MGOCSM and Sunday School Lenten Retreat and Confession Day - April 5th

A Lenten Retreat for MGOCSM and Sunday School has been scheduled for April 5th at church.  Teachers and students should all participate as per the schedule below.  Dn. Saju Varghese and Fr. Yohannan Panicker will be the leaders.

 

TIME	GROUP/EVENT
1:00 PM	Retreat MGOCSM and Sunday School (Grades 8 and above)
4:00 PM	Retreat Sunday School (Grades Pre-KG to 7)
5:30 PM	Holy Confession for all Charity Project (Grades Pre-KG to 7) Make hygiene kits for Orange County Rescue Mission
6:30 PM	Evening Prayer Lenten Message

Father of Jolly Varughese Passes Away in India

We are very saddened to inform you that the father of Mrs. Jolly Varughese (Culver City) has passed away in India early this morning.  Both Sodharan and Jolly were in India when her father passed.  Our prayers go out to Jolly Varughese and her family.  

The St. Thomas Orthodox Church gives our heart-felt condolences to the families.  Please keep them in your daily prayers as they pass through this difficult time.

Great Lent Prayer Meeting - Sat., March 15th @ 6:30pm

A prayer meeting has been scheduled at church this Saturday.  Evening Prayer will begin at 6:30pm and a devotional talk after.  Please make every effort to attend with your family.

If you wish to host a prayer meeting at your home or at the church, please contact Mr. Abraham Mathew, Prayer Coordinator.

Week 2 of Great Fast - Devotional & Scripture

Devotional based on abridged Homilies of St. John Chrysostom “On Fasting” – part 2

Click here to view PDF Version.

For there exist, there really exist, ways which are even more important than abstinence from food which can open the gates which lead to God with boldness. He, therefore, who eats and cannot fast, let him display richer almsgiving, let him pray more, let him have a more intense desire to hear divine words. In this, our somatic illness is not a hindrance.

Let him become reconciled with his enemies, let him distance from his soul every resentment. If he wants to accomplish these things, then he has done the true fast, which is what the Lord asks of us more than anything else. It is for this reason that he asks us to abstain from food, in order to place the flesh in subjection to the fulfillment of his commandments, whereby curbing its impetuousness.

But if we are not about to offer to ourselves the help rendered by the fast because of bodily illness and at the same time display greater indifference, we will see ourselves in an unusual exaggerated way. For if the fast does not help us when all the aforementioned accomplishments are missing so much is the case when we display greater indifference because we cannot even use the medicine of fasting.