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

Oakland 90th Anniversary Greeting 2016

Greeting from His Grace Bishop Maxim of Los Angeles and Western America

Oakland 90th Anniversary Greeting 2016

Dear Brothers and Sisters, our beloved Children in the Lord,

This anniversary in Oakland coincides with the recent canonization of Archimandrite Sebastian (Dabovich) of San Francisco and Jackson, clergyman and preacher of the Gospel who inspired many missionaries. Once again, through the life of this Saint, we see a faith that produces holy persons, enriches the world with saints and insists on an ethos of holiness. 

Living in the Bay area, you might better understand how the life of the Church has the depth and breadth of the open ocean, such that great swells do not make the waters turbid, but release the “ozone” of health and courage which strengthens man in his struggle. When you live in the world that they have shaped and partake in the universal concelebration of heaven and earth which is celebrated in the Orthodox Church, you pulse with a vibration that reveals to you things unseen.

Many times Orthodox immigrants have gone to other countries and not lost our faith and our character, but have often rediscovered and lived them better. Our Orthodox manners and customs are liturgical, and our upbringing, ethos, and education are those of the Church. The axis of our tradition and our life is the God-man. The whole parish is one family, one Church. Its feast and festivals, the feasts of the Church. And the church feasts are the days for its holidays, festivities and songs. The folk songs, their words and their music, are related to the music (and the ethos) of the Church. 

In most cases, Church life in this part of the Serbian Church during the Great Depression survived, its organization preserved at both the diocesan and congregational level. There was even the case of Akron where people, though suffering hardship and destitution during the Depression, through the efforts of their priest Milan Popovic, built a new church dedicated to St. Demetrius. During this period of adversity our people united around their Church, which had also become impoverished, since it was the only place they could turn to and share what little they had in those sad times.

May this Jubilee which we commemorate in Oakland as well as the Commemorative Book marking the ninetieth anniversary of the establishment of the Serbian Orthodox Parish of Saint George, remind us all of the zeal of our ancestors and guide us to the sacred goal of unity in Christ and His Orthodox Church.

 


SA

 

People Directory

Borko D. Jovanovic

Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine (Biostatistics)

Description of Interests

I am a consulting biostatistician, with focus on experimental design and analysis of data in clinical trials, basic science and in epidemiology. Some of my other interests included model selection, prediction models, gene arrays and history of mathematics.

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Publishing

Theological Disambiguations

An Unconventional Handbook of Orthodox Theology

by Rev. Vladan Perisic

Foreword
by Fr John Behr

It is a great pleasure to see this work published, making available some of the most important writings of Fr Vladan Perisic over the last couple of decades available, together in one volume, to an English speaking audience. Fr Vladan’s work is well known in Serbia, and in broader academic and ecumenical circles. But it can now receive the much wider readership that it deserves, and, as a collected volume, its scope, coherence, and significance is sure to receive the recognition it deserves.

The eighteen essays collected here treat diverse topics, from academic theology (and its place in the Church) to questions of life and death, from historically oriented studies, on Sts Ignatius and Gregory Palamas, to contemporary issues, such as human rights and ecology. Each of them is characterized by meticulous scholarship and great insight, clarity of thought and expression.

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