First Saturday of the Souls Liturgy, this Saturday, March 2, 2019 at 9:30am

Please bring the names of the loved ones you want commemorated.

Schedule of Saturday of the Souls Liturgies:

• Sat Mar 2 — Saturday of the Souls 9:30am
• Sat Mar 9 — Saturday of the Souls at St. Paul’s (Fr. Hans out of town) 9:30am
• Sat Mar 16 — Saturday of the Souls CANCELLED (Women’s retreat at St. Paul’s)

Bp. Nicholas Visits St. Paul’ this Weekend, March 2-3, 2019

His Grace Bishop Nicholas visits St. Paul this weekend for their Founder’s Day celebration. He will serve Vespers on Saturday, March 2, 5:00pm. Bishop Nicholas is our hierarch and it would be good to attend the Vespers for both our own souls and the proper ordering of the Church.

St. Peter / St. Paul Spiritual Saturday Women’s Retreat on Saturday, March 16, 2019

All women invited!

Please RSVP to Anne Breitenbach at either:

• 239-313-0749 (text or phone)
• anne-breitenbach@hotmail.com
• at Church on Sundays

Registration begins this Sunday, March 2, 2019.

Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers on Sunday, March 17, 2019 at 5:00pm

History is memory. If we forget our past we won’t know who we are or where we are headed.

Area Orthodox Church will gather on the Sunday of Orthodoxy, March 17 at 5:00pm at St. Paul’s Orthodox Church (get map) to commemorate the Triumph of Orthodoxy.

What is the Triumph of Orthodoxy? The Feast of Orthodoxy (also known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy or the Triumph of Orthodoxy) is celebrated on the first Sunday of Great Lent (six Sundays before Pascha) in the liturgical calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Feast is kept in memory of the final defeat of iconoclasm and the restoration of the icons to the churches.

Despite the teaching about icons defined at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, the iconoclasts (icon breakers) began to trouble the Church again. After the death of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos, his young son Michael III, with his mother the regent Theodora, and Patriarch Methodios, summoned the Synod of Constantinople in 843 to bring peace to the Church. At the end of the first session, all made a triumphal procession from the Church of Blachernae to Hagia Sophia, restoring the icons to the church. This occurred on 11 March, 843 (which that year was the first Sunday of Lent). The Synod decreed that a perpetual feast on the anniversary of that day should be observed each year on the First Sunday of Great Lent, and named the day, “the Sunday of Orthodoxy”.

The name “Orthodoxy” has gradually affected the character of the feast. Originally commemorating only the defeat of iconoclasm, the commemoration has gradually come to be understood in a more general sense as opposition to all heterodoxy. In this way, though its first occasion is not forgotten, the feast has become one in honour of the true Faith in general. This is shown by its special service.