UPCOMING EVENTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS

St. Basil of Ostrog Serbian Orthodox Church 27450 N. Bradley Rd . Mettawa – Lake Forest , Illinois 60045 –5104

Email: (office@stbasilchurch.org) www.stbasilchurch.org Parish Priest: V. Rev. Stavrophor Djuro Krosnjar - frkrosnjar@gmail.com (847) 477-1531 cell

Trustee Co-Chairman: Michael Kosanovich Circle of Serbian Sisters: Richelle Arandjelovic

Choir Director: Roxanne Getz Coordinators: Folklore: Slobodanka Vranjes Church School: Nada Savatic &Vasilija Vojcanin

St. Varnava Men’s Club: Marko Vojcanin; Bookstore: Diana Potkonjak and Paul Saniuk Facilities Contact: Goran Bogojevic and Radenko Krajisnik, Webmaster: Peter Pirocanac

Serbian School: Dunja Vla, Jelena Visnjevac and Svjetlana Masic

Make your pledge to serve St. Basil of

Ostrog Church in a variety of ways: time, talent, and monetary

support.

STEWARDSHIP FORMS

AVAILABLE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

July 12,

2014 The 17th

Annual

Petrovdan

-Sts. Peter

and Paul Day Golf

Outing Divine Liturgy 9:30 AM 12:00 Registration and Cevap Lunch at golf course. 1:00 Shot gun start. 5:00 Picnic open to all at the church hall and Jelica's famous buffet. Everyone invit-ed and welcome!!!!!!!

Room for only 144 Golfers.

First 50 to register on line are

entered into a raffle to win a

box of cevaps!

Register today!

Continued from page 2) We are living in a time when wars are being waged by other, as some might say, more sophisticated means. To take a sword in hand, pray to God that it be His will and set off to battle was a knightly act of the great heroes of that time which today, not wishing evil, we could only wish for. How is it possible to perform a chival-rous act today? Not seeing the enemy, the country has been stealthily occupied, people are being indoctrinated by the media—the mailed fist of the Great Inquisi-tor and Big Brother—and the lifting of your sword will be followed by laughter and disdain. How is the Kosovo Covenant and the Kosovo choice looked at in our time? The Battle of Kosovo is carried out today in a constant battle with the unseen conquerors: first, we mustn't allow them to force on us their quasi-valuable culture, best represented in the Hollywood-McDonalds cultural hegemony. Secondly, we must make an effort to, as much as it is possible, preserve national, economic and social independence in midst of a techno-totalitarian globalism. Thirdly, we need to nurture and focus ourselves on our "small Church", the family, raising our chil-dren as free persons created in the image of God. Families with no or only a small number of children, with some exceptions, are the source of our loss of conscious-ness of the meaning and beauty of children in our surroundings and of our readi-ness for the parental sacrifice. And at the root of all of this lies the difficult battle to preserve the Christian, Orthodox, St. Sava [Svetosavlje], Kosovo, or simply the liturgical conscience in all of us. The Battle of Kosovo and the Kosovo Covenant, to repeat once again, are found today in the zeal of professors in schools, in the steadfastness of factory workers, in he spiritual struggle and humility of the mo-nastics and, especially, in the fruitful dialogue of he entire – I repeat – entire Serbi-an people. Our Serbian people are suffering to this day in Kosovo and Metohija. Little is being said about it, little is spoke of their human sufferings. Perhaps some are afraid that wringing up specific sufferings of specific Serbs in Kosovo and Metohi-ja will only wobble the already shaky opinion that the territories of Old and Holy Serbia that it be completely taken. They are mistaken! Our Kosovo choice from of old does not depend on human sufferings, it does not depend on territories: it de-pends, above all, upon the Kosovo Covenant in ourselves. And we can only lose this covenant ourselves; no one can take it from us: not Holbrooke, nor the Albani-ans, nor Bush, nor Arhtisari nor anyone else can do it! The socio-politically regulated situation in Kosovo and Metohija is directly linked by a step of the Kosovo Covenant and the consciousness in us. That is why, no matter what happens, let us nurture and repeat in our fruit-bearing meetings: Today here, tomorrow in Prizren! That all of our actions in life be limited in the in-quiring of the Kosovo choice, always, from day to day. Only in this way will we not make the same mistakes our fathers made; only in this way will we leave something to our descendants.

Branimir Nesic

V. Rev. Stavrophor Djuro Krosnjar Home (847) 680-1117 Cell (847) 477-1531 H. Fax (847) 680-1127 frkrosnjar@gmail.com - Church Phone (847) 247-0077 Church FX (847) 247-0088

S T . B A S I L O F O S T R O G S E R B I A N O R T H O D O X C H U R C H www . s e r b i a n c a t h e d r a l . o r g

EYE ON SCRIPTURE And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in hu-man terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncle-anness, and of lawlessness leading to more members as slaves of righteousness for holiness… But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Rom. 6, 18-23

Tone 3:

Epistle:

Rom. (6, 18-23)Gospel:

Mt. (8, 5-13)

4th Sunday after Pentecost Holy Martyr Agrippina of Rome; Wonder-

working “Vladimir” icon of Theotokos

Saturday and Pre-Feast Vespers 5:00 P.M.

~Next Sunday~

Divine Liturgy at 10:00 A.M.

Orthodox Study Bible

While one is freely enslaved to sin, he is not even aware of it; he does not know enough to be ashamed. But now—having received the gospel—one knows all ac-tions have serious conse-quences: sin bears the fruit of shame and ends in the sec-ond death. Slavery to God, initiated in baptism, is true freedom. The fruit of baptism is holiness, or sanctification, and it ends in everlasting life. Thus salvation is a process of transformation from sinner to saint. We are saved through baptism, and we are being saved by the uncre-

ated grace of God to be like Him, in anticipation of eter-nal life. Orthodox Study Bible

St. Basil of Ostrog

Serbian Orthodox Church 27450 N. Bradley Rd, Mettawa - Lake Forest, IL. 60045-5104

SERBIAN ORTHODOX UNITY AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM

THE NATIVITY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST

The role played by John the Baptist IN THE STORY of salva-tion for making should never be minimized. His birth was a somewhat miraculous one, for his mother Elizabeth was ad-vanced in years and had been unable to conceive children. It was the Archangel Gabriel who announced this wonderful news to his father Zacharias while he was doing his priestly duties in the Temple. Gabriel gives him insight into what will be expected of John: "He will turn the heads of many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah… to make ready a people prepared for the Lord." (Luke 1:16-17) Yes, John would be the "Forerunner"-- the one who would ser-ve as the "voice of one crying in the wilderness"— preparing the world for the coming of the Messiah. He is considered to be

the last of the prophets. Many followers of John would become followers of Christ. Per-haps John is best remembered for baptizing Christ in the Jordan River. It was not the "baptism of repentance" that John insisted the faithful needed, but rather it was in-stead a necessary process "to fulfill all righteousness." (Matt. 3:15) As great as his popularity was, John fully recognized that with the coming of Christ, his role in the story of salvation would be greatly diminished. The Baptist stated as much: "He must increase, but I must decrease. He Who comes from above is above all." (John 3:30-31) Soon after baptizing Christ, John was imprisoned and later behead-ed. He was aptly described by the Lord he served: "Among those born of women, there is no greater prophet than John." (Luke 7:28)

speak here of the results of such research, but it would be interesting to compare our Kosovo Iliad with Homer's poem. Unlike the Iliad in which the central theme is the Trojan war, with its descriptions of the battles, the heroes, the combat (filled with sweat and blood, courage and wrath), the Serbian folk poems which are either directly or indirectly tied with the battle of Kosovo do not have as their central theme the battle. In the medieval epic poems nowhere is the central theme the battle itself (the po-sition of the Serbian and Turk-ish armies, combat, etc.) We receive knowledge of the bat-tle (the same applies to Nje-gosh's Masterful poem - The Mountain Wreath) only in retrospect and through the brief interpretation of some surviving solder; the only po-em in which such a retrospec-tive incident is not included is the poem The Fall of the Ser-bian Empire, but even in this poem the battle is not the cen-tral theme, but Lazar's decision for the Heavenly Kingdom. This is an evangelical choice and it is not the basic idea of every heroic epic, as some literal historians might think, but it is the idea of the Chris-tian heroic epic. In the Iliad this is not the case because in the religious philosophy of the ancient Greeks life beyond the grave did not exist; the Valley of the Shadow existed, but this can-not be called life, at least not a happy life for which one yearns. And precisely because the dimension of a blissful life beyond the grave did not exist in the religious philosophy of the ancient Greeks, all the he-roes of the Trojan War (and the ancient Greek world) were turned and directed towards this earthly life. The Trojan heroes were concentrated on proving themselves in battle for eternal memory in this earthly world, and not for the Kingdom of Heaven. It is only with Christianity in the socio-historical experience that the determination for the Heavenly Kingdom enters. It is to this kingdom that the en-tire life of a Christian is di-rected; in the Christian reli-gious experience there is no longer a Carpe Diem (seize the day) determination, as with the Greeks and later the Romans,

Kosovo Covenant and 21st Century

Any serious researcher on the notion of Kosovo, or better yet, the Kosovo Covenant and the Serbian people, knows that it is not important how many Serbian or Turkish sol-diers were at the Battle of Kosovo, (1389) or even who, if anyone, was the victor on that dreadful and great day. In any case, this is not to disre-gard the truth, nor to reduce the desire of it being known. On the contrary, we consider it more important to find the answer to the question WHY the Battle of Kosovo come about, and from it the Kosovo Covenant, than HOW the bat-tle was carried out. Research-ing the precise and clear an-swers to the question WHY will bring us to a precise and clear understanding of the Kosovo Covenant in the his-torical conscience of the Ser-bian people.

CHOICE What is the foundation of the Kosovo conscience, which for us Serbs is identified and in-deed is confirmed as the high-est conscience which a Chris-tian people can have - the liturgical conscience? The foundation of that kind of conscience is Choice! Choice is the basis of man's freedom. Choice is man's God-given right to reason, to de-cide what is good and what is evil. Choice is our humanity, that which sets us apart from and elevates us above the beasts - but, if wrongly used, it degrades us below the beasts. Choice is our treasure and our hazard. Man as a per-son, decides a hundred times a day. Frequently he is not con-scious of the fact that he is choosing, and at such times his choice, that greatest mys-tery of man's life, becomes a mere habit and careless. Each day man decides whether he will be slothful or diligent, honest or a thief, whether he will help someone or only pay attention to his own work, whether he will examine his own actions or chose the easi-er path by seeking fault in his neighbor... Therefore, there are many choices; they are, as political analysts tend to say, reduced to the individual, the person,

in the community during peace-ful times, while in times of war the choice continues to depend on the person in the communi-ty, even though the community, during those times, is empha-sized so much that it might seem that the individual is di-minished. In Christian nations the person is never disregarded, or in confrontation with the community; on the contrary, the one depends on the other. In contrast, in post-Renaissance Western Europe, stemming in part from the mid-eleventh cen-tury and the Great schism, the person and the community ceases to exist, to be replaced by the individual, on the one hand, and the collective on the other. (Unlike the person and the community), the individual and the collective are in con-stant battle with each other.

THE COMMUNITY OR

THE COLLECTIVE How did the community di-minish and the collective ap-pear? If we recall, the Christian or the Orthodox community is a covenantal community of the whole person whose center - or whose head - is Christ. In order for a community to survive in the course of history it has to be alive. The basic element of life of a community is dialogue: the dialogue of the faithful at the Divine Liturgy, the dialogue of the faithful at the church-laity councils, the dialogue of the faithful in parish communities, the dialogue of spouses in the Holy Mystery of Marriage. But at the pinnacle of the Orthodox path of dialogue stands the God-man Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the collec-tive appears when God is re-placed by man, when we bring Him "down to" earth, when the freedom of choice is reduced to blind obedience to one ordinary man, no matter what title he be given. When human freedom is thus restrained it destroys the person, who is left with nothing other than to melt into such a collective, or to fight for some glimmer of freedom, both of which are far from being per-sonal and whole-minded. THE ILIAD AND SERBIAN

POETRY ON KOSOVO A great number of researchers of Serbian literature have at-tempted to take the poems writ-ten about the battle of Kosovo and create their own version of the Kosovo Iliad. We shall not

but Carpa aetemitatem (seize eternity). This position is con-firmed by Lazar's words in the poem The Fall of the Serbian Empire: "Mighty God, what now shall this my choice be! Shall I choose to have a heav-enly kingdom? Shall I choose to have an earthly kingdom? If I now should choose an earthly kingdom, Lo, an earthly king-dom is but fleeting, But God's kingdom shall endure for ever." If we take the Christian dimen-sion away from Lazar, then he would have no dilemma be-tween the two kingdoms: the prince would instantly choose the earthly kingdom, the king-dom for which Achilles and the Trojan soldiers live. If Achilles was the central character in the Iliad as the greatest and most celebrated Greek soldier, then, by analogy, Milos Obilic would be the cen-tral figure in the poems of Ko-sovo. However this place was not taken by Milos Obilic but by Prince Lazar. While the members of the Nemanjic rul-ing dynasty confirmed their choice for the Heavenly King-dom by abdicating the throne and entering the monastic ranks. Prince Lazar needed to make for himself that same choice through a personal sacrifice - his earthly life. THE KOSOVO COVENANT

– YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

The Serbs are a covenantal, liturgical people because of their experience of the Chris-tian community, completely founded during the time of Stefan Nemanja and St. Sava, and confirmed by the Kosovo Covenant, which is to say, the saborno (conciliar) choice made by the Serbian people for the Heavenly Kingdom. This choice was made not only by Prince Lazar, but by the entire male population of that time. And not only of that time, but since the Battle of Kosovo, every day and in every place, the Covenant is verified and the Serbian people are called to make a choice. I will make what might be considered by the older people and the historians, a blasphe-mous statement: The Kosovo choice for us Orthodox Serbs in the 21st century is greater and more difficult than it was 800 years ago.

(Continued on page 4)

Lord, visit Thy ser-vants in their suffering, and grant them grace

and strength to bear their sickness with which they are afflicted; heal and save them:

Sister ANGELINA; Krista BAUMAN; Milica BILBIJA; Milorad BLAGOJEVIC; Zivota BLAZIC; Stevan BOGOJEVIC; Aleksandar BURMEISTER; David CASTALDO; Petar COKIC; Milan DAVORIJA; Daniel DEJANOVICH; Janko-Dan DEJANOVIC; Sotir DJORDJEVIC; Dusan DRONDIC; Ivan GAVRILOVIC; Aleksandar GLISOVIC; Daniela GOMEZ; Radoslav IVANOVIC; Snezana JOVANOVIC: Ljubica JOVANOVIC; Branko/Anka KOSANOVIC; George KOVAC; Lesia KOSTIC; Mara KOVACEVIC; Ray/Laura KULMALA; Cathy LALICH; Slavojka MILESIC; Milka/Milan MILICEVIC; Ron MITROVICH; Dragica MRKALJ; Suzana NEDIC; Boro NEDINIC: Vladeta & Marie NIKOLICH; Daliborka OPACIC; Mladen PECANAC; Natalija PETROVIC: Aleksandra RALEVICH; Marta RALEVICH; Milan RASKOVIC; Jessica SELOUNTOS; George SINNOKRAK; Nikola SREJOVIC; Nicole STEINBERG; Ratko STISEVIC; Nikola STOKOVIC; Zika SUBARIC; Jovica VIJUK; Jovan VOJCANIN; Danijela VRANJES; metr. JOVAN (Vraniskovski)

ST. BASIL OF OSTROG SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

Musical Orchestra

Every Friday at 7:00 PM

led by

Vladimir Rokvic and Bob Lalich

Open to all ages who can read music or who play by

ear and play an instrument.

FOOD PANTRY Donations accepted every

Sunday. Bring in non-perishable food items and

your donations will go directly to local food

pantries. Food donations accepted every Sunday!

SUNDAY

LUNCHES With our Chef Jelica

Available weekly for

food and fellowship.

Join us following

Divine Liturgy

Adults $7.00 Children $4.00

Where volunteers have the most fun!!!!!

St. Basil Church Golf Outing and Taste of Serbia.

Start planning ahead! Join the church efforts to host two great events!!!

For Golf—Contact Marko Vojcanin—mnvojcanin@gmail.com

For Taste of Serbia—Contact HelenMandich—helen.mandich@abbott.com

Become a volunteer and have the time of your life, make new friends, your volunteer stewardship is so welcome.

Friday Nights - 7:30 PM—Music Night Led by Vladimir Rokvic

and Bob Lalic—All ages invited. Bring your instrument. Must be

able to read music or play by ear. Don’t miss this opportunity.

Monthly Collections - Food Pantry Collections—Non-

perishable foods for local food pantries.

July 12 - Saturday, St. Basil 17th Annual Petrovdan Golf Tournament.

Divine Liturgy at 9:30 am.

AUGUST 30 and 31 - TASTE OF SERBIA - Don't miss the best year yet!!!!!!

”TASTE” web-site IS BEING UPDATED FOR “TASTE 2014”!!!!!

Summer Camp

Programs or Youth

St. Sava Monastery

July 13—August 2

New Gracanica

Monastery

June 29 - July 26

Signed registration

forms on the candle

table at church

Limited spaces availa-

ble, some weeks al-

ready to capacity