Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ —
The Liturgical Propers at Palm Sunday: the Entrance of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ into Jerusalem.
A blessed end to the Great Forty day Fast — and a blessed and joyous Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, God and Saviour, Holy Pascha.
Pray for us.
— На українську мову з грецької переклав Професор Іван Огієнко
Professor Ivan Ohienko
His Eminence, Metropolitan DINOSISIY (Valedynsky), Metropolitan of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church
In the final print edition, however, a truly remarkable section was included — comprising almost as many pages as the Divine Liturgy itself — but densely packed with academic data: Prof. Ohienko’s own description of the methodology used in arriving at his translation, his source bibliography and explanatory notes — together with the following acknowledgement and open invitation:
Вірю і визнаю, що тільки спільною невсипущою працею ми зможемо дійти до авторитетного сталого літургічного тексту Богу на славу, Церкві Українській на користь. Хай в цій праці великій скромний труд мій стане добрим початком.
There is a direct connection between this work — this “good beginning” — and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada: among those Professor Ivan Ohienko thanks in the afterword, those who offered him support…
«в гірку годину безпритульного блукання мого поза межами Рідного Краю, в часи, коли більшість сил своїх доводиться віддавати на шукання хліба щоденного та чужого, холодного притулку»
…are the Dean of the Mohyla Institute in Saskatchewan, Yulian Stechyshyn, the “lawyer from Saskatoon” Mykhailo Stechyshyn, the Administrator of the Ukrainian Church in Canada, Fr. Semen Savchuk, Fr. Dmytro Stratiychuk, a “teacher from Meacham, SK” Vasyl’ Burianyk, academic Mykhailo Cherneiko; and “the Canadian Red Cross in the persons of” Yaroslaw Arsenych and Osyp Boyanivsky. That note of thanks was written in 1923. Thirty years later, many of these same people would be welcoming its author as the Metropolitan of their Church.
As he writes in an earlier paragraph, Prof. Ohienko does not consider his work unchangeable, permanent, definitive; indeed, in later years he departed considerably from some of the language and ideas he offers here. Instead, it is a starting point — a good starting point, to be sure — but:
We cannot think that we will arrive swiftly and easily at such an immutable text — for even the Church Slavonic text developed over whole centuries and was constantly changing.
The copy of the Служебник-Часослов from which the scanned images were taken belonged to the late Fr. Volodymyr Sluzar (many thanks to his son, Dr. Roman Sluzar), and the pages (particularly those of the Divine Liturgy) were already fragile, crumbling, worn from use, and heavily marked in places with Fr. Volodymyr’s own notes. The font used presents problems when it comes to taking advantage of Optical Character Recognition software — in order to compensate for the lack of live text, the image-based pdfs have been kept at medium to high resolution — a compromise between legibility and file size.
Христос Воскрес!
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ —
A refresh of several of the brochures first published by the Office of Missions and Education of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada under the Directorship of Fr. Andrew Jarmus, between 2002-2003. These remain relevant to our worshipers and visitors — and are still widely distributed in our parishes, but often now as third or fourth generation photocopies. The original brochures featured photographic images on the front panels — but we’ve opted to use black-and-white graphic elements only, which, don’t exhaust coloured ink on printers — and may hold up better to subsequent photocopying.
The front panel now also features a window for entering in up to seven lines of parish contact information.
Pray for us.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ —
One of the challenges familiar to those who serve at the Altar is the steady stream of списки — the lists of the living and the dead — that flow from the faithful to the Table of Oblation behind the ikonostasis. For each name contained on those lists, the priest takes a particle from the prosphora at the Proskomedia — the Liturgy of Preparation — which usually begins one or two hours before the Divine Liturgy. At the Divine Liturgy, he offers prayers for them by name — for the Health, the Salvation; for the Repose of the Souls of these servants of God, before God’s own table. Not all of these lists arrive in ideal condition. From time to time, they are written on the back of whatever envelope, bulletin, newsletter or scrap piece of salvageable paper is at hand; and the names are not always legibly rendered.
Another difficulty is that often, very little distinguishes a list that holds the names of the living from one that bears the names of those no longer living. A person gets twenty names deep, and only then realizes that they’re writing on the wrong list — to much consternation and crossing out of names or titles — and when these arrive (perhaps later than ideally they ought), the decryption of those hieroglyphics becomes an uncertain thing.
To help with this, here are four pdf file forms for списки.
Each pdf is designed taking into account the leading edge of the page that most consumer printers use in order to feed the paper through the print drum (this is why printers don’t print edge-to-edge). Though the columns will appear unevenly spaced on your screen, the documents should print (without scaling) for cropping into three symmetrical pieces. These paper-feed figures vary from machine to machine, but it’s hoped that the layout used will account for a good percentage of the printers in parishes and households. Please test and adjust as needed.
The pdfs are form-fillable, so that names can be entered, forms printed and prepared in advance, at home. In addition to the names themselves, at the bottom of every column is a small space for a Family Name or the Date.
Pray for us — and in particular, for the health, safety and enlightenment of those who are embarking on the pilgrimage to Greece and Constantinople in two days’ time.
Christ is Risen!
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
In preparation for the upcoming pilgrimage to Greece and Constantinople — a downloadable interactive pdf file with the Commemorations, Hymns, Reflections, Contemplations, Homilies and Readings of the Day — for each of the 15 days of the pilgrims’ journey. An appendix contains brief excerpts from the lives of the saints commemorated according to the “new style” calendar — the calendar in use in many of the places where the pilgrims will worship.
Designed for smartphones, the pdf contains embedded links for easy internal navigation — which does not require the phone to be connected to the web. However, in some cases, in order to access and store the pdf directly to one’s smartphone, a third-party app like Adobe Acrobat Reader, available through the App Store, Google Play, Amazon App Store, etc. will be necessary.
The readings include the changeable portions from the Divine Liturgy for the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which pilgrims are due to celebrate on the Cycladic island of Andros.
God speed you on your way — and back again!
Pray for us.
Christ is Risen!
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ —
In preparation for May’s pilgrimage to the Greek islands of Andros, Tinos and Paros — and Constantinople, an article centered around miracles associated with the Παναγία ή Μυροβλύτισσα — the Myrrhstreaming icon of the Most-Holy Virgin Theotokos and the Holy Patriarchal Monastery of St. Nicholas on the island of Andros.
Dear brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ —
Pascha is almost upon us! And in the last weeks of the long period of preparation (though it seems to grow shorter and shorter with each passing year) that is the Great Fast, the next Cantoring Skills Workshop offers us useful instruction in some of the most profound and moving services of the liturgical year.
Forgive us! Join us! Pray for us!
2:00 PM
3:15PM
3:30 PM
4:45 PM
5:00 PM
Download the complete* Lesson 6.2 Workshop Materials Binder.
Or, if you prefer, you can download the materials as individual files (Ukrainian and English are paired in each pdf):
*Please note that items marked with an asterisk will either be sent by e-mail on Thursday or brought by Father for distribution at the workshop on Saturday.
Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Demetrius
3338 Lakeshore Blvd. West
Etobicoke, ON
M8W 1M9
Слухай, небо, і промовлю —
і в піснях прославлю Христа,
Що від Діви тілом прийшов.Attend, O heaven, and I shall speak
— and sing in praise of Christ,
who took flesh from a Virgin
and came to dwell among us.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ —
Formatted, with a reasonably large font, for easy printing on 8.5″ x 11″ (Letter size) paper — the changeable portions of Mattins for Thursday of the Fifth Week of the Great Fast in parallel Ukrainian and English texts:
Orthros begins on Wednesday evening, around the 4th hour of night (i.e. 10pm — but in many places it is the custom to start earlier) — in the usual manner, as given on pp. 126-127 of the Good Shepherd prayer book (2nd edition, 2013):
After The Great Litany (pp. 150-151), “God is the Lord” is not sung. From this point, the service is guided by the order reflected in the file.
For simplicity’s sake, the music for the Refrains of the Great Canon has been added only once in the files below — following the Irmos of the First Ode.
Orthros is also governed by the weekly cycle of 8 Tones, and not only the melodies, but also some of the verses we sing — change. In the attached file:
…the tone of the fifth week of Great Lent in 2015.
With joy of the Fast!
Pray for us.
The Holy Sacrament of Baptism — from the Euchologion | Trebnyk | Book of Needs of St. Petro Mohyla. Kyiv, 1646.
2:00 PM
3:00PM
Break
3:15 PM
4:45 PM
5:00 PM
Vespers in Church
In addition, if participants are able to bring a Требник ∞ Book of Needs with the complete text of the Wedding and Baptismal Services this would be very useful. If you do not have one see if you can borrow one from your parish for the day. I will have a limited number of Ukrainian texts available.
The Holy Sacrament of Marriage — from the Euchologion | Trebnyk | Book of Needs of St. Petro Mohyla. Kyiv, 1646.
3338 Lakeshore Blvd. West
Etobicoke, ON
M8W 1M9
Click this link for a Detailed Pilgrimage Itinerary.
Holy Islands and Holy Wisdom: a Pilgrimage to Holy Places in Greece and Constantinople
