Our series looking back twenty years enters its fourth month. Last month I shared the March 2006 issue of The Messenger, in which Fr. Tom likened the freshly-painted walls of the new Shoreline building to the soul-work of Great Lent.

In 2006, Pascha fell on April 23rd, and in this April issue the parish is deep into Holy Week preparations. Highlights include a full walkthrough of every Holy Week service from Lazarus Saturday through Pascha and news that Metropolitan Gerasimos would visit on Holy Monday for the Bridegroom Service.

Fr. Tom's message this month opens with what he calls "empty promises," the steady drip of self-help books, fad diets, products, and "special offers" that promise we'll be happy, sexy, rich, or successful if we just buy the right thing or follow the right plan. I have to mentally remind myself this was written long before the rise of social media influencers. (The very first iPhone didn't come out until late June 2007, more than a year after this newsletter.) Before Instagram, before TikTok, even before the public launch of Facebook, Fr. Tom was reminding us: "the harsh reality of empty promises [just leads] to more hopes, wishes and worries." Against those empty promises, Fr. Tom asks us to consider the empty tomb and the Paschal promise, fulfilled in Christ's Resurrection.

What struck me reading this issue, freshly out of our own Holy Week, is how thoroughly Orthodoxy teaches us about anticipation. We anticipate the moment we get to sing "Christ is risen!" The Bridegroom Services that open Holy Week are explicitly about watchful waiting. Those services remind us that the "virgins were called to be vigilant and prepared for the coming of the bridegroom lest they be shut out of the bridal chamber." Holy Saturday morning is its own deep act of anticipation. We celebrate Christ's descent into Hades to break open the gates, but we are not yet at the Resurrection. We are joyful because of anticipation, but we have not yet arrived at the joy of a promise fulfilled.

Orthodoxy teaches us that there are seasons for rejoicing and seasons for patient waiting, and that both are holy. The anticipation is not the absence of the celebration; it is its own season, and in some ways it may be more instructive than the payoff.

I find myself thinking about that in connection with our current building project. We are, in a very real sense, in the patient phase. The big drama of demolition is behind us. The dust and the noise and the chaos have, if not subsided, at least become routine. What's happening now is the work of putting things together: framing, roof trusses, HVAC, infrastructure that will eventually disappear behind finished walls and become invisible to anyone who didn't watch it go in.

As with Holy Saturday morning, we aren't yet at the big triumphal reveal but we can start to see what's coming. Walls are coming together quickly. Roof trusses are in. We can stand in spaces that didn't exist four months ago and imagine what they'll be. We can start to see the form of what's being built. One concrete example—and I mean that literally—is the new pathway the construction crew finished just in time for our Holy Friday and Pascha processions. The pathway is beautiful. It allowed our parish community to safely process through an active construction zone, and let many of us glimpse what will be for the first time.

I've never met Richard Mosher to the best of my knowledge, but I've been loving his monthly stewardship pieces. In this issue he's happily reporting that more families have filled out their 2006 Stewardship cards. Twenty years on, the pattern of the ask is still the pattern of the ask: if you haven't yet filled out your 2026 Stewardship form, you can find it online.

The full PDF is below. Click on the cover image to download. See you next month for May.

Warmly,

Erica