On Wednesday, March 24, 2021, at 12h00 the long-established event for the feast of the 25th of March was carried out online, broadcast from the Great Hall of the Hierarchy of the Synodic Palace for the employees of the services of the Holy Synod, the Apostolic Diakonia, and the Central Financial Services of the Church of Greece.
The event was opened by His Grace Bishop Philotheos of Oraioi, Chief Secretary of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, who emphasized the perennial nature of the event in question and its particular significance this year because of the bicentenary of the declaration of the Greek Revolution of 1821.
Subsequently, the solemn address of the day was delivered by Very Rev. Archimandrite, Father Vartholomaios Antoniou-Triantaphyllidis, Secretary of the Special Synodic Committee on Cultural Identity, who stated the following, inter alia :
“The message of the Annunciation opens up a door to a different contemplation of ourselves. The truth of freedom becomes communicable. […]
In my humble view, the theological content of the Exodus of the Free Besieged of 1821 consists in the fact that the course of the Turkish Rule relied on the everyday anticipation of the Annunciation, with the sacrificial experience of this tradition, Lent and Resurrection, deep in the conscience of our nation, which, united, lived the Lent of slavery and the Passover of Revolution, as a historical prefiguration. […]
The people of the Orthodox Church, the indomitable enslaved Orthodox Greek Nation sacrificed themselves, with the 11 Martyr Patriarchs of the Nation first. It is worth noting that the martyr’s death of Patriarch Saint Gregorios V was of paramount importance to the Struggle and set numerous developments in motion towards the outcome of the Revolution. Moreover, over 100 Prelates, over 6,000 clergymen and monks and with them tens of thousands of faithful Orthodox Christians fought and sacrificed themselves, throwing themselves at a National Struggle for their freedom, for the holy faith of Christ and the freedom of the Fatherland”.
The event was declared closed by His Grace Bishop Philotheos of Oraioi, who conveyed the blessings of His Beatitude Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece, President of the Holy Synod, both to the speaker and all those watching online.
Moreover, regarding the choice of the Fighters to launch the Greek Revolution on March 25, 1821, on the same day as the feast of the Annunciation of the Mother of God, His Grace stated that “they wished thus to demonstrate that God was indeed with them. A God who is a living God. A God who fights constantly for His creatures. A God who stands by their just struggles. […]”. With reference to the prefiguration of the Old Testament highlighted by the speaker, he pointed out that “they manifest the struggle of the people of God, at each time, to proceed from slavery to freedom. But let us ponder on the fact that this is the course of the entire human race: of each one of us individually and all those who constitute the new people of God, the new Israel”.
In closing, he emphasized that “we celebrate not our glorious past but the Heroes of the Nation who had hope for the future. Indeed, not a future trapped in secular dimensions but in the future of the life of the Kingdom of God. All of us Orthodox know that Life comes from the future and this is what gives us the strength to hope”.
You may watch the event here.
