ST. STEPHEN NEMANJA ORTHODOX CHURCH
216 Park Avenue, Bisbee, Arizona 85603
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 5666, Bisbee, Arizona 85603.
UPCOMING AT ST STEPHEN NEMANJA
Our next Divine Liturgy at St Stephen Nemanja is scheduled for Sunday, June 8, at 10:00 AM. This will be the day of Pentecost, one of the great feasts of the church year, comparable to Christmas and Pascha in importance. It is culmination of the cycle of services that began with the preparatory Sundays that brought us to Lent, Holy Week and the Paschal season.
As our Gospel reading for the day describes it, Pentecost is “the last and great day.” It marks both an end and a beginning. It celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit, the culmination of our fifty-day celebration of Christ’s resurrection and glorification. It also celebrates the “birthday” of the Church, the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit in the midst of God’s people, filling them with new life in Christ. As Fr. Alexander Schmemann put it, “With the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples, the time of salvation – the divine work of redemption – has been completed, the fullness revealed, all gifts bestowed. It now belongs to us to appropriate these gifts.”
Appropriating these gifts with us will be three new members of St Stephen Nemanja, who will be received through the sacrament of Chrismation during our June 8 Divine Liturgy. Please join us for refreshments in the church hall after the service and greet the Greathouse family: Clay (with St Alexander of Munich as his patron saint), Dayna (St Olga of Alaska), and Liesl (St. Elizabeth the New Martyr). May God grant them many years!
HISTORY OF ST STEPHEN NEMANJA
The Serbian Orthodox presence in Bisbee goes back to the late 1880s. While some of these early immigrants went into business, most went to work in the mines. Their importance for the local economy can be seen in Bisbee’s “copper man” statue, for which a Serbian miner served as model. Many of these early immigrants became American citizens, but they retained a love for the Orthodox Christian faith of their homeland. Newspaper articles document visits by early priests for baptisms and special occasions – most notably Fr. Sebastian Dabovich, American-born son of Serbian immigrants who was canonized in 2015 as St. Sebastian of Jackson and San Francisco.