Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Happy late October to you, friends! It's been beautiful autumn weather in my part of the world, interspersed with some gloomy rainy days, but to be honest I love all of it! It's getting closer to cozy season, to be sure. 

In our Byzantine journey (interspersed with still quite a lot of Latin rite devotions, because that's how I roll, it appears) we're trucking contentedly along in our post-Pentecost timeline, towards...Advent? 

*checks*

Yes, Advent! I know that the traditions leading up to Christmas are somewhat different in the East, so I'm learning as I go here. :-0 There is an Advent fast in the Eastern tradition, and it begins earlier than I'm used to, so lots of details on that to come!

But in the meantime, we were back at Divine Liturgy for the Twentieth Sunday following Pentecost. The Gospel this week in the Byzantine rite was from Luke 6, the tale of the woe of the rich man. Father spoke about how we should strive to be rich in faith and in our relationship with Christ. It was wonderful to be back in that worship space and into the rhythms of the Divine Liturgy. 

Afterwards, we indeed chatted about the upcoming parish Christmas Bazaar, which will be held the Saturday before Thanksgiving. All of us are looking forward to helping out and also partaking of the delicious homemade Ukrainian food that will be for sale there! We need to come up with a basket theme idea for the raffle. 🤔

By the way, the cycle of readings is different in the Byzantine rite than it is in the Latin rite, and I've done a bit of snooping on this point. I purchased the book pictured in this post, published by SVS Press, so that I could follow along with the liturgy readings at home on weeks where we attend Mass or if I want a preview before going to Divine Liturgy. There are no Old Testament readings during the liturgy in the Byzantine rite, just New Testament epistles/letters and a Gospel reading, and the cycle of daily readings moves through all of these in a single year. Interesting, yes?

I'm VERY excited about this Advent fast coming up, which begins in mid-November in the Eastern tradition. Expect excitement to come! 🥳