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SLOVAK CHURCH OF Sts. CYRIL AND METHODIUS
IN NEW
WESTMINSTER BRITISH COLUMBIA
40th
ANNIVERSARY
JUNE 25, 2000
PAGE TWO
Thank you Father Jozef and each and
every one of you for this opportunity to be with you as your shepherd and
to celebrate with you. As we mentioned we are celebrating the 40th
anniversary of this parish. And you know I often pray for the gift of
tongs, and God has blessed me, I learned five or six different languages,
but unfortunately Slovak is not one of them. So you have to teach me.
Today we celebrate forty years of God’s blessings; we give thanks to God
for the blessings for the past forty years. But we also know, for the
future we ask the God to give blessings upon each and every one of us and
this parish as we look to the future and it is fitting that on this
anniversary we gathered to bless this beautiful new altar. I congratulate
you on this 40th anniversary by bringing you my prayers, my best wishes,
and my affection for you and in particular I want congratulate you for
building this new beautiful altar. Your altar in the church is always a
sign of God's presence among his people. That's why we bow to the altar,
it is a sign of God's presence among it's people. It is on the altar that
God becomes present to us in the Holy Eucharist. Today we also celebrate
the feast of the guarding of love of Christ, Corpus Christi. So we have
solemn celebration today and let us pray that we may ever become God’s
people and that God will be always among us. So that he will always be
with his people and he will be our God.
All
photographs
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Dear brothers and sisters, when we
celebrate an anniversary we do especially two things. First we remember
and we give thanks. Anniversary is a time to remember and today we bound
remember those who began this parish forty years ago as strangers. It was
a feast but with time this parish grew and it is a part of community
effort. We want to thank God for the founders of this parish, we want to
thank God today for the pastors who led the people these forty years. And
above all while we give our recognition to the founders of the parish and
the pastors, above all we need to give thanks to God. Because as St. Paul
tells us, what have you that you have not received? Every achievement,
every success, everything we are ever proud of, in the end we should
recognize as gift of God. What have you that you have not received? We had
received a lot in these past forty years. Today we give thanks to God. And
in a special way we want to remember also those who have died through
these last forty years that now have gone forth to the heavenly Father and
the saints.
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photographs
are for sale
So we celebrating this anniversary we first of all remember
and give thanks. Secondly by celebrating the anniversary we have to look
to the future. Where are we going as a Christian community as we look to
the future? A lot of people as we approached the great millennium and
great jubilee year have begun to look to the future. Some of them are
afraid of the future, they think that the future will bring terrible
things. Our Holly Father takes much more optimistic view of the future. In
fact a very optimistic view and he says that the great jubilee year that
we are celebrating now will be a new spring time of faith and of Christian
living. And if that is to happen what do we need to do? And there our
Holly Father says, be what you are, a Christian community. And that raises
the question, to be an authentic, genuine Christian community what do we
have to do? We have a model or a blue print of what the Christian
community should be in the Acts of the Apostles the sacred scripture. The
Acts of the Apostles are the earliest history we have of the Christian
community of the church. It tells us what we must strive for, to live for
as a Christian community. And when we go to the Acts of the Apostles the
first thing we learn is that to be an authentic good Christian community
we must persevere in the teaching of the apostles, we must teach the
faith. And so as we look to the future I think we need look at ourselves
and ask ourselves: are we doing that? Are we teaching the faith to our
children? Are we teaching the faith to our youth? Are we teaching the
faith to our young people and the older people and the seniors? We need to
look at that as we look to the future. A Christian community is a
community that perseveres in the teaching of the Apostles. Secondly the
Acts of the Apostles tells us that the authentic Christian community is a
community that perseveres in the breaking of the bread, by celebrating the
Eucharist at the Altar of God. This too is something that we must do with
fidelity and with ever-greater affection and with ever-greater faith and
hope and devotion. And so again as we look to the future we need to look
at how we celebrate the Eucharist. How can we celebrate it with greater
faith and greater devotion? Because it is in the Eucharist that we come
closest to the Kingdom of God. It is in the Eucharist that we are made one
with our God and one with each other as we share in the same body of Jesus
and in the same blood of Jesus, we become one. And that oneness with God
and the oneness with each other is what the church is all about.
Color video
of the Holy Divine service is available for US$ 44.45
Please send
personal check to:
Vladimir
Linder
3804 Yale Street
Burnaby, BC, V5C 1P6
CANADA
GO TO PAGE THREE
GO TO CATHOLIC CHURCHES
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TO Sts. CYRIL AND METHODIUS CHURCH
HAND EMBROIDERED
VESTMENTS FROM SLOVAKIA
Published in the Slovak Heritage Live
newsletter Volume 8, No. 2, Summer 2000
Copyright © Vladimir Linder 2000
3804 Yale Street, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5C 1P6
The above article and photographs may not be copied,
reproduced, republished, or redistributed by any means including electronic,
without the express written permission of
Vladimir
Linder. All rights
reserved.
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