“Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted,
and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered:
they trusted in thee, and were not confounded”
(Psalm 22.4)
Dear children in the Lord,
“Today is the crowning of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery which is from eternity”. The Orthodox Church celebrates the Annunciation of the Mother of God and the entire Hellenism, within and outside Greece, honours the bicentenary of the outset of the Great Greek Revolution of 1821.
Despite the difficult conditions and the sanitary restrictions, all of us Greeks are invited to pray unitedly to our Lady, Mother of God, the Defender General of our Nation, to thank her for the event of salvation, which our Lord Jesus Christ grants us through her, as well as for the freedom of our Fatherland and the success of the national Struggle. At the same time, we are invited to beseech her, so that she may intercede to her Son so that we may soon be relieved of the trials and tribulations of the pandemic, which plagues the entire mankind.
Today is a day of Memory, Honour and Hope. A day of commemoration of Saints, Neomartyrs, National Martyrs, Heroes, Fighters, Teachers of the Nation, clergy and lay persons, men and women who gave up everything for the Fatherland.
We remember those who paved the ground. Those who safeguarded Faith, language, and national consciousness. Those who cultivated the combative ethos. Those who kept the fire of hope burning. We remember the words of Saint Cosmas the Aetolian, Apostle of our Nation, who taught that the outcome desired (i.e. liberation) would come, provided that we kept our Christian faith and Greek language and learning.
We honour the Fighters of the numerous pre-revolutionary movements. The men and women who fell in the struggles during 400 years for Southern and 500 for Northern Greece. We honour the modesty and combativeness of the members of the Society of Friends (“Filiki Etairia” in Greek), who launched their bold endeavour on the very day of the feast of the Cross on September 14, 1814, and organized the National Uprising in secrecy and wisdom, despite the negative international environment. We honour all those who spilled their blood in the battles, sieges, and naval combats of the Greek Revolution. We honour the victims of Holocausts and of the massacres in Naoussa, Hios, Cyprus, Kydonies, Missolonghi and throughout Hellenism.
We hope and entertain a vision. We hope that Greece may remain free of any form of oppression and threat, relying upon the Holy Faith of Christ and the democratic principles and values. We desire the peaceful living together with all the peoples of the Earth, but are not ready to relinquish our national rights. We must safeguard all that was obtained by our ancestors with their blood, so that the Greece we shall hand down to the generations to come may be safe and capable of highlighting its rich and living cultural heritage.
We are therefore invited to proceed with hope for the future, conscious of the fact that the future is what gives essential meaning to what transpired before. A future which reveals the presence of God in our lives. Our forefathers, in 1821, would not have succeeded in any one of their fights without faith in this living presence of the truly Living God.
The day of the Annunciation, which signifies so much for the brilliant future of the course of man towards the end times, had been chosen by the Society of Friends as early as October 1820 for the uprising in the Peloponnese and other parts of Hellenism. Many of the protagonists confirm this in their writings, with the most telling account being that of Theodoros Kolokotronis in his “Narration of Events of the Greek Race”. Those who prepared the Revolution wished to connect their Fight for the freedom of the Fatherland with the Orthodox faith and life, and the person of the All-Holy Virgin with their salvation. Indeed, in the third year of the Struggle, on January 30, 1821, the All-Holy Virgin sent them the message that the Struggle would be crowned with success. It was at exactly that time that an icon of the Annunciation of the Mother of God was miraculously found on the island of Tinos, following a tip by a nun by the name of Pelaghia, already a Saint of our Church.
Blessed children of our Church,
Having in our minds all that has been stated above, let us contemplate the future with optimism. May the 25th of March 2021 become the starting point and the springboard of a new course regarding our relation to our Nation and Fatherland. Let us endeavour to combine our Christian Tradition and historical continuity with the needs of modern times. And let us carefully re-read the popular wisdom of General Ioannis Makriyannis, who summarises the meaning of the Struggle in his account of a brief discussion with the French Admiral de Rigny before the battle against Ibrahim Pasha in Myloi of Argolis:
“As I was fixing the positions, in Myloi, Dernys [i.e. Count Henri de Rigny] came to see me. He tells me: “What are yoy doing here? These positions are weak, what kind of war are you going to wage with Braimis [i.e. Ibrahim Pasha] here? I tell him: “The positions are weak and so are we. But God who protects us is strong…”.
We may be weak, but our God is strong, is what Makryiannis teaches. We too feel and are weak, but, with faith in God, awareness of our history, and hope for the Life that comes from the future, we shall become stronger to address difficulties!
Dear children in the Lord,
To us Orthodox, this steady orientation of history towards the future is what transforms and gives real meaning to the present time. It constitutes an answer to the issue of death and this is why it was reflected to the point in an unrivalled manner in the ever relevant revolutionary battle cry of the Fighters of 1821 “Freedom or Death”. The belief that history proceeds not by returning to a perfect past but to an eschatological future which awaits it and whose memory it cannot undo, was what kept our ancestors unbowing for 400 years under the Ottoman yoke.
Freeing oneself of any form of secular slavery presupposes the belief that the past cannot determine man. Pursuant to the life and faith of our Church, only the future can determine man. Besides, this is also the meaning of Repentance.
Many happy returns, in freedom, repentance, joy, and hope for the era to come!
† Ι Ε R O Ν Υ Μ Ο S of Athens, President
† Iakovos of Mytileni, Eressos and Plomarion
† Demetrios of Goumenissa, Axioupolis and Polykastron
† Panteleimon of Veroia, Naoussa and Campania
† Damaskenos of Didymoteichon, Orestias and Souflion
† Andreas of Dryinoupolis, Pogoniani and Konitsa
† Panteleimon of Xanthi and Peritheorion
† Kallinikos of Arta
† Athenagoras of Ilion, Aharnai and Petroupolis
† Dionysios of Zakynthos
† Kyrillos of Kefissia, Amaroussion and Oropos
† Gabriel of Nea Ionia, Philadelphia, Irakleion and Halkidon
† Antonios of Glyfada, Ellinikon, Voula, Vouliagmeni and Vari
The Chief Secretary
† Philotheos of Oreoi
