Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Our salvation is our
object. We move toward this goal through the increasing indwelling of
the Holy Spirit through our acquirements of God’s grace. We do this,
not alone, but together, as witnessed to by the organized life of the
Church into parishes. It has been so since the Church was first spoken
of in the New Testament. Of course, THE manifestation of such unity is
within the Divine Liturgy where Christ, our Chief Cornerstone, is
together with His living stones, us and the Saints, in the Mystery of
the Body and Blood. Other manifestations of unity suggest themselves as
by-products of this primary unity. We eagerly seek other ways for
showing and developing our oneness so that our lives together and apart
may shine more and more with the brightness of His grace and move us,
each and all, toward the final goal of salvation, and in so doing, move
us away from the corruption of the things of this world. Such ways
suggest themselves to us now. This month, we begin two activities
through which we have a good hope that God may move in us and use us. For some time, we have seen among us a growing number of young,
unattached people. The spirit of the age ever preys upon us to draw us
away from concern for our place in the Church and salvation. This is
most clear among those emerging from their families to assume and lead
their own lives. Especially in this day of general falling away from
any type of Christian influence, let alone belief, the newly
independent person can fall into confusion through the omni-directional
assault of influences unknown under the family roof. For this reason,
we are forming a group within the parish, known as St. Joseph’s Young
Singles, to welcome unmarried Orthodox Christians from college age
through the early thirties. St. Joseph is the eleventh son of patriarch
Jacob who, as we know from Scripture, resisted seduction by Potiphar’s
wife, enduring false accusation and imprisonment rather than succumb to
illicit allurements and offend God. God preserved Him to be mighty in
Egypt so that he could save not only Egypt, but his own family and
promised nation. Our desire is that those in St. Joseph’s Young Singles
may encourage each other to keep a holy witness arising out of growing
familial love – the love within the family of Christ. Recently,
desires were expressed that our Wednesday night class be conducted with
an eye to a focused study. We have decided that one of the books
written by Father Michael Pomazansky, “Orthodox Dogmatic Theology,”
provide the basis for such a study. Father Michael was one of the last
surviving clergy educated in the pre-Revolutionary period when Russian
Orthodox Theological training was at its peak. In his introduction to
the book, Father Seraphim Rose speaks of the rarified spiritual
atmosphere of such writers as Father Michael, and at the same time in
their writing the down-to-earth, “salt-of-the-earth” quality that
reaches out and touches the heart of the serious student. Therefore,
while the title of the work, from our experience with non-Orthodox
books with similar titles, may at first be daunting and off-putting, my
own experience of this book entirely matches what Father Seraphim says
about it. The book is a garden of the Lord, rich for us toward growth
in understanding, toward the building up of the foundation of our
spiritual house. Let us all pray that these additional efforts
will be means to grow in knowledge and love of the Lord and toward
mutual encouragement, understanding and love and growth in the gifts of
God. In Christ, Father George
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"In building churches here on earth, we create for ourselves eternal habitations in heaven."
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