Great Lent - The Bad Beginning!

All during the first week of Great Lent, there were services every night and I didn't make a one of them.

I did manage, however, to attend Divine Liturgy on Saturday morning. There was a commemoration for St. Raphael of Brooklyn and another Saint, whom I cannot now remember. As for the latter saint, the story was told that some Emperor wanted all the Christians to eat food sacrificed to idols in order to ruin the fast and God did some miracle. So after Liturgy we all ate some really good wheat mixture which was mixed with fruit and very delicious.

Two things about the Liturgy. I really appreciated that Jack, or rather Reader Innocent, since he was clad in a black robe, made sure he gave me some of the bread of fellowship after he himself received communion. (What is that bread called again, the non-consecrated bread that is eaten after the Precious Body and Blood?) As he handed it to me, he called me by my baptismal name, James instead of the more informal Jim. which I most normally go by. It really was a nice way of including me as far as they could in fellowship.

Also, after the Liturgy when Tammy was handing out the wheat mixture and I mentioned I had to scoot out of there, she said, "We'll see you the next time you are here." This she said with her cheery smile. Now, I had been to Sunday Morning Liturgies twice but hadn't been able to return for various reasons and Tammy did not try to guilt me into going but rather left everything on a positive note. (In some of the pentacostal churches I went in the past, guilt was the way things were done!)

I do hope to return on Sunday mornings but some family things keep me at my protestant church on Sundays.

Prayers, brothers and sisters, prayers please!