Are You Listening?

Saint John of Rila, pray for us! This is the famous Rila Monastery in Bulgaria. “Let the little children come to me, and do not forbid them, for to such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Mark 10:14 A Ministry of the Sunday, October 16, 2016 Volume 4, Issue 42 Orthodox Christian Network Are you listening? How many times has somebody—a teacher, your mother or father, or even a friend— told you to LISTEN? Sometimes we DO hear something, but that doesn’t mean we are really listening! In today’s Gospel reading, we hear a story about somebody who goes out to the field to plant seeds. Some seeds never sprout at all. Some seeds sprout at first and then die. But some seeds fall onto good dirt, and they do sprout. They grow and grow and give a good crop. The story shows how the Word of God is like seeds. This story shows how we should hear God’s teach- ings. The Gospel explains that the seeds that are in the good dirt are the ones who, “hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart.” They hold onto it, because the word of God is something precious! S0 it’s easy to hear the word, but we also have to listen . That means in church, or in church school, or when we read our Bibles, or when our par- ents tell us about Jesus Christ, we listen . We try to take these words about God and put them into our hearts. We try to live the words, and not just The Children’s Word is a weekly bulletin for Orthodox Christian young people. Copyright 2016 Alexandra Houck. hear Email is orthodoxchildrensword (at) gmail.com. Find it each week at myocn.net. them. We hold them fast in an honest and good heart. WORD SEARCH BULGARIA’S FAVORITE SAINT I F A J M V N Y O R D N E V A SAINT JOHN OF RILA Can you find V A T I H B M C A T D I M E O Do you have a favorite saint? A holy these words in A E G Q R H E R O E S K J H K person who loves God very much? Maybe you the jumble? A L A K S A E D P B Z O H R H G G I O B L G V W W U O C Z A pray to him or her more than to any other. Well, the people of the country of Bulgaria have a fa- BULGARIA E R W R B D Z L M C N N I V K HEROES N E K A C I E O U P L S K I L vorite saint. They name their churches after him, JOHN R R R P W N N A U B I T N R R they put his icon on their money, they pray to LISTEN S A P O R A Q Z L D S R I A C him because he was one of them! MONASTERY P T J E S A H O H H T E T V M PARABLE V W X T F S Y B Z J E E O J W Saint John of Rila was once a simple cowherd, B C E V W F F E U L N T T N O PRAYER who lived near what is now Sofia, Bulgaria. John F R D O G F O D R O W C S Z T RILA loved God so much that he wanted to find a way Y N H O J O N N W B O A W P U SOWER to grow closer and closer to Him. So he moved to the Rila mountains, U Y F U U M O C U V P R Y W G WORD OF GOD to the wilderness. He wanted to live all alone so he could pray and fast and love God’s beautiful world. That was Saint John’s plan, but people began to find out about this holy man, and they wanted to be close to him too! Soon, more and more people would visit him, asking What’s in the icon? for his prayers and his advice. Once, even King Peter of Bulgaria came to see him. John was so hum- An icon on a coin! ble though, that he refused to meet the king. Instead, they bowed to each other from far away. He gave away most of the gifts the king Here is an icon of Saint John of Rila on gave him, and he told the king that he needed it more—so the king the Bulgarian coin (1 lev). It is worth could help the poor. about 50 cents. For many years, the people of Bulgaria had a hard time as Christians. You can see that Bulgaria really loves But they have always loved Saint John and many people still pray to Saint John! him as one of their real heroes! We celebrate the nameday of St. John on Wednesday, October 19th. .

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