Dear Parents and Friends:

Please keep our principal, Fr. Matthew Steenberg, in your prayers. On Monday, March 8th, he began his new life as a monk and hierodeacon in the Orthodox Church. At his tonsure he received the name of Irenei after St. Ireneius of Lyon, a great teacher and defender of the Faith. One could say, that we've received a new principal, Father Matthew is no more. May God bless and keep Fr. Irenei in his dedication to Christ and to St. John's Academy.

The Life of St. Ireneius (Irenei, Ireneios, Iriney), Bishop of Lyons

Commemorated on August 23

The PriestMartyr Ireneius (Ireneios), Bishop of Lyons, was born in the year 130 in the city of Smyrna (Asia Minor). He received there the finest of educations, studying poetics, philosophy, rhetoric, and all the rest of the classical sciences, considered necessary for a young man of the world. His guide in the truths of the Christian faith was a disciple of the Apostle John the Theologian – Sainted Polycarp of Smyrna (Comm. 23 February). Saint Polycarp baptised the youth, and afterwards ordained him presbyter and sent him off to a city in Gaul then named Lugdunum (the presentday city of Lyons in France) to the dying bishop Pothinus. A commission was soon entrusted Saint Ireneius: to deliver a letter of Christ-confessors to the holy Pope of Rome Eleutherius (177-190). During the time of his absence all the known Christians were thrown into prison. After the martyr's death of Bishop Pothinus, Saint Ireneius was chosen a year later in 178 as bishop of the city of Lugdunum. "During which time, – Sainted Gregory of Tyre writes concerning him, – by his preaching he transformed all Lugdunum into a Christian city!"       When the persecution against Christians quieted down, the saint expounded upon the Orthodox teachings of faith in one of his fundamental works under the title: "Detection and Refutation of Pretensively Called Gnosis-Knowledge", or in short form "Five Books against Heresy" ("Adversus Haereses"). During these times there had appeared a series of religious-philosophical Gnostic teachings. The Gnostics (from the Greek word "gnosis" meaning "knowledge") taught, that God is not able to be incarnated [i.e. born in human flesh], since matter is imperfect and manifests itself as the bearer of evil. They taught also that the Son of God – is only an outflowing ("emanation") of Divinity. Together with Him from the Divinity issues forth an hierarchical series of powers ("aeons"), the unity of which comprise the "Pleroma", i.e. "Fullness". The world is not made by God Himself, but by the aeons or the "Demiourgos" ("Demiurge"), which is beneathe the "Pleroma". [trans. note: this Gnostic terminology reflects various attempts at a synthesis of the Neo-Platonic thought of the time with Christianity. But lest the reader be confused and consider all "gnosis" to be heretically Gnostic, there is indeed an Orthodox "Gnosis" theologically deriving from Christ as the "Logos" or "Word" – "through Whom all things were made" (Jn. 1: 3) underlying the Creation, without which all theology itself would be impossible. Also, our account neglects to point out that the "Adversus Haeresus" was a compendium of the teachings of all the known heresies of the time, publishing "for free" the esoteric salvation "secret teachings" of the Gnostics, who made a business charging money to be "initiated" into the upper level of "knowers" ("illuminati" or "electi"); in doing so he helped put them out of business].
     

In the refutation of the heresy of Valentinus, Saint Ireneius presents the Orthodox teaching about salvation. "The Word of God, Jesus Christ, through His inexplicable blessedness caused it to be, that we also, should be made that which He is..., – taught Saint Ireneius, – Jesus Christ the Son of God through exceedingly great love for His creation condescended to be born of a Virgin, through His own Self having united mankind with God". Through the Incarnation of God creation becomes co-imaged and co-bodied to the Son of God. Salvation consists in the "Filiation" ("Sonship") and "Theosis" ("Divinisation") of mankind.
     

In the refutation of another heretic, Marcian, who denied the Divine-origin of the Old Testament [trans. note: based on the problem of suffering and evil, i.e. Theodicy, with Marcian giving insufficient consideration to the issue of freedom], the saint presents the teaching about the Same Origin of the Old and the New Testaments: "It is one and the same the Spirit of God, Which through the prophets proclaimed, in what manner precisely would be the coming of the Lord, – wrote the saint, – He through the apostles preached, that the fullness of time of the filiation had arrived, and that the Kingdom of Heaven was come nigh".

The truthful veracity of Church teachings was grounded by Sainted Ireneius in the succession of the episcopacy, since the Church is more anciently primary than all the later heretics. "Anyone, that desireth to know the truth, ought to turn to the Church, since through Her alone did the apostles propound the Divine Truth. She is the door to life".

Saint Ireneius exerted also a beneficial influence in a dispute about the celebration of Pascha. In the Church of Asia Minor was preserved an old tradition to celebrate Holy Pascha on the 14th day of the month of Nisan, irregardless of what day of the week this occurred. Holy Pope Victor (190-202) forcefully demanded uniformity, and his harsh demands fomented a schism. In the name of the Christians of Gaul, Saint Ireneius wrote to the Pope, that while it be impossible to allow a schism on account of traditions, yet foremost of all it is necessary to esteem churchly peace.
During the reign of the emperor Severus (193-211), Sainted Ireneius was beheaded by the sword for his confession of faith, in the year 202.

The Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, Sainted Polycarp of Smyrna, and Sainted Ireneius of Lyons – here are three links in an unbroken chain of the grace of succession, which connects back to the Original Pastor, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. In extreme old age, Saint Ireneius wrote to his old friend Florinus: "I was a lad when I saw thee (Florinus) with Polycarp. I remember what then happened better than what now happens. And I can now describe for thee the place, where blessed Polycarp usually sat and conversed. I can describe his mannerisms of life, the appearance of his body and his instructions which he spoke to people. The intimate conversations which, as he said, he had with John and others who had seen the Lord, and everything that he remembered from their words, that he heard from them about the Lord... I heard this then, by the mercy of God, with fervour and did write it down, not upon paper, but upon the heart".

© 1996-2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos.

During the Fall Semester, students and teachers from St. Innocent’s Academy in Kodiak, Alaska, visited our school. They prayerfully sang an akathist before the relics of St. John and performed folk music, traditional Alaskan singing and Alaskan dance for our students.  St. Innocent's Academy is an Eastern Orthodox Church school for young men at-risk under the guidance of the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

October 7, 2009  The middle school students went on an exciting field trip to the De Young Museum  where they visited the special  King Tut Exhibit. The tour began with the students being “shut up” in a tomb-like room before being led into the main exhibit hall, where they saw many beautiful and ancient artifacts. For more information about the exhibit visit the website, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs.

December 15, 2009  Our own Mrs. Helen Nowak was celebrated by RACS, the Russian American  Community Services, as Volunteer of the Year, for her ceaseless work among the many different community agencies. At St. John’s Academy alone, Helen has donated time, money, and materials as she selflessly and tirelessly works day and night to make sure that we are able to have the best school possible for your children. Thank you, Mrs. Nowak, for all of your dedication and hard work!

Also during the evening's event, RACS presented St. John's Academy with a $5000.00 check to match the funds raised so far this year by our dedicated parents. The school is very grateful for the support given by RACS and other community organizations.

Nov. 2, 2009   Our Administrator, Mrs. Maria Kotar, was the guest of the Russkiy Mir Fund at the Third Annual Assembly held in Moscow. Guest speakers included Patriarch Kyrill, whose speech can be read here: http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/928446.html. The Russkiy Mir Fund in interested in creative ways to help develop the Russian language and Russian culture throughout the world.

Our new playground was finished just in time for the beginning of the new school year. The beautiful surfacing job was funded by donations brought in by  the whole  community.  A huge thank you to all who participated!

During the Columbus Day weekend in October, ACTR conducted a Professional Development Seminar for teachers of Russian. Nineteen Teachers representing different regions of the country and a variety of educational settings joined facilitators Betsy Sandstrom and Natasha Ushakova and American Councils staff for the four-day weekend.

 

The attending teachers were given a first look at exciting new resource-sharing tools that will soon become widely available on Russnet (www.russnet.org). Over the past several months the multimedia team has been developing a comprehensive media management system that will be used extensively in Russnet and made available to American Councils’ programs and other Web-sites. The new system will serve as part of a broader resource-sharing model on Russnet that will allow teachers to share media, lessons, and activities with one another.

 

Using the new media management system, participants developed lesson plans centered on a media clip of their own choosing. In creating their lesson plans, participants focused particular attention on several key elements: they identified appropriate performance assessments for their lessons, learned how the same media clip can be used to spiral learning from higher to lower-level Russian, and created reading, listening, writing, and speaking activities appropriate for all levels. Throughout the process they gained experience in using the new Russnet resource-sharing tools to place their work in a common area for other teachers to use. The ACTFL Standards and Guidelines as well as the National Standards for Russian aided workshop participants as they produced lessons grounded in the Standards and suitable to their local conditions.

 

As a follow on, the nineteen workshop participants have been given the opportunity to participate in the initial plotting phase of resource sharing. As members of the pilot cohort, these teachers now have access to the new version of the Russnet Lesson Planner, which allows them to upload and tag multimedia files (images, audio, viedeo, and text) into a searchable database. Any lessons that they create will be available to other teachers in the resource sharing pool.

 

Participating in this seminar was Vera Skorteskull of St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Academy.