Weekly Bulletin

His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas

120 W. Seneca St. Ithaca, NY 14850 http://www.stcatherine.ny.goarch.org

TEL. 607-273-2767 e-mail: stcatherinegoc@gmail.com

Fr. Zenoviy Zharsky /607/ 245-9988

 

Sunday, January 4, 2026

 

Welcome all visitors, please come again.

 

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"By changing ourselves in Christ, we are able to change the world around us"

 

Please let Father know who is in need of visiting and prayers. 

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Daily reading of the holy scripture, Saints for the day, liturgical schedule, news from the parish life, announcements and more, please read the Sunday Bulletin on the parish websitewww.stcatherine.ny.goarch.org 

Please submit to the parish priest all announcements for the church bulletin website before Thursday evening. Thank you.

Follow us on Facebook: St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church of Ithaca, NY.

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Scripture Reading: Matins: Gospel Reading: John 20:11-18. Divine Liturgy Epistle: 2 Timothy 4:5-8. Gospel: Mark 1:1-8.

When you write your will, won't you please remember St. Catherine's Church? Such a gift will live forever as our church minister to our spiritual needs and others it's an investment in the Gospel of our Lord and life eternal

If you know someone who would like to rent church apartment please see Ike Nestopoulos or Fr. Zenoviy. Thank you. 

Announcement:If you didn't give names and date of your birthdays and your families birthdays please provide them. Also please give the names and dates of your family members who fell asleep in the Lord. We will pray for them. The list of the names located near the Sunday Bulletins. Thank you.  

Memory Eternal! Αιώνια η μνήμη του! January - 5 Brian Barrios.

We pray for those who celebrate their birthday. Хρόνια πολλά & ευλογημενα! January - 1 Bill Manos, 2 Silviv Gaitan, 4 Eric West, 5 Kathryn Ann Cushing, 5 Isaiah Bishop, 6 John Momeni, 7 Mary Kathryn Archin, 8 Alaksandar Bradic.   

I wanted everyone to be informed we will begin holding a Paraklesis service every Thursday night at 6pm. The first Paraklesis service will be January 8^th Following the service you will be anointed with the holy oil from Kardiotissa miracle icon. 

Philoptochos Christmas and Holiday dinner is scheduled for Saturday, January 10, 4:00 PM at the Souvlaki House. 

 

Liturgical Schedule:  Daily 3:00 PM. Let's pray Jesus Prayer for 10 minutes straight saying,"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." 

Monday, January 5 - Strict Fast. 3:00 PM. Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. 6:00 PM. Vesperal - Liturgy. The Great Blessing of Water of Epiphany.  

Tuesday, January 6 - The Hoy Theophany. 10:00 AM. Divine Liturgy. The Great Blessing of Water of Epiphany.  3:00PM Jesus Prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner 

Wednesday, December 7 - 3:00 PM. Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner" 6:00 PM. Prayers near Miraculous Icon Mother of God "The Tender Heart" St. George's Orthodox Church in Taylor, PA. Every Wednesday we remember when Judas betrayed Christ. 

Thursday, January 8 - 3:00 PM. Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." 6:00 PM.Paraklesis. Following the service you will be anointed with the holy oil from Kardiotissa miracle icon. 

Friday, January 9 - 3:00 PM. Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Every Friday we commemorate Christ's Crucifixion.

Saturday, January 10 - 3:00 PM. Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner" NO VESPERS. Philoptochos dinner. 

Sunday, January 11 - 8:45 AMOrthros/Confession. 10:00 AM. Divine Liturgy. Every Sunday we commemorate Christ's resurrection. 

 

January 4 we commemorate Saint Nikephoros the Leper. He was born in Greece in 1890. Today we will be able to venerate his icon and relics. His name was Nicholas Tzanatakis, he was born in a mountainous village in Khania, in Sikari. His parents were simple and pious villagers, who died when he was still a young child, leaving him as an orphan. His grandfather undertook to raise him. At the age of thirteen, he went to Khania to work there in a barbershop. At about sixteen years of age, he showed the first signs of leprosy. The lepers were isolated on the island of Spinalonga, off the northwest coast of Crete because leprosy was a contagious disease and it was treated with fear. He left on a boat to Egypt to avoid being confined there. He remained in Alexandria, working in a barbershop again. However, the signs of the disease became more and more apparent, especially on his hands and face. That is why, through the intervention of a cleric, he went to Chios, where there was a Lazar house for lepers at that time, and the priest was Father Anthimos Vagianos, later Saint Anthimos. The residents lived as a community of monastics. Father Anthimos dined at the same table with the lepers. As we read in an account of his life,"He also cultivated for the sick a spiritual garden, which blossomed with the flowers of love and other virtues. His priesthood was a blessing; he aided his flock like a physician; he looked after his people like a caring nurse. He made rounds of the sick people; he went into every room; he bent over their pillows and comforted the sick with prayer and kind words. The lepers acknowledged his love by calling him "Elder". They asked him to teach them how to pray, confessed their sins and partook of the holy sacraments. Many eventually took monastic tonsure". Nicholas arrived in Chios in 1914 at the age of twenty-four. He settled in the leper hospital where there was a chapel of Saint Lazarus in which the wonderworking icon of Panagia Ypakoe was kept. In this space, the course of virtues was opened for Nicholas. Within two years Saint Anthimos considered him ready for the angelic monastic life and tonsured him with the name Nikephoros. The disease progressed and evolved in the absence of suitable drugs, causing many large lesions (a drug was found in 1947). Father Nikephoros lived with unquestioning, genuine obedience to his Spiritual Father, and with austere fasting, working in the gardens. He also recorded the miracles of Saint Anthimos, which he had witnessed with his own eyes (many of these were related to the deliverance of those possessed by demons). Father Nikephoros prayed for hours on end, he fasted vehemently, did not quarrel with anyone, nor injure anyone's heart, and he was the master chanter of the temple. Because of his illness, however, he slowly lost his sight. The Chios leprosarium was closed in 1957 and the remaining patients, together with Father Nikephoros, were sent to Saint Barbara's home for lepers in Athens, in Aigaleo. There, saint Nikephoros spent the rest of his days. Miracles from the saint's intercession began to occur towards the end of his life. Many more miraculous healings and occurrences were witnessed after his blessed departure. God blessed Saint Nikephoros with the gifts of prophesy and consolation for his endless patience and love for his neighbour. Crowds of people gathered at his cell to obtain his prayers. By the end of his life, his members and his eyes were completely altered and distorted by the disease, yet despite his infirmity, Nikephoros always greeted visitors with a smile and praised the name of God. Father Nikephoros reposed at the forefeast of Theophany on January 4, 1964, at the age of 74. His relics were flagrant. Father Eumenios and other believers reported many cases where miracles occurred by calling on Saint Nikephoros to intercede with God. After three years, his holy relics were exhumed and found to be fragrant. Eventually, many more miracles were reported. Saint Nikephoros was canonised in 2012 and glorified in 2013 at the Panagia Ypakoe church in Kissamos at Crete, where part of his sacred relics was opened for veneration. 

January 6 - Holy Theophany. The Baptism of the Lord.  God the Father spoke from Heaven about the Son, the Son was baptised by the Fore Runner of the Lord John, and the Holy Spirit descended upon the Son in the form of a Dove. From ancient times this feast was called the Day of Illumination and the Feast of Lights, since that God is Light and has appeared to illumine "those sitting in darkness and the shadow of death" (Mt. 4: 16) and to save through grace the fallen race of mankind.                

In the ancient Church it was the custom to baptise catechumens at the vespers of Theophany, such that Baptism also is revealed as a spiritual illumination of mankind. The origin of the feast of Theophany came about in Apostolic times. Mention is made concerning it in the Apostolic Decretals. From the II Century there is preserved the testimony of Saint Clement of Alexandria concerning the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord and performing the night vigil before this feast. In the III Century on the feast of Theophany there is known the dialogue concerning Divine-services between the holy martyr Hyppolitus and Saint Gregory the WonderWorker. Saint John Damascene said: "Lord was baptised not because He Himself had need for cleansing, but so that "by water to bury human sin", to fulfill the law, to reveal the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and finally, to sanctify "watery nature" and to proffer it to us in the form and example of Baptism." On the feastday of the Baptism of Christ, Holy Church asserts our faith in the mystery, most sublime and incomprehensible to human intellect of the Three Persons of the One God. It teaches us to confess and glorify as equally honoured the Holy Trinity One Essence and Undivided. It exposes and collapses the fallacies of the ancient pseudo teachings, which attempted with reason and by human terms to explain the Creator of the world. The Church shews the necessity of Baptism for believers in Christ, and it inspires for us a sense of deep gratitude for the Illumination and Purification of our sinful nature. The Church teaches that our salvation and cleansing from sin is possible only by the power of the grace of the Holy Spirit, wherefore it is necessary to preserve worthily these gifts of the grace of holy Baptism, keeping clean this priceless garb, about which the feast of the Baptism tells "As many as have been baptised into Christ, have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27)

 

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Methods of Giving:

Cash and checks can be brought to the church and put in the donation baskets.

 

Checks made out to Saint Catherine Greek Orthodox Church can also be mailed to:

St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church

120 W. Seneca St Ithaca, NY 14850

 

When you write your will, won't you please remember St. Catherine's Church? Such a gift will live forever as our church minister to our spiritual needs and others. It's an investment in the Gospel of our Lord and life eternal.

 

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