~When you are two you can be faced with some very tough decisions. ~

~Photos and Videos from Last Sunday~

Last Sunday was such a busy day at Church and this week has been even busier. I am just now getting around to sharing with you photos from Sunday. which include the Sunday of the Cross and Greek Independence Day celebration. Sunday March 30th was the Third Sunday of Lent- The Sunday of the Holy Cross. Following the Divine Liturgy there is a procession throughout the Church with a cross decorated with flowers. After the service we enjoyed a lovely luncheon and Greek School programs of poetry, music and dance. I was really proud of Nicholas and Basil. They both recited a poem in Greek and Basil is part of the Greek dance troupe. I am so thrilled Basil is dancing. I grew up dancing Greek in the annual Church festival and performed every summer until I graduated college, got married and moved to England. I am thrilled that on his own initiative Basil has taken up Greek dancing and he enjoys the practices and performance. He is the tall thin boy towards the end of the line. There are more videos and photos of the dancing on my photo blog.

Nicholas and Maria~Angelica in the parish house dining room before Church.

 

Sunday of the Veneration of the holy cross: The third Sunday of Great Lent

On the Third Sunday of Great and Holy Lent, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Services include a special veneration of the Cross, which prepares the faithful for the commemoration of the Crucifixion during Holy Week.

Fr. and the decorated cross.                        Jonah holding a candle as an  altar boy.

Fr. blessing the congregation.   

 

  Basil in his Greek Costume.                    The Greek school procession in the Church.

Fr. leading the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer in Greek and Maria~Angelica joining him in prayer.

Nicholas reciting his Greek poem.

Basil dancing the Greek Wedding (Kalamatiano) dance and going under the arms of the other dancers.

 

Basil dancing my favorite Greek folk dance, young and old get in on the jubilant dancing!

Maria~Angelica makes a new friend.  

1821 and the mission of modern Hellenism

 

For more than 1000 years after the end of the ancient world, the Roman Empire continued to flourish around the eastern Mediterranean.  It became an entity comprised of people who identified themselves as Roman citizens, spoke mostly Greek and were mainly Christian.  It spread Christianity to near and far-away lands, defended Europe from multiple barbarians and from the onslaught of Islam, and preserved and propagated the Greco-roman literature, wisdom, and science to the world around it including Arabs and Western Europeans.  This was the Roman Empire, nowadays called Byzantine, a misnomer with denigrating connotations that we should never use to describe our ancestors.

 

Under the overlapping blows of the Crusaders and of Islam (by then personified by the Turks) our empire succumbed.  Darkness covered our land! 

 

Our ancestors had a choice.  They had the option to become Muslim and thus remain part of the master race with all their privileges, their lands, their property.  Many did that and swelled up the ranks of the new Ottoman nation.  The minority that remained Christian, because they considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the comforts of this life (to paraphrase Saint Paul), that minority became the root of the modern Greek nation (ethnos).  We are their children!

 

The dark night was to last long (three to six centuries depending on what part of the Greek world we talk about).

Some modern historians in the West keep talking about the tolerance of Islam and how good the Christians had it under the Turks.  It was the “goodness” of the slave whose life or death depends on the whim of the master, who is humiliated in one hundred ways every day to make sure he remembers his place, who sees her children taken away from her to become apostates and the lifeblood of the elite troops of the tyrant.

 

Many rebellions were drowned in blood; the “benevolent” master knew how to be most ruthless, an indiscriminate murderer to keep the slaves in submission.

Such suffering, combined with the always open door to conversion to the master’s religion would have eliminated many nations with weaker foundations.  Yet the flame of freedom was never completely extinguished. Whether in the harsh remoteness of Sfakia, Mani, and Souli, or in the mountain redoubts of the kleftes, or in the remote rocky islands of the Aegean, or in the hearts of Greeks everywhere, the hope of restoration of the old glories kept burning. 

 

The last rebelion, that of 1821, succeeded in freeing a small part of the Hellenic lands and establishing the first modern Greek state.  It was a ten year long titanic struggle punctuated by triumphs and tragedies, amazing acts of bravery and self-sacrifice, dogged perseverance, stubborn resistance even when all seemed hopeless.  Brilliant military tactics led to great victories.  Infighting because of lust for power and first place (the curse of our nation) led as frequently to near disasters.  It is truly a miracle that our ancestors won their freedom almost despite themselves; they succeeded against all odds in a way that makes the saying of Kolokotrones ring particularly true: “God has put His signature under the freedom act of Greece, and He won’t take His signature back”.   

 

But how does all that relate to us and to our children who will continue their lives in this great country, the USA, so far removed from our ancestral land?  

 

In more that one ways:

 

First, it’s a memory of gratitude for what they went through so that their children could keep their faith and their historical memory all the way to our generation. 

 

Second, it’s a memory of admiration for their bravery and endurance – it is great to know that you descend from such heroes!

 

Third, it’s a memory of behaviors to emulate and behaviors to avoid.  Unity led them to victories; infighting almost destroyed them and greatly impoverished the final outcome esp. in regards of how many territories became free initially.  We are small communities in a huge land in the midst of multiple influences and cultural pressures that threaten to assimilate us.  Unity will preserve us, dissension will destroy us.  We are family to each other; we should care for one another as for family.  We can debate issues that concern us without allowing personal factors to get in the way of seeking the common good.  

 

Fourth: we carry the Orthodox Faith that defined us as a nation. Those fighters, those martyrs fought and died “for the holy faith of Christ, and for the freedom of the fatherland”, in that order of importance.  No matter how confused modern Greeks are about their relationship with the Faith, influenced as they are by Western secular thought, the fact remains that that Faith made us who we are.  However, the Orthodox Christian message can’t be seen as our exclusive privilege, or as something to be closed in a reliquary and just to be preserved.  This Orthodox faith is the only genuine way for man to relate to God, it is the hope of the world.  It should be spread, and offered to anybody who seeks it, so that the world may live.  This is the role of modern Hellenism, this is our role here.  Each of us came to this land for various personal reasons.  Yet no human act is outside the eye and the plan of God.  I believe that God has planted us on this continent so that the treasure of faith that our ancestors died and suffered for may become known to our fellow-Americans, so that the world may live. 

 

We can only spread what we have first understood, appreciated, and lived in our own lives.  Let us then take our faith seriously, study it, experience it for our sake and for the sake of the people around us. 

 

Hellenism was glorified whenever it opened up and gave the world something the world needed – look at the Hellenistic times after Alexander the Great.  This is our turn to make Hellenism great in the world.  How? By opening up and offering the world our most treasured possession – Orthodox Christianity. 

~Written by Dr. George Marinidies and presented during the Greek Independence Day celebrations 2008

April 1st

April Fool’s Day? No. Today is the Feast Day of St. Mary of Egypt and the 15th anniversary of the day I found the lump in my neck that turned out to be stage II cancer- Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. It is so hard to believe 15 years has passed. Fifteen years ago Fr. and I were just 2 days engaged and I was being sent for an x-ray. Fifteen years later we have been married 13 1/2 years are the parents of 4 healthy children, Fr. has served 4 parishes in two countries and has been a priest  11+ years. Where does the time go? Fifteen years cancer free, hard to believe but I am so grateful. Today is always an emotional day.  I am forever thankful for the prayers of St. Mary of Egypt and the power of the Holy Spirit,  who protected me and sent me to the doctor  after my  8am German history lecture at the University of Cincinnati instead of for a manicure to compliment my recently received engagement ring. I am forever grateful to Christ, who healed me, for the monastery of St. John the Baptist in Essex, England who prayed for me, for my friends and family who were there for me,  for my doctors – Dr. Michael Neuss, oncology nurse- Arleen Schumann and Dr. Robert Caldemeyer, and especially my mother who held it all together and handed me each and every pill for a year. I was so loopy from all the meds and crazy in love that I could have never kept track of all those pills, appointment, surgeries, scans, chemotherapy, radiation etc. without my mom. Thank you to my mom and thank you to my then fiance who flew back and forth from London, England- 8 times in one year and thank you to my dad who saved me from a  year of wedding planning when he agreed we should just go to Greece and be married- that was a glorious decision! St. Mary of Egypt, pray to God for all of us! May God grant us at least another 15 years of of good health and blessings!

Icon of Saint Mary of Egypt, surrounded by scenes from her life (17th century, Beliy Gorod).

St. Mary of Egypt

April  1st and the  Fifth Sunday of Great Lent – St. Mary of Egypt lived between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6th. She was a prostitute in Alexandria, and decided to join a pilgrimage sailing to the Holy Land, knowing that even holy pilgrims can be tempted. When they arrived in Jerusalem, she went with the pilgrims to visit the Church of the Resurrection on the feast of the Holy Cross, but she was unable to enter the doors of the church, as though an invisible hand was pushing her away. She tried four times to get in, but every time was prevented. Finally she began to realize how her sinful life was keeping her away from God. She saw the icon of the Mother of God above the doors of the church, and began to pray, weeping bitterly, repenting of her sins, and vowing to go wherever Christ might lead her if only she would be able to enter the church. Then she was allowed to go in. She fell at the feet of the Lord on the Holy Cross, realizing how God accepts true repentance. Returning to pray again in front of the icon of the Theotokos, she heard a voice tell her, “Cross the Jordan and you will find peace.” So she walked all day, till she came to the place on the Jordan River where John had baptized Jesus. In the church she received Holy Communion, then went into the desert to live as a hermit. For 47 years she lived in the desert, seeing no human beings and suffering horrible temptations as she tried to make up for the evil deeds of her early life. One year, during Great Lent, Father Zossima, a priest-monk from one of the monasteries of Palestine went out into the desert to fast and pray, as was the custom. He met Mary, hardly recognizing her as a woman or as a person at all. She asked his blessing and told her story, then asked him to return the next year to bring her Holy Communion, which she had not received all the time she was in the desert. The next year he returned, and brought her the Holy Body and Blood of the Lord. She went back into the desert and asked him to come again the next year. When he returned, he found her lying dead and a note she had written in the dirt. It said that she had died there immediately after receiving the Holy Eucharist the year before. Father Zossima prayed over her body and tried to dig a grave in which to bury her. But he had only a stick of wood and the ground was very hard. Exhausted, he sat down to rest. When he looked up, he saw a big lion licking the saint’s feet. Despite his fear, he approached the lion and found that it was friendly. The lion dug the grave with his powerful paws, and Fr Zossima buried St Mary there. The lion went peacefully into the desert and Fr Zossima returned to his monastery, where he told the story of St Mary of Egypt. It touched all of the monks in their hearts, so they kept her memory out of respect for her and out of love for God. Father Zossima died in the monastery when he was nearly 100 years old.

The Life of St Mary of Egypt is often read together with portions of the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete.