A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Holy Cross Yakima Iconography Project

Five years ago our parish began communicating with an iconographer and his wife in Belgrade, Serbia, UGLJESA and ZVEZDANA MILETA. I had seen their iconography in pictures brought back by one of our parishioners from a beautiful Serbian church in Butte, Montana. The Church had been adorned by Ugljesa and other associates from Belgrade. I am not a byzantine icon expert, but I could tell from what little knowledge I had that these people have a love for the Tradition of the Church... that they were intent on following the Apostolic command, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught...”. Our correspondence and perseverance with the visa process finally resulted in their arrival in Yakima and the beginning of this great effort during Bright Week of 2012.

Twenty-five years ago now our small parish was received by His Eminence Metropolitan PHILIP into the communion of the Antiochian Orthodox Church. This meant that we had entered the historic Apostolic Church in the very place that believers had first been called “Christians” almost 2000 years ago.

One does not enter the Orthodox Church and according to our preferences attempt to shape and form its ethos, its cultural predisposition, primarily the “way things are done”, handed down by the Apostles themselves. We must be shaped and formed by the ethos of the Church; its sights, sounds, smells, actions, auditory features and etiquette... its ways. We no more adapt the theology of the Church to our way of thinking than we design the ethos of the Church to fit our aesthetic predispositions. The theology of the Church is an Apostolic gift just as the sound and content of ecclesiastical hymnody was revealed to the Church from the Old Testament through the New Testament and throughout the ages of the Church by many heavenly and miraculous visitations. These visitations have revealed the ethos, the heavenly content and sound of our hymnody. This way of doing Church hymnody is part of the transforming power of holding to, “...the traditions which ye have been taught...” and allowing them to transform our preferences and predispositions. Iconography is like that as well. We do not shape and form it according to our own image. Rather, we are shaped and formed by the grace of God flowing from this iconographic tradition. This is the ethos of the Church in shapes and colors that bends our attention toward seeking “...first the kingdom of God and His righteousness...”.

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So, thank God, we have found some humble and masterful iconographers who desire with their hearts to adorn our temple with iconography that is faithful to the sacred traditions handed down to us. May this work reveal the very Glory of God in His Saints. May it be filled with Divine Energy, the Uncreated Light, the very Power of God that flowed from His humanity, even His clothes, to heal the sick and raise the dead. May this Light penetrate us who stand together in His Holy Temple in worship, “...who love the beauty of Thy house”.

This project has been and will continue to be financially costly. You may help with a monetary gift large or small. All will be welcome to help in this effort. For your convenience we have provided a link to PayPal to expedite your gift. May God bless it!

Fr. Joseph Copeland
Afterfeast of the Dormition
Aug. 17, 2012


SA

 

People Directory

Larry Vuckovich

Larry Vuckovich was born in Kotor, Montenegro (Former Yugoslavia). He came to San Francisco in 1951 and was immediately exposed to a flourishing jazz scene. After receiving a classical training he became a frequent guest at music clubs like the Blackhawk where he met Vince Guaraldi. Mr. Vuckovich studied jazz piano as Guaraldi's only piano student. At the same time he enrolled in music studies at San Francisco State University, where John Handy was a major influence on the school's jazz program.

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Publishing

Christ - The Alpha and Omega

The Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America is pleased to announce the publication of an outstanding book by Bishop Athanasius Yevtich, a disciple of the great twentieth-century theologian Archimandrite Justin Popovich. Bishop Athanasius' thought combines adherence to the teachings of the Church Fathers with a vibrant faith and a profound experience of Christ in the Church.

Christ - The Alpha and Omega is the first of a planned collection of works of contemporary Serbian theologians. It is an anthology of Bishop Athanasius' articles which have appeared in Serbian, Greek, French, English and Russian. Focusing on themes central to Christian patristic Triadology, Ecclesiology and Anthropology, the book reveals the ultimate purpose of man and the universe, and speaks of how each of us can realize this purpose within the divine-human community of the Orthodox Church. Bishop Athanasius reminds us that the God-man Jesus Christ is the Beginning and the End of all things, and that we must seek our own end, goal, and fulfillment in Him.

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