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, February 22, 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: Luke 24:1-12. Divine Liturgy Epistle: Romans 13:11-14, 14:1-4. Gospel Matthew 6:14-21 

We pray for those who celebrate their birthday. Хρόνια πολλά & ευλογημενα! February - 20 Anees Mitri, 21 Kairo King, 23 Ileana Gaitan, 26 Alexander Derbin, 28 Sameer Fakhoury.  

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.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ! Great Lent begins tonight, Let us embrace the fast and let us gather the joy and strength from denying ourselves from any hunger, wickedness, meanness we may experience. May this Great Lent be blessed! Let us practice prayers, confession and come to the church services. Great Lent is not just something we "do." It is something we enter. And more deeply still, it is something we allow to enter us. Very often we approach Great Lent with anxiety. We think about fasting rules. We think about we will "keep it well." We think about what we will give up. But the Church Fathers teach us that Lent is not first about performance. It is about standing before God in TRUTH. St. Sophrony says that "Whole of our life is learning in one thing: standing before God as we are." So, most importantly, we must tell God THE TRUTH. The power of Lent is found in humble honesty. Elder Zacharuas says: "God respond not to our strength but to our willingness to be known by Him." Great Lent is an opportunity to loosen your grip on what is unnecessary and deepen your hold on what is eternal. It is when we begin to feel, quietly,"Without Him i cannot live." St. Sophrony teaches that when light begins to enter, we seed the dust in the room. So prepare yourself for hidden warfare. If you fall, simply stand up again. Say the Jesus Prayer, confess and continue. Our enemy (satan) wants drams. God desires perseverance. Great Lent prepare us forPascha. But Pascha is not only the feast at the end of the fast. Pascha is Christ rising in the heart. And Christ rises where humility is. May this Great Lent will be radiant. May this Great Lent be quiet. May it be honest. May it be real. May the Lord find in each of us a heart willing to be softened. Asking your prayers, Fr. Zenoviy  

Philoptochos: Please mark your calendar: our next Philoptochos meeting will be held on Sunday, March 1st following Divine Liturgy.

A new coffee hour calendar has been posted. Please take a look and sign up alone or with a friend(s) so we can continue this warm, tradition

 

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." GREAT LENT BEGINS. 

Clean Monday, February 23 - 3:00PM Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. 6:00 PM - Lenten Ninth Hour. 

Tuesday, February 24 - 3:00PM Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. 6:00 PM - Lenten Ninth Hour. 

Wednesday, February 25 - 3:00PM Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. 6:00 PM - Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.  

Thursday, February 26 - 3:00PM Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. 6:00 PM - Lenten Ninth Hour. 

Friday, February 27 - 3:00PM Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. 6:00 PM - Salutations to the Theotokos.

Saturday, February 28 - 10:00 AM Ψυχοσάββατο. Memorial Saturday. Divine Liturgy.The Commemoration of the Miracle of Kollyva wrought by St. Theodore the Tyro.  3:00PM JesusPrayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Day of Fasting. NO VESPERS. 

Sunday, March 1 - 8:45AM Orthros/Confession. 10:00AM Divine Liturgy Every Sunday we commemorate Christ's resurrection. Day of Fasting. Welcome to attend the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers. Sunday,  March 1-6:00 PM St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Church Syracuce, NY

 

Catechetical Homily For the Opening of Holy and Great Lent of the Ecumenical Patriarch.                  

By God's mercy Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch to the Plenitude of the Church.

Blessed children in the Lord, Filled with sacred emotion, we enter once again, by God's goodwill, into Holy and Great Lent, the arena of ascetic struggle, the time of fasting and repentance, of humility and prayer, of spiritual vigilance and love, with the eyes of our heart directed to the life-giving Cross of the Lord, which guides us all toward Holy Pascha that opens the gates of Paradise to the human race. This blessed period now opening before us constitutes an opportunity to comprehend once more the truth of asceticism according to Christ and its inseparable association with the Eucharistic realization of the Church, whose every expression and dimension is illumined by the light and joy of the Resurrection. The spirit of asceticism is hardly a foreign element introduced into Christianity, nor is it the result of influence by dualistic ideologies outside the Church. Asceticism is another word for the Christian existence, connecting it with absolute trust in Divine Providence, with the inexhaustible spiritual gladness of a life dedicated to Christ, with self-transcendence and self-offering, with charitable love and respect for all creation. Asceticism is not a matter of self-willed choices and subjective particularities, but of submission to the rule and the "catholic experience" of the Church. It has been described as an "ecclesiastical" rather than an "individual" event. Life in the Church is indivisible. Repentance, prayer, humility, forgiveness, fasting, and philanthropic deeds are interconnected and interwoven. In the Orthodox tradition, there is no asceticism as an end in itself, for that only leads to an overestimation of individual effort and feeds tendencies of self- justification. Great Lent is the appropriate time to experience the Church as the place and the manner in which the gifts of divine Grace are revealed, always as a foretaste of the joy of the Lord's Resurrection, the cornerstone of our faith and the all-radiant horizon of "the hope within us." It is by divine inspiration that the Church honours on Cheesefare Saturday the sacred memory of saintly men and women who have shone brightly in asceticism, for they are the supporters and companions of the faithful in the long course of asceticism. In the arena of spiritual struggle, we have the benevolence of the Triune God with us, the protection of the All-Holy Mother of God and Mother of us all, and the intercessions of the saints and martyrs of the faith. Healthy Christian asceticism is the participation of the whole human beings as a unity of spirit, soul, and body in the life in Christ, without undervaluing matter and the body, and without a Manichaean reduction of spirituality. As it has been written, Christian asceticism is ultimately a struggle "not against, but for the body"; as the Gerontikonaffirms: "We have been taught not to destroy the body, but to destroy the passions." Unfortunately, and inaccurately, Christian asceticism has been labelled by contemporary thinkers as a denial of the joy of life and as a restriction of human creativity. Nothing could be further from the truth! As release from "having" and from attachment to the possession of things, and especially as liberation from the ego, from "seeking one's own," and from the "having of our being," asceticism is the source and expression of genuine freedom. What can be more truthful than the exodus from the captivity of "individual right" and the openness and love for our fellow human beings, the inner "good change" and steadfastness in fulfilling God's commandments? What could be more creative than fasting, when it is a holistic attitude of life and expresses the ascetic and Eucharistic spirit of the Church, when it is a "common struggle" and not an "individual feat"? What could be more existentially striking than repentance and internal conversion, as a vital direction toward the truth and a renewed discovery of the power of divine Grace, of the depth of life in Christ and the hope of eternal life? It is truly impressive that, when the early Christian character of Holy and Great Lent as a period of preparation for Holy Baptism in the Divine Liturgy of the Resurrection was replaced by the "ethos of repentance," there nevertheless remained its experience as a "second baptism." For this reason, the period of fasting and repentance is not sorrowful. Our hymnology speaks of the "spring of fasting," while theology calls Great Lent a "spiritual spring" and a "period of joy and light." All of this assumes special timeliness and significance in the face of the anthropological confusion of our time, as well as the new alienations rooted in contemporary civilization. With these sentiments and thoughts, reminding all the children of the Holy Great Church of Christ throughout the Lord's dominion, that on the day of the Akathist Hymn, the festivities will culminate, marking the 1400th anniversary of the year 626 when, in expression of gratitude to the Theotokos for the deliverance of the City of Constre from a perilous siege, the Akathist Hymn was chanted standing in the sacred Church of Blachernae we wish you all a smooth course of the Fast, with asceticism and patience, with thanksgiving and doxology. May we all, speaking the truth in love and being sanctified in the Lord, travel this way toward the fullness of joy in His radiant Resurrection. Holy and Great Lent 2026 + BARTHOLOMEW of Constantinople.  Your fervent supplicant for all before God.  

The Holy Fathers have appointed the commemoration of Adam's exile from the Paradise of delight here, on the eve of the holy Forty-day Fast, demonstrating to us not by simple words, but by actual deeds, how beneficial fasting is for man, and how harmful and destructive are insatiety and the transgressing of the divine commandments. For the first commandment that God gave to man was that of fasting, which the first-fashioned received but did not keep; and not only did they not become gods, as they had imagined, but they lost even that blessed life which they had, and they fell into corruption and death, and transmitted these and innumerable other evils to all of mankind. The God-bearing Fathers set these things before us today, that by bringing to mind what we have fallen from, and what we have suffered because of the insatiety and disobedience of the first-fashioned, we might be diligent to return again to that ancient bliss and glory by means of fasting and obedience to all the divine commands. Taking occasion from today's Gospel (Matt. 6:14-21) to begin the Fast unencumbered by enmity, we also ask forgiveness this day, first from God, then from one another and all creation.

 

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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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