IT WAS OUR JOY TO ENROLL Noah Janke into the catechumenate yesterday before Vespers. Noah’s enrollment expands our class of catechumens now to 16. Let’s get to know our catechumens! They are:

Cindy Beaver

Garrett Boyum

Katie Boyum

Ezra Boyum

Obadiah Boyum

Kelly Hawkinson

Matthew Homan

Noah Janke

Stuart Klenk

McKenna Klenk

‘Junior’ Klenk (bun still in the oven!)

Jordynn Kluntz

Tom Kolden

River Rocyzki

Erika Roland

Blake Swanson

HIS GRACE, BISHOP DANIEL, will be enthroned as bishop of the Diocese of the Midwest on Saturday, Oct 1, at the Divine Liturgy served at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chicago, at 9 am. Fr Paul & Mother Nancy will not be going to the enthronement. We will serve the Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos here at St Herman’s this coming Saturday, Oct 1, at 8 am. (Catechism class will follow)

SOS, Support Our Seminarians Sunday, is today, Sunday, Sept 25. Parishes throughout our Midwest Diocese are accepting donations that will all go directly to our seminarians. Bishop Daniel’s letter posted on the bulletin board downstairs explains why this is important.

ST HERMAN’S BOOK CLUB meets next on Saturday, October 15th at 9 am at the Church.  Our current book is The Spiritual Life by St. Theophan the Recluse.  Please read through chapter 40.  Books are available in the St. Herman's Bookstore. All are welcome to join.

THE CATECHISM CLASS meets next this Wednesday, Sept 28, at 745 pm, following Vespers, and then again on Saturday morning, Oct 1, at about 10 am, following the Divine Liturgy (which begins at 8 am) for the Feast of the Protection of the Theotokos. Students are encouraged to view the recording of the first Catechism Class that was held on Saturday, Sept 17, if possible, before the second Catechism Class held this Wednesday, and then again on Saturday, Oct 1. Our Catechism classes are open to all. To view recordings of the catechism classes, click on the Resources tab on the home page of St Herman’s website, then scroll down and click on ‘Uploads of Fr Paul’s Sermons/Classes.’

SAVE THE DATE! ST HERMAN’S MITTEL EUROPEAN DINNER returns on Saturday, Nov 5! This is an evening of warm, homey fellowship with each other and with family, friends and guests. Gene (former parishioner, now in Duluth) does a really great imitation of a Guest Master Chef. He prepares his delicious Czechoslovakian goulash (marinated beef with spaetzle or sauerkraut). We provide the rest: salads, desserts, wine and beer, and guests—family, friends, neighbors. Tickets will be available for purchase ahead of time sometime soon. This is our dinner. We make it happen. Talk to Miriam to find out how you can help.

We acknowledge with gratitude a DONATION IN MEMORY OF RAY   Pregl from Ekatarina Knowlton: $1,000.

MEOCCA will serve the sacrament of Holy Unction at St Mary’s Romanian in West St Paul on Friday, Oct 14, starting at 630 pm.

FAMILY CAMP at Camp Courage near Annandale, MN is Oct 7 – 9. Fr Andrew Jaye of Holy Myrrhbearers in St Cloud will speak on prayer, and David Benson from 12 Apostles in Duluth will speak on praying with the Psalms.

NOT ON ST HERMAN’S EMAIL LIST and wanna be, to receive Sunday’s bulletin and other parish notices? Just let Fr Paul know.

ORTHODOXY’S ESSENTIAL ELEMENT is the theme of St Mary’s Cathedral’s Fourth Annual Metropolitan Leonty Memorial Lectures in Orthodox Theology and Spirituality on Saturday, Oct 15, from 1 – 4 pm (30 min break at 215 pm). Guest lecturer is Dr Eugenia Constantinou, professor of biblical studies and early Christianity at the University of San Diego. She is also a regular contributor to Ancient Faith Radio, and the author of ‘Thinking Orthodox.’

THE TWIN CITIES MARATHON and Ten Mile Run happen next Sunday, Oct 2. They follow a route that may affect your route to Church next Sunday morning. A map of both runs is posted on the bulletin board downstairs.

Death is an ultimate ending, a complete frustration of human hopes and prospects. Death comes from sin, from the original Fall. It was not divinely instituted. Human death did not belong to the Divine order of creation. It was not normal or natural for man to die. It was an abnormal estrangement from God, who is man’s Maker and Master.

Many Christians today have lost this biblical conception of death and mortality and regard death rather as a release, a release of an immortal soul out of the bondage of the body. As widely spread as this conception of death may actually be, it is utterly alien to the Scriptures. In fact, it is a Greek, a gentile conception. Death is not a release; it is a catastrophe….A dead man is no man any more. For man is not a bodiless spirit. Body and soul belong together, and their separation is a decomposition of the human being. A discarnate soul is but a ghost. A soulless body is but a corpse….Death is hopeless. And thus the only reasonable answer that could be given to the question the LORD put to Ezekiel (‘Can these bones live?’ in Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, Eze 37.1-14), from the human point of view, is: ‘No, the dry bones will never live again.’

But the divine reply was very different from that. And it was not just an answer in words, but a mighty deed of God….By the power of God the dry bones were brought again together, and linked, and shaped, and covered over again with a living flesh, and the breath of life came back into the bodies. And they stood up again, in full strength, ‘An exceedingly great congregation.’ Life came back, death was overcome.

Those bones were the house of Israel, the chosen People of God. She was dead, by her sins and apostasy, and has fallen into the ditch which she made herself, was defeated and rejected, lost her glory, and freedom, and strength. Israel, the People of Divine Love and adoption, the obstinate, rebellious and stiffnecked people, and yet still the Chosen People. And God brings her out of the valley of the shadow of death back to the green pastures, out of the snare of death, of many waters, of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay….

The house of the New Israel of God is again very much like dry bones. There is so little true life in all of us. The historical path of man is still tragic and insecure. All of us have been, in recent years, driven back into the valley of death. Everyone who had to walk on the ruins of once flourishing cities realizes the terrible power of death and destruction. Man is still spreading death and desolation. One may expect even worse things to come. For the root of death is sin. The old saying of St Augustine finds anew echoes in the human soul: ‘You never understand of what weight sin is.’

Yet, the power of death is broken. Christ is risen. The Prince of Life, who died, reigns immortal. The Spirit of God, the Comforter, the Giver of Life, has been sent upon the earth to seal the victory of Christ, and abides in the Church since Pentecost. The gift of life, of the true life, has been given to men, and is being given to them constantly, and abundantly, and increasingly. It is given, but not always ‘received.’ For in order to be truly quickened one has to overcome one’s fleshly desires, ‘to put aside all worldly cares,’ pride and prejudice, hatred and selfishness, self-complacency, even to renounce one’s self. Otherwise, one would quench the Spirit. God knocks perpetually at the gate of human hearts, but it is man himself who can unlock them.

Fr Georges Florovsky, Creation and Redemption, 13-15