attained a victory. Judas was not possessed by a demon in a literal sense, but Holy Evangelist Luke writes, “Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve. So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them” (Lk. 22, 3-4). Thus Judas became filled with the spirit of Satan and betrayed the Son of God. This is why we have to be very careful about our thoughts and desires. Judas did not become filled with the spirit of the devil from the beginning. We read in the Gospel that he was the Apostles’ treasurer. And behold, the devil found his weakness – his love of money. Holy Evangelist John writes that Judas was a thief and he used to take from the donations given for Christ and the Apostles (Jn. 12, 6). Later this weakness and this sin made Judas mad, so he decided to betray Christ Himself for the money. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, let us be careful with our passions!”
“Another thing that we need to understand from today’s celebration of the 4th Sunday of Lent is that we need a firm faith. In today’s Gospel we heard what the Lord said to the father of the possessed young man, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mk. 9, 23). The father of the young man cried out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9, 24). Our faith is weak and appears like unbelief. Therefore, we need to ask the Lord to help our unbelief. And we have to strengthen our faith by the acts of piety, by prayer and fasting.”
“In today’s Gospel story we heard that the Disciples of Christ were unable to cast out a demon. And we should note that this happened after many of them, particularly not the 12 but the 70 Apostles did cast out the evil spirits. They joyfully reported the Lord that even the demons are subject to them in the name of Christ (Lk. 10, 17). But here the Apostles failed. The Lord later explained that this kind of demons is being driven out only by prayer and fasting (Mk. 9, 29). Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, our struggle against the enemy of the human kind, our fight against him is possible only if we practice prayer and keep fast. Otherwise we are not going to overcome him as the Apostles failed to overcome him in today’s reading from the Gospel.”
“Dear brothers and sisters! Let us remember that the devil never sleeps. As Holy Apostle Peter teaches us, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5, 6). But if we will have a firm faith, we will be able to overcome the intrigues of the evil one. And if we are going to live by prayer and fasting, we will be able to chase the unclean spirit from our thoughts, from our deeds and from our lives, and then we will be able to reach the Kingdom of Heaven!”

In the time preceding the Holy Communion the choir beautifully performed the hymns dedicated to Venerable John of the Ladder whom the Church honors on this Sunday.

Following the dismissal of the Liturgy the Rector preached a brief sermon in English to address the main thoughts of his Russian homily.

On Wednesday, March 22, feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs of the Sebastian Lake, Rector of St. George Church, Archpriest Igor Tarasov served the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in our temple.

Two readings from the Old Testament, as well as the Epistle and Gospel lesson were proclaimed during that lenten and festal service. The choir prayerfully performed singing of this special service and hymns dedicated to the Holy Martyrs.

Following the Liturgy dismissal the Rector and parishioners venerated the Precious Cross.

On March 19, on the Third Sunday of Lent, Rector of St. George Church, Archpriest Igor Tarasov, Dean of the Eastern States of the Patriarchal Parishes participated in this year’s second Lenten Mission Vespers served in our Deanery. This day such service had been celebrated at the Elevation of the Holy Cross Church in Hackettstown, NJ.

Mission Vespers was headed by Chancellor of the Patriarchal Parishes, Archpriest George Konyev and co-served by our Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov, as well as by Hieromonk Stephen (Bushman), cleric of the Three Saints Church in Garfield, NJ, Priest Aleksiy Paranyuk, Rector of St. John the Baptist Church in Little Falls, NJ, and Deacon Andrew Massey, cleric of the Holy Cross Church in Hackettstown, NJ. Unfortunately, Rector of the hosting parish, Archpriest John Kassatkin was ill and could not join our clergy at the Mission service.

Following the Great Prokimenon a sermon in English was delivered by Priest Aleksiy Paranyuk.

After the Vespers dismissal Chancellor of the Patriarchal Parishes expressed his gratitude to the clergy and lay people present for their participation in the Mission service. Following the service in the temple, a delicious supper was offered to the guests of the Hackettstown church in its parish hall.

Please, note that we will have a Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on this coming Wednesday, March 22 to celebrate feast of the 40 Holy Martyrs of the Sebastian Lake. The Liturgy will begin at 6 pm.
Please refer to our updated Service Schedule for March.

On the Third Sunday of Lent the Orthodox Church venerates the Holy Cross. This year on this day, March 19 we had a beautiful celebration in our parish church conducted by our Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov.
Before the reading of the Hours the Rector solemnly transferred decorated cross from the altar to the middle of the church and placed it on the stand.
During the Divine Liturgy, following the lessons from the Scripture Fr. Igor preached the following homily in English:

“On this Third Sunday of Lent we come to the very middle of our journey towards Holy Pascha and, as we said before, of our spiritual journey of the return to paradise. On this stop we are offered a rest under the holy Tree of the Cross of Christ. As we venerate that Precious Cross, we have to realize that the only way to the Kingdom of God is the way of the Cross. If we wish to be back in paradise, there is no other way than this.”
“Everyone has his or her own cross in this life. Such a cross consists of our sorrows and sufferings, our worries and cares, our misfortunes and pains. The Lord says, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mk. 8, 34).  It means that we need to carry our crosses and thus we will follow the Lord Jesus who Himself carried His Cross. It is understood that we may not like our crosses and even hate them. But let us remember that this is the difference between the Christian Church which wishes to carry the Cross and the sinful world which desires to reject the Cross and to find an easy way. However, those who attempt to reject their crosses, suffer anyway and suffer even more. For instance, if people do not wish to be patient with each other, and they fight and lose their temper, they suffer. If a person does not want to be abstinent and indulges in drinking or drugs, he suffers himself and also brings suffering to his loved ones. If a married couple does not want to have a child and they decide to have an abortion, that innocent child suffers, but the mother who does it suffers too. Every sin is a pain, and our enemy desires to tempt us not to suffer the cross, but then makes us suffer even more.”
“When our Lord Jesus Christ had been suffering on the cross, the devil through sinful people tempted him saying, “Save Yourself! If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Mt. 27, 40). In the same way the devil in many different ways tells us to avoid sufferings and to leave our crosses. But let us remember that our Lord remained on the cross to save us from our sins. If He did not take up His cross, we would not be redeemed. As the Lord teaches in today’s Gospel lesson, “Whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it” (Mk. 8, 35). Jesus preferred to lose His life for us. As a result, He conquered death and redeemed us. Now it is our turn: if we do not take up our crosses, we do not follow the Lord, and we cannot be saved.”
“Today’s Gospel lesson ends with the following words of Christ: “Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the Kingdom of God present with power” (Mk. 9, 1). What do these words mean? They were said about some of the Disciples of Christ who later had a chance to be witnesses of Christ’s Transfiguration. They did not taste death till they saw the divine glory of Jesus on Mt. Tabor. But these same words of Jesus are referred also to all of us. We may also do not taste death till we see the Kingdom of God.”
““To taste death” means to suffer from all that entered into the world when death entered into the world. For when Adam and Eve fell, not only did death enter, but also hard work, pain, sorrow, worry, disease, old age. And all these things are the taste of death. How then are we to overcome them? Only by returning to paradise. And to return we need to carry our cross. Christ is the New Adam and the Cross is the new Tree which is not forbidden. Its fruit is the Resurrection. The tasting its fruit is tasting the Body of the risen Christ. We do it when we receive Holy Communion. And this precisely is the meaning of the words in today’s Gospel that it is possible “to see the Kingdom of God come with power”. If we face up to the difficulties of life with the Cross of Christ, we shall not taste death, those difficulties, in the light of the resurrecting power of the Cross.”
“Everyone has his or her own cross. Let us then carry it following our Savior Jesus Christ. Let us ask Him that His eternal Kingdom may touch our souls. There is no pain, sorrows and sufferings in that Kingdom. Let us look for a comfort in the Holy Cross of Christ and let us put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ who died for us on the Cross and who was risen from the dead.”

After the Liturgy dismissal the Rector preached a short sermon in Russian conveying the main ideas of his English homily.

Following that the Rector and the altar server came out of the sanctuary before the stand in the middle of the church and venerated the Precious Cross.

The Annual Parish Meeting of St. George Church was held on Sunday, March 12, 2017, following the Divine Liturgy and coffee hour. Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov presided.

Church Warden, Olga Roussanow read the minutes of the last Annual Meeting held in 2016. The Rector reported on financial situation. He informed that parish income in the year 2016 was higher  than in the previous year, especially due to a special donation of $ 2,000. However, our deficit grew due to the increasing expenses. Although we did not have any special spending and our only renovation project of painting the church inside was done as a voluntary work donated by Andrew and Vitaliy Malyshew, we still had to cover certain parish expenses. The Parish is in a great financial need. Parishioners still do not cover our spending. In addition, during the last year we lost some of our members, so the church attendance has become lower.

Following the discussion of financial situation it was pointed out that Parish Treasurer, Sophia Kay left our Parish and a new Treasurer should be elected. After some discussion it had been unanimously decided that the duties of the Treasurer have to be temporarily imposed on our Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov.

Among other issues discussed at the Meeting were our plans regarding the Patronal feast of St. George, a possibility of having a Russian-language version of our parish website, as well as some other concerns.

On March 12, on the Second Sunday of Lent, our Parish family gathered for a nice liturgical celebration at our temple. The Rector of St. George Church, Archpriest Igor Tarasov served the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. Following the reading from the Holy Gospel he preached a homily in Russian. An English translation of that homily is the following:

“On the Second Sunday of Lent we have to come to an understanding that each one of us has very little power to accomplish our journey to the Kingdom of heaven. It has been two weeks after we started this journey, two weeks has passed since we began Lent. And I think that those of us who really tried to keep this fast, had to realize that not much was accomplished. It was difficult to abstain from certain food, but even if we did, it was much more difficult to abstain from passions: from being angry, from being jealous, from judging and condemning others, from being lazy and negligent. This shows us, dear brothers and sisters, that by ourselves we cannot do much about our salvation, our conversion or repentance. We need God’s help. As the Lord says, “Without Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 5, 15).”
“This why today’s Gospel lesson is telling us about a paralyzed man. His condition is an image of our sinful soul. Although we may wish to be saved, to repent and to enter into the Kingdom of God, we are not able to accomplish it because our souls are paralyzed by our sinfulness and spiritual weakness. We need Jesus who would first forgive our sins and then heal us from this paralysis. Only with God’s help and with His life-creating power we can be made whole. Such life-creating power of God is His divine grace. Without God’s grace we cannot reach salvation. Today the Church commemorates Holy Father Gregory Palamas who was a great spiritual writer. In his writings he taught about divine grace and that a man can acquire it through spiritual life and endeavors of piety. This is why we call St. Gregory “the preacher of grace”.”}
“The divine grace is a gift from God. It is God’s power, His energy which, according to the teaching of St. Gregory, is God Himself. In today’s Gospel story the paralyzed man acquired such grace. He probably did repent for his sins but his repentance was in vain until He was brought to Jesus. Only Jesus could forgive his sins and heal him. Same thing happens to us when we approach the holy Mystery of Confession. Our own strength and our own repentance may not be sufficient for our sins to be forgiven but if it is joined with the power of Christ we are forgiven in the Mystery of Penance.”
“Another important aspect for us to remember today is that we are being saved not alone but as a community of believers. In today’s Gospel the paralyzed man could not himself approach Jesus. Thus he was carried by his four friends who even got on the roof of the building where Jesus was and uncovered the roof and let down the bed with the paralytic right to Jesus. It is after seeing their faith the Lord forgave the man’s sins and made him whole (Mk. 1, 4-5). In the same way, dear brothers and sisters, we are being saved not only by our own faith, but also by the faith of the Church. Who are those four friends of the paralyzed man? Symbolically, they are an image of the four Evangelists who composed the four Gospels and the Holy Gospel is bringing us to Jesus. They first bring us to the Lord and then we become able to acquire His grace. Those four friends may be also considered an image of the four sides of the universe where the Good News of Christ is being preached and where the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church is being established to lead all the nations to the Lord.”
“Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, we do need those four friends. We need the four Gospels, we need the Church, the holy community of those who have faith, so that faith may be seen by the Lord and may produce a miraculous outcome. And when we become brought to the Lord by the faith of the community, of the four friends, then the divine grace may act upon us. This is why, we first need to be instructed by the Word of God and then become able to receive His Mysteries. All this is impossible without the Church, without being with the community of the believers.”
“Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, on this Second Sunday of Lent let us realize that we cannot accomplish the journey to our salvation alone. We need the divine grace and God’s help. And we need to acquire it through the Holy Church which is dispensing the divine grace in the Holy Mysteries, especially in the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist. And realizing that, we may successfully use help of our four spiritual fiends and become brought to the Lord, so He could grant us His life-creating grace of salvation.”

Since we did not hold a service on yesterday’s memorial Saturday, the Rector proclaimed the Litany for the departed commemorating the names of our deceased loved ones.

After the dismissal of the Liturgy the Rector preached a brief sermon in English stressing the main points of his Russian homily.

Due to the scheduled Annual Parish Meeting we had coffee and refreshments served after the Liturgy.

On Sunday, March 5 following the Lenten Mission Vespers served at St. John the Baptist Church in Little Falls, NJ clergy of the Eastern States Deanery gathered to hold a Deanery meeting.

After a delicious supper served at the parish hall Fr. Igor opened the meeting and expressed his gratitude to all those in attendance. The Dean welcomed Priest Aleksiy Paranyuk as a new clergyman of the Deanery who was appointed Rector of St. John the Baptist Parish in Little Falls in August, 2016. Fr. Igor also welcomed the two newly-ordained deacons, Fr. Andrew Masey and Fr. Nicholas DeGraaff. They serve in our parishes in Hackettstown and Garfield.

The clergy further discussed a number of administrative and pastoral issues which concern our Eastern States Deanery.

On March 5, on the First Sunday of Lent, the Rector of St. George Church, Archpriest Igor Tarasov, Dean of the Eastern States of the Patriarchal Parishes participated in one of the traditional Lenten Mission Vespers served in our Deanery. This day such service had been celebrated at St. John the Baptist Church in Little Falls, NJ.

Mission Vespers was headed by Chancellor of the Patriarchal Parishes, Archpriest George Konyev and co-served by our Rector, Archpriest Igor Tarasov, as well as by Archpriest John Kassatkin, Rector of the Holy Cross Church in Hackettstown, NJ, Archpriest Mikhail Kapchits, Rector of St. Nicholas Church in Bayonne, NJ, Hieromonk Stephen (Bushman), cleric of the Three Saints Church in Garfield, NJ, Priest Aleksiy Paranyuk, Rector of St. John the Baptist Church in Little Falls, NJ, Deacon Andrew Masey, cleric of the Holy Cross Church in Hackettstown, NJ and Deacon Nicholas DeGraaff, cleric of the Three Saints Church in Garfield, NJ.

Following the Great Prokimenon a sermon in English was delivered by Archpriest John Kassatkin.

After the Vespers dismissal the Parish Rector expressed his gratitude to the clergy and lay people present for their participation in the Mission service. Following the church service, a delicious supper was offered to the guests of the Little Falls Church in its parish hall.