The Lighthouse
November 2016
“I will build you a lighthouse from
which the light of Christ can shine.”
Christ the Savior Orthodox Church, 1070 Roxbury Road, Southbury, CT 06488
Archpriest Vladimir Aleandro, Pastor · (203) 267–1330 · www.christsaviorchurch.org
Looking Ahead to 2017
On Sunday October 16th, we assembled as the 23rd Annual Assembly of Christ the Savior. The events and
metrics of our past 25th Jubilee year were read. We confirmed the Leaders, Steward Representatives, for
2017. We heard goals set for the coming year and set our “hand to the plow” for the future. Perhaps this is
all best summed up in the quote of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom that was given to us that day and for
every day of this coming year.
“Our vocation is to be sent like light into the darkness, with our divine hope where there is no hope;
like salt where there is corruption. Our place as Christians is not in the safety of our Christian
communities, but in the storms that must be stilled; at the heart of corruption that must be stopped;
at the point of hopelessness where we must bring hope, which is beyond all human hope. Light that
shines in the darkness-that is our vocation.”
The light of Christ within me is not to be hidden under a bushel. Rather, it is to be like
a city set on a hill. It is to function as a lighthouse helping others steer clear of danger,
illuminating the darkness with HIM who is the light of the world.
What darkness will Christ’s light in you dispel:
In your life?
In our church community?
In your family?
In this country during this election year? Be sure to vote and remember whoever
becomes our president, God is the eternal King, not president. Because God is King,
everything is under His control.
EACH LITURGY is literally a service of thanks and the very word Eucharist means thanks. So our
call to the table, on Thanksgiving Day is to The Lord’s table where He gives Himself to us as Life. Let us
gather at that table first, then the rest of the day with family and friends will be in their right place.
“Everyone capable of Thanksgiving is capable of salvation.”
"On Thursday, we will celebrate Thanksgiving Day. What a noble and
wonderful feast. Undoubtedly, it is a day of the Church. For everything
received in the past year, I thank you for everything, O Lord! The bells of
all the churches will ring, pastors will speak inspiringly, families will gather
with thankful prayer at their abundant meals with traditional turkey... A
feast of peace and thanksgiving...Accept, O God, our reasonable praise for
the unending mercies which You have graciously granted to our church, for
all the good things You have poured out on us. Multiply Your mercy upon
those who know You. And be merciful even to those who do not seek You."
— St. Alexander Hotovitzky (1908)
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THANK YOU FOR THE LIVING TEMPLE. This is the essence of our
prayer at Great Vespers on Sunday evening, November 20th and Liturgy on
Monday November 21st. On this day, we remember that God came to earth to
dwell in the temple of the body of a virgin for our sake.
November 2016 Announcements
An invitation to all women for Saturday, November 12th, Women’s Monthly Retreat beginning at 9am:
Akafist, “Glory to God For All Things” followed by a short meditation, a few minutes of quite reflection,
food, fellowship and discussion. This month we will reflect upon the question: “How present and attentive
are we with the people in our lives?” The group will be led by Kathy Johnson. The reading is from Being
Bread, pp 39-43, “2:39 AM Gloria.” Please join us! All are welcome!
Harumbai! What in the world is this “Men’s Retreat every month?” All men of every age are invited to
come and see this month on Thursday, November 17th when Dan Brockett will lead us in discussion of
chapter one of the book Being Bread by Deacon Stephen Muse. For more information see Dan Brockett.
The next meeting of Gifted Hands will be Friday, November 18th, 6:30 pm at Renate Sica’s house.
Operation Christmas Child: Please join us again this year as we pack shoeboxes for children in many
places throughout the world, who might not otherwise receive a Christmas present. Please bring your shoe
box gifts to Church from November 1 – 15. All information can be found on the display table at the entrance
to Church. Please note that all items must be new. Anyone wishing to help with the postage can place their
monetary donation in the jar so marked. Thank you!
Advent Friends, a Live Wire and Teen Group Outreach will take place again this year. We will be reaching
out and sending prayers, cards and a Christmas gift(s) to those who are unable to be with us each week. If
you know of someone who would enjoy this outreach please let Matushka Suzanne know by November 7th.
The Southbury Interfaith Thanksgiving Day Meal Committee will be holding its annual holiday event
for Southbury residents on Thanksgiving Day at United Church of Christ 280 Main St. Doors open at
noon. The invitation is extended to those who are: unable to prepare a meal due to financial limitations,
unable to prepare a meal due to physical restrictions, unable to be with family or friends. The event is open
to Southbury residents only. Reservations are required. Call Judy at (203) 264-5882 to make a reservation
by Friday, November 18th. Transportation will be available for those who have no means to travel to the
event - please ask while registering. Meals can also be delivered to those who are housebound, ill, or
otherwise unable to attend.
The Southbury/Woodbury Interfaith Thanksgiving Service will be held at B’nai Israel, 444 Main St.
Southbury, Tuesday November 22nd at 7:00 pm. The service will feature clergy from both Southbury and
Woodbury and is always a most touching service. Please join us for this special time of giving thanks!
Donations for the Woodbury Food Bank and children's clothing for the Children-To-Children
organization are needed. Clothing is needed for infants to age 18. The collection containers are located in
the hall near the assembly room door. Thank you.
Please remember to “Fall behind” one hour on Sunday, November 6th. Also be reminded that Saturday
Vespers of the Resurrection falls back to 5:00 pm, beginning on Saturday, November 12th and will remain
there until after Pascha. These winter hours help us to travel in a little more light. Saturday Vespers is a
most important step in our preparation for Sunday Liturgy and reception of Communion.
In the event of inclement weather please be sure to check WTNH News Channel 8. Closings will be
posted both on the TV and Web site. Daily Matins will be cancelled if there is a delay or closing in
Oxford or Southbury. When in doubt, call 267–1330.
“I was hungry and you gave me food” ~ November is the month assigned to Christ the Savior parish
to assist at The Woodbury Food Bank. Please see the sign-up sheet on the board to help on the Fridays of
this wonderful month of Thanks. It is a most rewarding experience.
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The Great Vespers for the Feast of St. Nektarios of Aegina will be celebrated this
year on the Sunday before the Feast, November 6th at 4:00 pm. We are most
blessed to have Archbishop NIKON presiding at that Vespers. Attending will also
be priests from our own Deanery and visiting clergy from other churches.
For the past twenty-four years, the fall season at Christ the Savior brings
memories and anticipation of this great Feast. St. Nektarios has said: “Miracles
are a manifestation of God’s love for his creatures.” On this night God’s love is
often manifested in ways we least expect. There will be a procession with his
relics, prayers for the sick and anointing. A light buffet will follow. Please invite
friends and relatives to come with you to this powerful evening of faith! On the
feast, Wednesday, November 9th, there will be a Divine Liturgy at 9:30 am. We will also have visiting
clergy at this time.
We have been given the gift of this Feast as “hosts” for the many people who need God’s healing
power of love thought the intercession and example of our Patron Saint. Everyone please sign up,
volunteer, and respond to this awesome privilege. We need food, servers, bell ringers, cleaners,
greeters, and your loving presence.
The Christmas Lent = the Nativity Fast = St. Philip Fast = Advent: By whatever we call these forty
days which begin on November 15th, they are a time of preparation for the birth and baptism of our
Savior. For Orthodox Christians it is:
 A time to quiet and simplify our lives and reflect on our priorities.
 A time of fasting, along with the whole church we should at least fast from meat and rich food
during this period. At church functions the fast from meat and dairy will be observed.
 One of the reasons for fasting is so that the money we save can be used for those who are hungry. It
is a time for helping others with our time and money.
An essential part of this preparation is a sincere personal confession. Please plan early. We all know
how quickly this time goes.
There will be a General Confession before Christmas for all those who have gone to confession during
these Forty Days.
The Nativity Fast
What Should I be Doing?
(1) Pray. Find time each morning and each evening to pray. If you do not follow a “prayer rule,”
speak with Father and he will help you.
(2) Read Scripture. A useful exercise during the Nativity Fast is to choose a Gospel (Mark is a good
choice), and read one chapter each day. But read the chapter aloud and slowly. Then sit in silence for a
few minutes and reflect on any words or images that grabbed your attention.
(3) Fast. Observe the Church’s fasting rules. Our faith is physical, not just spiritual. And fasting helps
us to develop awareness of God’s presence and of our dependence upon God for all things.
(4) Get in the game! Go to church faithfully, offer a personal confession, pray for others, visit the sick,
volunteer your time, give sacrificially from what you have, make an attempt to heal broken relationships,
decide to get the help you need.
Stewardship, as defined in the Scriptures, is the proper management of the various gifts bestowed upon us
by God. All that we have is given to us by the Lord, and it is our sacred duty to utilize what we have- our
time, our talent, and our resources, our very lives – for what St. Paul calls the “building up of the Body of
Christ.”
HOW CAN YOU OR I SAY THANK YOU FOR OUR LIFE, THE GIFT OF LOVE, EVERYTHING
THAT WE HAVE AND THE WHOLE WORLD? By giving a portion back! First portion percentage
giving, Pledging and Tithing are ways that we give thanks for all that is given to us. Toward the end of
the month of November, Pledge forms for 2017 will be given out again so that between Thanksgiving and
Christmas we can put our thanks into action. This will be one of the most serious decisions each of us will
have to make all year. To give ten percent off the top is just a concrete way of saying: “Thank you Lord, it
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is really all yours.” During these last two months of 2016 we need to be as faithful as possible to the pledge
made to God for the past year.
We say thanks not just by giving of the resources we have but giving of ourselves. The very basis and
structure of our Mission Community is that every person is a steward and needs to give of themselves.
When we put our wants first there is never enough time or energy for everything and we are frustrated. In
our small community, everything still has to be done. Each of us must give of our time and ability and then
be committed to follow through.
There is a wonderful book full of short but powerful, unforgettable stories. It is being used by the Monthly
Women’s Retreat, by the Monthly Men’s Retreat and by people in our parish for their own reading. It makes
excellent Advent reading to prepare for the celebration of the coming of “God with us.” It is the book:
Being Bread by Deacon Stephen Muse. It is available in our Parish Bookstore and worth the investment.
The following quote by Alice Miller was the heading for chapter four of Being Bread. When the Women
met in October, they asked if I would put it in the Monthly Bulletin. It speaks to each of us and the child in
us. It also speaks to us as we strive to love the children in our lives.
A child cannot be raised to be loving – neither by being beaten nor by well-meaning works; no
reprimands, sermons, explanations, good examples, threats, or prohibitions can make a child capable
of love. A child who is preached to learns only to preach and a child who is beaten learns to beat
others. A person can be raised to be a good citizen, a brave soldier, a devout Jew, Catholic,
Protestant, or atheist, even to be a devout psychoanalyst, but not to be a vital and free human being.
And only vitality and freedom, not the compulsions of child-rearing, open the well-springs of a
genuine capacity to love. - Alice Miller.
BEING BREAD
Stephen Muse
Introduction
Students in the servant leadership Masters program of Columbia State University invited some community
leaders to a conversation on the theme, “Embracing the Beauty Around Us.” During lunch, we gathered in
one of the studios on the riverfront campus where we were shown a film taken from cameras installed in
the Washington DC Metro at a time when celebrated concert violinist, Joshua Bell, agreed to play several
haunting and incredibly difficult pieces of music. Dressed incognito in a baseball cap with an open violin
case beside him, standing off to the side against a wall, he played his 300-year-old Stradivarius violin for
nearly 40 minutes, collecting thirty dollars in donations in the process. Predictions had been that hundreds
of people would stop to listen to the virtuoso, but the cameras recorded the sobering truth that of some
1,100 people passing by that morning, only seven stopped to listen.
Most of those who did stop, or tried to, were children who were captivated simply by the music itself. They
were most vulnerable to the actual presence of beauty for its own sake, when not framed by the attire of the
maestro in Alpert Hall with all the trappings of an “evening sold out” at $150 a ticket, which appeals to the
cultured, worldly, social ego. These children had no interest in all that. They were without guile. Noticing
the incongruity of this joyful music hidden quietly and unobtrusively in a corner of the Washington Metro
on an ordinary everyday run-of-the-mill workaday morning, the children actively struggled with their
hypnotized parents. They tried to turn them aside like Moses, to respond to the hidden fire that was setting
their hearts aflame without burning them.
Unresponsive, their parents would not permit them to take off their shoes on this profane ground. They
were not allowed, even for a few seconds, just to be still and listen. Held captive to the inertia of another
morning ritual en route to meeting the various obligations of a day which did not include the freedom to
notice and attend to “a new thing,” these parents were not vulnerable to being awakened to beauty by their
children’s as yet unsullied capacity to be touched by it. Not only did they miss being refreshed by this
gratuitous blessing, they forfeited the gift of seeing their children’s pure attention and guileless hearts,
calling them in a different direction, if only for a moment, where they might have received an unexpected
nourishment capable of transforming their whole day.
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Like Balaam, they did not notice the angel in front of them. Why could they not discern the difference
between their children’s disobedient tug and the miracle of their response to an angelic summons, stopping
them in their tracks, dissolving the hypnotic monotony of the familiar morning ritual? The parents did not
hear the music, or, if they did, they did not value it. What had happened to their hearts? They could not see
through their children’s eyes or hear through their children’s ears. They were not present. And they were
teaching their children to become like them, deaf, dumb, and blind to spontaneous personal encounter.
Gratefulness for the pristine newness of every moment is given to us like manna wherever there is presence
to receive it. Vulnerability to the felt awareness of one’s own being in relationship is an essential
ingredient. Standing before the great I AM, the Giver of life, all life becomes Eucharist that transforms the
quality of our impressions. What we receive in this way is raised to another level, just as bread and wine
become the Body and Blood of Christ, though remaining bread and wine. When we receive these elements
with discernment of the relationship that unites Heaven and Earth, they become nourishment for our being.
“Give us today our daily being bread” is a prayer to God that we may receive all the world and one another
as Eucharist, on a daily basis and become Eucharist ourselves for others.
The Prologue of the Gospel according to St John
declares that God the Logos, Whose life is the Light that
enlightens humankind, became flesh and dwelt among
us. Strangely, He came to His own in human form and
His own did not receive Him. But, those who did
received nourishment for their being that was not born
of this Earth or of flesh and blood or of emotional desire
and human will. The strange paradox of this opportunity
for δια-Λογος continues in our lives every day in the
midst of ordinary events. How do we cultivate within us
a capacity for vulnerability to have ears to hear and eyes to see Him Who is hidden in the midst of us in
and through the people, places, and events we encounter every day?
The students posed three questions to the group of invitees: “Where do we find beauty and meaning in our
lives?” “What beauty is going unnoticed or being ignored and why?” “How can we be more like the
children in the video and recognize and appreciate beauty more readily?” They were not thinking
Eucharist. As is often the case, beauty itself seemed enough to hope for. But, if, indeed, as Dostoyevsky
says, “Beauty will save the world,” it is because beauty arises only in the presence of love. Without love,
there is nothing beautiful. There is nothing valuable. There is nothing meaningful. God is revealed to us
as Love between the call and response of personal encounter. Yet, the monologue of egoism, like a certain
creature “more subtle than all the rest,” is always inviting us to prefer the gifts over the Giver, to seek to
own or merely name and know about the world, rather than to be vulnerable to God and each other through
relationship with it.
I am only because Thou art. To be an “I” without personal relationship with a “Thou” is merely to exist, to
be a thing, refusing to partake of the Bread of Heaven which alone renders us human. It is to have a heart of
stone, instead of a heart of flesh. Such egocentricity is the worst imaginable hell. We mark the passing of
our lives along the dusty road of linear time, which is chronos, all the while longing to eat from the Tree of
Eternal Life that originates from outside time and beyond the created order. This is kairos, where meaning
arises and transformation occurs. The created and uncreated world cross along the path of personal
encounter where we discover a third Presence Who awakens us from the determinism and inertia of
biological life. Lifting every moment up to be blessed and offered back as gift, we discover that the
smallest crumb has potential to nourish in such a way that “all are satisfied,” that still there is abundance
remaining.
We eat our daily bread to sustain biological life, but it is the uncreated encounters of faith in love coming
through the call and response of our life together in Christ that nourish our being unto eternal life. The
personal encounters and theological reflections in this volume, along with the study questions that follow
each section, are offered in celebration of Him Who, in surprising ways and unexpected circumstances,
becomes the precious and pure Gift our daily being bread, so that we may learn together the mystery of
becoming bread for others in return. I wish this for all who read this book.
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St. Nektarios of Aegina: Miracles are not impossible from a logical standpoint
“Miracles are not impossible from a logical
standpoint, and right reason does not deny them.
Natural laws do not have the claim to be the only
ones, nor are they threatened with being overturned
by the appearance of other laws, supernatural ones,
which also are conducive to the development and
furtherance of creation… Miracles are a consequence
of the Creator’s love for his creatures.”
— St. Nektarios of Aegina
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