Or, to put it the other way round, if you want to tell people what God
has done, tell them what Jesus has done. The best brains in two
thousand years of Christianity have struggled to find adequate words
to explain how this can be; but it is a truth known to many, at a level
too deep for mere theory, from the moment they discover God's
saving power in the person and work of Jesus.”
Saint Paul
Orthodox Cathedral
Rector: Rev. Fr. Robert J. Royer
Email-robertjroyer@gmail.com
(810) 919-9485
Website: stpaulorthodoxcathedral.org
V. Rev. Fr. Frank Timpko, Attached
Rev. Dn. Basil Frenchek (734) 637-3970
Bishop N.T. Wright, Luke for Everyone pages 101-102.
Sunday -- Tone 4
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Our fall fundraiser: A Celebration of a New Beginning will
be celebrated today following the Divine Liturgy.
There will be a General Membership Meeting of the parish
on Sunday, November 16, following the Divine Liturgy. All
members of the parish are encouraged to attend.
Next Sunday, November 9, we will be continuing adult
education. We are studying the liturgy of the Church. The
liturgy of the Church is the best teacher and we need to
learn to listen and understand what it is teaching us!!!
On Saturday, November 8, we will be starting our once a month
parish Faith Encounter Day whereat we will celebrate Vigil, have
some light Education, and followed by Confession (for those
who are interested) in the afternoon.
UPCOMING SERVICES
Liturgy on Wednesday, 11/5, 10:00 A.M.
Parish Faith Encounter Day: 11/8, 4:00 P.M.
Liturgy on Sunday, 11/9, 10:00 A.M.
21st Sunday of Pentecost
“People should listen to the priest and the deacon and the
reader. They should sing ‘with their whole soul and their whole
mind.’ They should watch the rites of the Divine Service. In a
word, they should bathe themselves in the Liturgy…”
-Fr. Paul Harrilchak, Holy Trinity Church, Weston, VA
“The whole assembly of God’s people must, to the best of their
ability, participate in the sacrament of redemption with full
understanding and true feeling and realize they are a royal
priesthood bringing spiritual offerings.
The people standing in the church are not passive attenders but
are co-celebrants with the officiating priest or bishop, and they
must be able to follow the course of the Liturgy and participate in
its prayers. Only in this way can the Liturgy be real liturgy—
common worship—and the Church an ekklesia—the people of
God assembled for the Eucharist.”
-Archbishop Paul of Finland, This Faith We Hold
Today we will celebrate the Divine Liturgy of
St. John Chrysostom
Epistle – Galations 2:16-20
Brethren, knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law but
through faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in
order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law,
because by works of the law shall no one be justified. But if, in our
endeavor to be justified in Christ, we ourselves were found to be
sinners, is Christ then an agent of sin? Certainly not! But if I build up
again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a
transgressor. For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to
God. I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith
in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Gospel – Luke 8:26-39
At that time, they arrived at the country of the Ger'asenes, which is
opposite Galilee. And as he stepped out on land, there met him a man
from the city who had demons; for a long time he had worn no clothes,
and he lived not in a house but among the tombs. When he saw Jesus,
he cried out and fell down before him, and said with a loud voice,
"What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I
beseech you, do not torment me." For he had commanded the unclean
spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him; he
was kept under guard, and bound with chains and fetters, but he broke
the bonds and was driven by the demon into the desert.) Jesus then
asked him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion"; for many
demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them
to depart into the abyss. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there
on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So he
gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered
the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and
were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they
fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to
see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man
from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed
and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it
told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed.
Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Ger'asenes
asked him to depart from them; for they were seized with great fear; so
he got into the boat and returned. The man from whom the demons
had gone begged that he might be with him; but he sent him away,
saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done
for you." And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how
much Jesus had done for him.
Christ exorcises Legion from the Demoniac(s).
“For Luke, what has happened to this man isn't just a remarkable
healing; it is 'salvation' (verse 36). The salvation which God promised long
ago, which has appeared in Jesus, and which has already reached many in
Israel, is now starting to spread further afield.
But the real point of the story comes at the close. The man, quite
understandably, wants to be allowed to stay with Jesus. Not only is
he now bonded to him by the astonishing rescue he has experienced; he may
well assume that things would not be easy back in his home territory, where
everyone knew the tragic tale of his recent life.
There might be considerable reluctance to accept him again as a
member of a family or a village. He would have to stand up and take
responsibility for himself; he couldn't rely on being able, as it were, to hide
behind Jesus. He is one of those to whom Jesus does not say
'follow me' in any literal sense; he is one of those (the majority we
may suppose) to whom he said 'go home and tell them'. Having
experienced the good news in action, he must now tell it himself.
Luke reserves the real point for the last words - in Greek, the last
word of the story. 'Go home,' says Jesus, 'and tell them what God has
done for you.' And the man goes off and tells everyone what Jesus has done
for him. Luke is not offering us, or not yet, any formula, or carefully
worked-out doctrine, of how 'God was in Christ'. At the moment it is simply
something people discover in their experience: what Jesus does, God
does.