Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Hello friends! We're steadily plugging along into the autumn, aren't we? I've noticed from the monthly bulletins we receive at our Byzantine rite parish that we're settling into this post-Pentecost period for a stretch before we get to the next Great Feast in November, so it does feel a bit like the Ordinary Time I'm used to at this time of year. 

This week, it finally wasn't raining, horray! The kids and I headed off to Divine Liturgy, and the first thing we noticed is that Father was wearing blue vestments this week rather than the gold ones he usually wears. I'm not certain of the significance...ok, quick research shows that blue is used for feasts of the Theotokos (which makes sense, blue is her color!), but I'm not sure why that was associated with this past Sunday...ok, I think I finally got it, hee hee! I see on the Byzantine calendar that Saturday October 1st is marked as Protection of the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary, so it seems likely the blue would pervade the entire weekend. 

🙌

Liturgy was lovely, as usual. We're getting more and more used to the responses and cadence of things, and picking up on when to consult the sheet with the weekly Propers on it a bit more. After liturgy, we all gathered out in the hall/entryway to talk about the parish Christmas bazaar next month. They need some help with it, and so the kids and I are happily being roped in. There will be Ukrainian food, a basket raffle, and a "trash to treasure" sale. We'll need to come up with a basket idea, but that's a wonderful project to have! Henry can get some service hours towards what he needs at his Catholic high school, and it's just nice to feel more and more acclimated to the community. 

I've noticed that being around an Eastern liturgy and congregation so much has led to me becoming fairly ambidexterous with my Signs of the Cross. I hold my thumb and first two fingers in the little triangle/Trinity shape that I learned from my Byzantine rite research, and I have to say that I absolutely love that. But I also unconsciously switch between moving my hand from left to right and right to left fairly interchangably. At first, I thought I would stick with my Roman left to right, and later that when I'm attending Divine Liturgy I would switch exclusively to right to left. Neither of those has happened, and my hand moves as inspired each time I do it. 😂 I actually kind of like it, it symbolizes this multi-ritual gal quite well right now.