Our oldest parishioner, Anna Ardito, 99, has fallen asleep on Wednesday, March 28. May she rest in peace and rise in glory with our Lord Jesus Christ. Please remember her in your prayers. Visitation - Monday, April 2, 9:30-10:30am at Bizub-Parker Funeral Home, 47 Main St, Little Falls, NJ 07424.
Funeral - Monday, April 2, 11:00am at our church. Fourth Sunday of Great Lent on Mark 9:17-31 I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief!
What a cry of inner struggle! This phrase has always befuddled me. I believe…yet, help my unbelief. Was the man who exclaimed this confused or was he contradicting himself? Today is St Patrick's day (as you may have noticed). The emphasis is on SAINT, as in he was a great Christian man and a missionary who enlightened Ireland. The emphasis is NOT, however, on whiskey, Guinness beer, rowdy behavior, green colors, and other nonsense. Below we offer for your edification some links about St Patrick so that you can celebrate his memory as he would have preferred, that is, in prayer and glorification of Christ for giving us this great saint. You can read his life (a sort of biography) here.
St Patrick penned a beautiful prayer that can be said in the morning (or any other part of the day). Say this prayer today in celebration of St Patrick's day.The prayer is here. Another article on "Is St Patrick an Orthodox Saint?" Last, but not least: St Patrick's autobiography, "Confession." Third Sunday of Great Lent: Veneration of the Cross Three weeks now, three weeks we have been on our Lenten journey. I do not know about you, but for me these were very fast three weeks. And now we have reached the midpoint, the middle of Lent.
The Church, in its infinite wisdom, reminds us, half-way through our journey, what is the point, what is the final destination of not only Lent, but the final destination of our whole life. Original source: Mary Eberstadt, "The Weight of Smut" in First Things [This article may be from 2010, but this only means that the issues discussed here are magnified by now - Father Aleksey.] As the impressively depressing cover story “America the Obese” in the May 2010 issue of The Atlantic serves to remind us all, the weight-gain epidemic in the United States and the rest of the West is indeed widespread, deleterious, and unhealthy—which is why it is so frequently remarked on, and an object of such universal public concern. But while we’re on the subject of bad habits that can turn unwitting kids into unhappy adults, how about that other epidemic out there that is far more likely to make their future lives miserable than carrying those extra pounds ever will? That would be the emerging social phenomenon of what can appropriately be called “sexual obesity”: the widespread gorging on pornographic imagery that is also deleterious and unhealthy, though far less remarked on than that other epidemic—and nowhere near an object of universal public concern. That complacency may now be changing. The term sexual obesity comes from Mary Ann Layden, a psychiatrist who runs the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She sees the victims of Internet-pornography consumption in her practice, day in and day out. She also knows what most do not: Quietly, patiently, and irrefutably, an empirical record of the harms of sexual obesity is being assembled piecemeal via the combined efforts of psychologists, sociologists, addiction specialists, psychiatrists, and other authorities.
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