The Fifth  Sunday of Lent: The Commemoration of Saint Mary of Egypt

Schedule of Services :

Wednesday, 5:30 p.m.: The Presanctified Liturgy

Friday, 5:30 p.m.: Compline and Akathist Hymn

Saturday, Great Vespers, 5:30 pm

Sunday: 9:00 a.m., Matins [Orthros, Morning Prayer];
10:00 am: The Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great

Sunday, April 6, 11:30 a.m.

Icons to be Dedicated at Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Boone

Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Boone cordially invites all members of the High Country community to attend the dedication of a special set of icons, or religious paintings, on Sunday, April 6.

Icons, a central part of the devotional as well as artistic tradition of the Eastern Christian Churches (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches), are often known as “Windows into Heaven.” Icons portray religious persons such as Jesus, His mother, saints, or Biblical scenes to instruct and edify the faithful, as well as to signify the incarnation of the Divine into the material world in the person of Christ.

A specially donated set of icons painted by noted iconographer Gloria Lenakos Gaffney will be dedicated at Saints Peter and Paul Church after the 10 o’clock Sunday Morning Divine Liturgy service on April 6 (the dedication of the icons will begin at about 11:30 a.m. that day).

The icons were donated to the church by the artist and by an anonymous donor.

The Church is located at 707-7 Highway 105 Bypass, Boone, across from the West View Baptist Church.

 (see more, below)

RESURRECTIONAL APOLYTIKION IN TONE EIGHT

From the heights Thou didst descend, O compassionate One, and Thou didst submit to the three-day burial, that Thou might deliver us from passion; Thou art our life and our Resurrection, O Lord, glory to Thee.
What it looks like. What it sounds like.

APOLYTIKION OF ST. MARY OF EGYPT IN TONE EIGHT
Through thee, the divine likeness was securely preserved, O mother Mary; for thou didst carry the cross and follow Christ. By example and precept thou didst teach us to ignore the body, because it is perishable, and to attend to the concerns of the undying soul. Therefore, doth thy soul rejoice with the angels.

Kontakion: Fourth Tone

Having escaped the gloom of sin, O blest Mary, and shining brightly with the light of repentance, thou didst present thy heart to Christ, O glorious one, bringing Him His Holy and all-immaculate Mother as a greatly merciful and most bold intercessor. Hence, thou hast found the pardon of thy sins and with the Angles rejoicest for evermore.

THE EPISTLE
Make your vows to the Lord our God, and perform them.
God is known in Judah; His Name is great in Israel.
The Reading from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews. (9:11-14)
Brethren, when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

THE GOSPEL
The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (10:32-45)
At that time, Jesus took His twelve Disciples, and began to tell them what was to happen to Him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles. And they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and after three days He will rise.” And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Him, and said to Him, “Teacher, we would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we shall desire” And Jesus said to them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And they said to Him, “Grant us to sit, one at Thy right hand and one at Thy left, in Thy glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to Him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit at My right hand or at My left is not Mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John. And Jesus called them to Him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be servant of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

Saint Mary of Egypt, with Scenes from Her Life

Lenten Synaxarion

Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt

The spirit departed, the flesh was left untended long ago;
hide, O Earth, the mortal bones of Mary.On this day, the fifth Sunday of the Fast, we have been enjoined to make commemoration of our righteous Mother Mary of Egypt.

She, while yet twelve years of age, came to Alexandria unbeknownst to her parents, and there lived a profligate life for seventeen years. Afterwards, being moved by curiosity, she departed with many other worshipers for Jerusalem, in order to be present for the Exaltation of the Precious Cross. There, she gave herself over to every form of licentiousness and impropriety, and dragged many others down to the depths of destruction. On the day in which the Cross was exalted, she, when she desired to enter the church, felt some invisible power preventing her from passing through the entrance, though she tried a third and even a fourth time, and though the multitude that was with her passed through the same entrance unhindered. Because her heart was wounded by this, she decided to change her life, and to propitiate God through repentance. And thus when she returned to the church, she entered easily therein. After venerating the Precious Cross, that very day she withdrew from Jerusalem, passed over the Jordan, entered the inner regions of the desert, and there she lived the hardest life, a super-human life, for forty-seven years, praying alone to God alone.

Concerning the end of her life: After meeting a certain monastic, Zosimas by name, and fully recounting to him her life from the beginning, she begged him to bring to her the spotless mysteries for Communion. And he did this very thing the following year, on Holy Thursday. The year after that Zosimas, coming once again, found her dead, stretched out upon the earth; and beside her was written the following: “Abba Zosimas, bury here the body of wretched Mary. I departed in death the very day in which I communed of the spotless mysteries. Pray for me.” Her death took place in the year 378.

The memory of this righteous woman is celebrated on the first of every April; but the same is also appointed for today, since the end of the sacred forty-day fast now draws near, in order to rouse the slothful and the sinners unto repentance, since they have an example in her, the Saint who is being celebrated.

Through her intercessions, O God,
have mercy on us and save us.
Amen.

Translated from Greek Triodion by Dn. C. Paul Schroeder.

Texts from goarch.org and antiochian.org (except “Lenten Synaxarion” selection, above); Icon from pravicon.com and full-of-grace-and-truth.blogspot.com)