Ministries
Sisterhood
The Sisterhood of Holy Resurrection consists of all women in the parish who wish to participate. We meet together several times a year to discuss fund raising, event planning, hospitality and how we can serve our parish through various projects. The Sisterhood sponsors a yearly Women's Retreat at the Church, allowing time to share together and grow spiritually. It also coordinates coffee hour food offerings
St. Elizabeth Society
The St. Elizabeth Society continues to meet on a monthly basis to pray the Supplicatory Canon to the Mother of God, offering prayers for the people on the current list and adding names as needed.
A number of new people have joined, asking to receive the ongoing lists and to hear of urgent situations requiring immediate prayer. There has been an increased effort, in conjunction with the Sts. Mary and Martha Sisterhood, to better cover the needs of people in the church who are ill; providing meals, visitations or rides to medical appointments.
Open Door Soup Kitchen and St. Bridget's Food Pantry
"For I was hungry, and ye gave me food..."
Who We Are
The Open Door Soup Kitchen and the St. Bridget's Pantry are ministries of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Allston, MA. Our mission is to help feed the hungry. We have been serving warm, nutritious, homemade meals every Monday evening for over 30 years! We have never missed a Monday, not even during blizzards and extreme weather conditions!
Labor comes from the parish, friends, neighbors, and local college students—all work on a volunteer basis.
We serve Allston, Brighton, and neighboring communities.
What We Do
We help feed the hungry in the community, including families with children, elderly and homeless.
We currently serve about 80-100 people every Monday (providing over 4000 meals per year). Our guests are served a full, restaurant style meal consisting of: an entree, salad, bread, coffee or tea, and dessert. St. Bridget's pantry also supplies grocery bags of food to our guests. We give out approximately 65 to 75 bags each Monday (over 3000 bags per year). Our goal with each grocery bag is to supply at least a couple of good, protein-rich meals.
The dignity of our guests is very important to us. We serve them with the utmost respect and love. For us the dignity of our guests is also a spiritual response to their needs; the Lord said "Whatsoever ye do to the least of my little ones, ye do to Me."
Our Need for Your Support
We need the help of volunteers to prepare quality home-cooked meals, serve and clean up.
Our biggest challenges are obtaining financial support to not only purchase food for the weekly free meal and grocery bag program, but also to pay utility costs for several commercial freezers and refrigerators, as well as a sterilizing dishwasher.
The Open Door Soup Kitchen and St. Bridget's Food Pantry are not self-sustaining. We are asking you to help support these programs so that we can continue to feed people in need in our community.
How You Can Help
You can help by volunteering or by contributing a tax-deductible monetary gift. You may donate by writing a personal check to “Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church” (in the memo line please specify for Open Door Soup Kitchen) and sending it to the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church address. You can also donate via PayPal or credit card, at our donations page (select “Open Door Soup Kitchen”).
Open Door Soup Kitchen is a ministry of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church, and is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. If you have questions, or need more information, please contact us by e-mail at open.door@hrocboston.org.
St. Helen's Sacristy Guild
The St. Helen’s Sacristy Guild is a ministry that serves to bring beauty, order and support to the Divine Services and sacraments of Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church.
To that end the Sacristy Guild members are striving to inventory and procure icons for the feasts and commemorations of the liturgical calendar. We have catalogued and labeled the various festal cloths for the seasons of the Church year, in order to be prepared to adorn the church as needed.
The Guild has been quite fruitful in inspiring new and zealous members and assistants from among the young women and girls in the parish. They are being instructed and guided in all the vital tasks of this ministry.
We also have developed supply kits and designed protocol lists for the sacraments of the Church. These include: Baptisms, Weddings, Lityas, Holy Unction, and Burials. In addition the Guild took initiative to obtain a set of deep purple curtains for the iconostasis for the Lenten season.
This year the Guild has been blessed to receive from a monastery various liturgical cloths and a large wooden bier for Holy Friday. This afforded us the opportunity to pass our bier on to a parish that did not have one.
We have dedicated this ministry to St. Helen whose shining example inspires us to build up and beautify the church
Festival Committee
The Festival Committee plans all the activities, repasts, decorations and gatherings that revolve around the Liturgical Celebrations. With such a full Calendar, the members of the Festival Committee meet together quarterly or more for careful planning of the events around holidays and saints days and fasting periods. Incorporating Orthodox traditions from different cultures, the planned events are full, diverse and reflective of our faith.
Tree of Life Bookstore
"We must thoroughly quench the darts of the devil and beat them off by continual reading of the divine Scriptures. For it is not possible, not possible for anyone to be saved without continually taking advantage of spiritual reading." - St. John Chrysostom
The Tree of Life Bookstore seeks to help the parish and its visitors by providing access to Orthodox Christian resources for every occasion and need. Its inventory includes Christian literature, gift cards, icons, incense, jewelry and seasonal items. The Tree of Life Bookstore also provides special orders for items and books not currently in stock.
The Bookstore is open regularly during coffee hour following Divine Liturgy on Sundays or by appointment.
St. Herman of Alaska Christian School
St. Herman of Alaska Christian School is a monument and institution for parents who look for the support of the school to solidify, and not counteract, their labors in passing on the flame of zeal for God to their children. It is a proof that education is more than a collection of facts or skills required to “make it” and survive in this world, but rather a training of the mind body and soul as a handmaiden for our life with Christ. One prominent Russian Bishop expressed this very clearly when he said that the goal for parents and educators in regard to their children should be to “raise Saints”. If the parents are able to work together with the teachers and priests, then a firm foundation and straight course is set for the child’s future in the world and in the Church. This three-fold relationship is the subject of a brief article written by the founder and Headmaster of St. Herman’s School. The article delves into the importance of seeking to find a balance and completion in education by pursuing the three “weight-bearing pillars of education.”
The educational tone of St. Herman’s School is classical and deeply Christian. Our classes are small, and divided into multi-grade clusters. Student-Teacher relationship is of primary concern, providing ample individual attention for the students in each class. The class structure is personal and very human, based on the relationship between the teacher and the student and the mutual care of students for each other.
At St. Herman’s School we strive to take the profound ideas given to us by the Scriptures, Church Fathers, the writings and research based findings of contemporary educators and put them into practice. It is a continual process of self-reflection and application of these ideas in the realm of content, teaching method and goals. We are a “work in progress” and use the ideals presented thus far as a measuring stick, by which we can determine what we need to do to fulfill the call to implement a Theanthropic (both divine and human in nature or quality) education.
For more information visit the St. Herman's website.