Feasts and Commemorations for this Week Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church

Address: 6134 Black Bill Rd., Flagstaff, AZ 86004 Mailing Address: PO Box 2164, Flagstaff, AZ 86003 Phone: (928) 225-3814 Web: www.holycrossflagstaff.org Wine/Oil Allowed Fish Allowed Strict Fast Cheese / Dairy Allowed Email: [email protected] Very Reverend Father Earl J. Cantos

Phone: (928) 225-3814 Prayer List: Services Schedule: Please keep the following intentions in your prayers this week: Orthros 9:00 AM Divine Liturgy 10 AM  For Cody Burkett, for healing. Church School 9:15 AM  For Subdeacon , who is recovering from an extended illness  For those suffering around the world with corona virus  For those in Tennessee who lost their family, homes and lives in Bulletin for Sunday, March 8, 2020 recent tornadoes. Sunday of Orthodoxy

Services / Save the Dates! Hymns of The Day 3/14 Orthodoxy 101 3:30pm, “Confession and Penance: More Important Resurrectional Apolytikion in the Plagal First Mode Than You Think” Vespers 5pm Confessions Let us worship the Word who is unoriginate * with the Father and the Spirit, and 3/15 Orthros 9:00am, Church School 9:15am, Divine Liturgy 10:00am from a was born * for our salvation, O believers, and let us sing His 3/21 Orthodoxy 101 3:30pm, “Eucharist: Law of : Blood Brothers and praise. * For in His goodness He was pleased * to ascend the Cross in the Sisters” Vespers 5pm Confessions flesh, and to undergo death, * and to raise up those who had died, * by His 3/22 Orthros 9:00am, Church School 9:15am, Divine Liturgy 10:00am glorious Resurrection. 3/25 Feast of the Annunciation—No Services Apolytikion for Sunday of Orthodoxy in the Second Mode 3/28 Lenten Retreat—Constantine Zalalas 9:00am to 5:00pm Vespers 5pm Confessions We venerate Your immaculate icon, O good Lord, and entreat You to forgive our offences, O Christ our God. By Your own choice you were pleased to 3/29 Orthros 9:00am, Church School 9:15am, Divine Liturgy 10:00am ascend the Cross in the flesh, to deliver us, whom You created, from our Parish Memorial Service slavery to the foe. Therefore we cry to You with gratitude: You have filled all 4/4 Orthodoxy 101 3:30pm, “Spiritual Health in Keeping Death Before things with joy, O our Savior, by coming to save the world. You” Vespers 5pm Confessions 4/5 Orthros 9:00am, Church School 9:15am, Divine Liturgy 10:00am Holy Cross Church Apolytikion in the First Mode Save, O Lord Your people, and bless Your inheritance; grant victory to the faithful against the adversaries of the Faith, and protect Your people by the

power of Your Cross. Refer to e-mailed Parish Updates and website for additional events and details. Seasonal Kontakion in the Plagal Fourth Mode O Champion General, I your City now inscribe to you Triumphant anthems as the tokens of my gratitude, Being rescued from the terrors, O . Inasmuch as you have power unassailable, From all kinds of perils free me, so that unto you I may cry aloud: Rejoice, O unwedded Bride. Epistle Reading and Feasts Commemorated

Prokeimenon. Fourth Mode. 3.26,27. Sunday of Orthodoxy Blessed are you, O Lord, the God of our fathers. For more than one hundred years the Church of Christ was Verse: For you are just in all you have done. troubled by the persecution of the Iconoclasts of evil belief, beginning in the reign of Leo the Isaurian (717-741) and ending The reading is from St. Paul's Letter to the Hebrews 11:24-26, in the reign of Theophilus (829-842). After Theophilus's death, 32-40 his widow the Empress Theodora (celebrated Feb. 11), together with the Methodius (June 14), established Brethren, by faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son Orthodoxy anew. This ever-memorable Queen venerated the of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of icon of the Mother of God in the presence of the Patriarch God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. Methodius and the other confessors and righteous men, and And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, openly cried out these holy words: "If anyone does not offer relative worship to the holy icons, not adoring them as though Samson, Jephthah, of and and the prophets -- who through faith they were gods, but venerating them out of love as images of the archetype, let him conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths be anathema." Then with common prayer and fasting during the whole first week of of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength the Forty-day Fast, she asked God's forgiveness for her husband. After this, on the out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign enemies to flight. Women first Sunday of the Fast, she and her son, the Emperor, made a procession received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept with all the clergy and people and restored the holy icons, and again adorned the release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and Church of Christ with them. This is the holy deed that all we the Orthodox scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were commemorate today, and we call this radiant and venerable day the Sunday of sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep Orthodoxy, that is, the triumph of true doctrine over heresy. and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated -- of whom the world was not worthy -- wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. Theophylact the Confessor, Bishop of Nicomedia And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was Theophylact was from the East; his native city is unknown. In Constantinople he became a close friend of Tarsius, who promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us afterwards became Patriarch of Constantinople (see Feb. they should not be made perfect. 25).Theophylact was made Bishop of Nicomedia. After the

death of Tarsius, his successor Nicephorus (see June 2) called together a number of Bishops to help him in fighting the Gospel Reading iconoclasm of Emperor Leo the Armenian, who reigned from 813-820. Among them was Euthymius, Bishop of Sardis Sunday of Orthodoxy (celebrated Dec. 26), who had attended the holy Seventh The Reading is from John 1:43-51 Ecumenical Council in 787 - he was exiled three times for the sake of the holy icons, and for defying the Emperor At that time, Jesus decided to go to Galilee. And he found Philip and said to Theophilus' command to renounce the veneration of the icons, him, "Follow me." Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and was scourged from head to foot until his whole body was one great wound, from Peter. Philip found Nathanael, and he said to him, "We have found him of which he died eight days later, about the year 830; of Thessalonica (see July whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the 14); Michael of Synnada (see May 23); Emilian, Bishop of Cyzicus (see Aug. 8); and son of Joseph." Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Saint Theophylact, who boldly rebuked Leo to his face, telling him that because he despised the long-suffering of God, utter destruction was about to overtake him, and Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." Jesus saw Nathanael coming there would be none to deliver him. For this, Theophylact was exiled to the fortress of to him, and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" Strobilus in Karia of Asia Minor, where, after 30 years of imprisonment and hardship, Nathanael said to him, "How do you know me?" Jesus answered him, "Before he gave up his holy soul about the year 845. Leo the Armenian, according to the Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathanael Saint's prophecy, was slain in church on the eve of our Lord's Nativity, in 820. answered him, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" Jesus answered him, "Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree, do Hermas the Apostle of the 70 you believe? You shall see greater things than these." And he said to him, Paul the Confessor "Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." Dometios the Righteous Felix of Burgundy, Enlightener of East Anglia