Tag Archives: Greece

A Letter from Greece

I have just read your recent posts on the events blog, and I would like to express my gratitude to our Lord who helps you to confess the true Orthodox spirit in such difficult times full of unrest.

In order to give you a glimpse of the “true Orthodox Greece”, that you refer to in one of your quite recent posts (5/12/2014), and not of compromised Greece of bribery, I would like to share with you some recent moments of the life of our Local Church:

1) Tuesday – Wednesday 24-25th of March 2015 | Agia Aikaterini (St. Catherine) parish church, Kastella, Pireus (port of Athens) 20:30 – 01:30: vigil service for the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary (New Calendar), where among the priests serving the holy altar stands hieromonk Gregorios the Athonite, one of the oldest diciples of Saint Paisios the Athonite (since early ’70s or earlier). He is during his annual long visit to his spiritual children in Athens every Lent (he also visits them, as well as other brethren all over Greece and Germany, every May, late July and during the Christmas Fast). Almost all of the latter reunite again, babies, children, adolescents, young adults, adults, elderly people, all faithful spiritual children of Fr. Gregorios for the last four decades are there with their families, sharing the same chalice, the same blessing of the Virgin Mary. It is She whom Fr. Gregorios so vividly honours inside and outside Mt Athos through his exemplary life as a man of constant prayer and through his many books. I was there too with my wife.

2) Saturday 28th of March 2015 | Agios Georgios (St. George) parish church, Dionysos, Attica (at the foot of Penteli Mountain, near Athens) 07:30 – 11:00: Matins and Divine Liturgy for the Saturday of the Akathist in an unusually crowded small church of the early 20th century. Why? Because today is the five-year memorial of the dormition of hieromonk Markos Manolis (16/4/2010). He was one of the most militant adversaries of ecumenism, spiritual leader of “Orthodoxos Typos” newspaper, but above all a true spiritual father and leader of many spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ in villages, towns, hospitals, jails around Athens and in Athens itself. At the end of the Liturgy all in one soul sing “Eternal memory”. A little later a bag is given to everyone as they exit the church containing kolyva and a small book written by Fr. Markos entitled “The Holy Double: humility and love”. Afterwards most of the congregation take part in a common meal organised by the parish in Fr. Markos’ memory in a small house near the church. A couple of priests give short talks about his life and his legacies to our times. There is a strong feeling that Fr. Markos is not dead, but among us! I was there too.

3) Saturday 28th of March 2015 | Holy Monastery of Hosios David of Evia, northern Evia island 07:00 – 11:00: Matins and Divine Liturgy for the Saturday of the Akathist in a unusually crowded monastery up in the mountains. Why? Because today is the three-year memorial of Elder Kyrillos Gerantonis and people from all over Evia, Greece and even abroad gather to commemorate him. Our friend Stratos with his wife Carmen (of Romanian origin) came from Paris just for this day. My wife was there too.

4) Great Wednesday 8th April 2015 | Holy Monastery of Agia Philothei, Ekali, Attica 07:00 – 09:00: Vespers and Divine Liturgy in a quite peaceful central church (katholikon) with a few pilgrims and the heavenly voices of the choir which is comprised of Abbess Agapi (= Love), a couple of nuns and a couple of novices. Only oil lamps and a couple of dim lights behind the iconostasis are seen. A few minutes before the Holy Communion I see a thin stooped figure with a walking stick approaching the icon of the “Nymphios” at the centre of the Church. She is a very old nun with her face hidden moving slowly towards the icon in order to venerate it. Then she takes place next to the choir waiting for Holy Communion. When the time comes she receives the Body and Blood of Christ with great piety right after the Abbess and… steps slowly backwards until she returns to her initial position at the left side of the church. She is always there at every service in spite of her 94 years. As I learned a little later, she is sister Elpida (= Hope).

May you and all your family and parishioners have a blessed Easter full of the light of our Lord.

Dimitrios

The Fate of Christian Europe Hangs in the Balance in Greece

Greece had the misfortune of being the first Orthodox country to be betrayed by its political elite and sold for a mess of pottage to the EU. Current events in Greece point to the fate that awaits all the other Orthodox countries, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Romania and others, which have already taken or still in their folly wish to take, that same path of apostasy. Thus:

Greece’s international creditors are setting it ever more anti-Christian ultimatums: it has been decreed by EU order that priests must no longer visit schools and groups of school pupils have been banned from attending services; Sundays will now be desecrated and businesses opened; priests have lost 20% of their paid leave; the number of ordinations allowed has been cut; the mention of religion has been removed from passports; a mosque must be built in Athens; certain Church properties may be privatised or else auctioned off by order of EU bureaucrats and their atheist quislings in the Greek government; laws on ‘free unions’ and others forbidding ‘insulting language’, the latter including calls to patriotism and quotations from the Gospels, are under discussion.

Little wonder that some bishops are preparing their flock to ‘to resist Antichrist’ in a new wave of persecution. Metropolitan Nicholas of Phtiotidis has spoken clearly of a possible popular revolt. Metropolitan Kosmas has said that if the law on same sex unions is passed, then the people must protest and become confessors of Christ. Like the Patriarchate of Antioch in Syria, today the Church of Greece has to stop compromising the Faith and stand up and be counted. The easy, consumerist times of previous years, when decadent practices were introduced from Western Europe and gradually everything was allowed – the Catholic calendar was introduced, the Liturgy was abbreviated, confession before communion was no longer obligatory, seating was introduced in all the churches, little girls were allowed to serve in the altar – are over. In reality the Church is not Consumerism, for the Church is the ascetic principle, not the rationalist and secularist one.

Greeks are finally waking up to the fact that their obsessive dream of ‘Europe’ has turned out to be a nightmare – just as their ignored monastic elders had forewarned. A wave of new barbarianism, this time of the liberal sort, is unfurling on Greece and massive immigration is destroying what remains of the local, Orthodox way of life and culture. Greece is entering the spiritual winter of Western Europe, as anti-EU Greek politicians are removed by ‘auditors’ from Brussels, Berlin and Paris. Only the Church of Greece remains independent from EU tyranny. Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus has threatened to excommunicate any politician who votes for laws which trample underfoot traditional moral standards. Many Church figures are finally asking that Greece leave the EU. It is no longer an economic struggle, but a spiritual, moral and cultural one.

Resistance now is vital for the future of European history. Given the apostasy of Protestants (and they are often in the forefront of the new decadence in any case) and the open abandonment of the Christian cause by most Roman Catholics (they see the EU has a pro-Cathoolic project and its flag as a Catholic banner), the struggle for Christ against those who are preparing the coming of Antichrist is now concentrated on the Orthodox world. Orthodox resistance to the Babylon of Brussels and its globalist ‘liberal’ project may be severely repressed, individual bishops and theologians may be ‘removed’, using contemporary technological controls. Other Local Orthodox Churches, already compromised by calendar change, should look carefully – they will be next to have to submit to the ‘New World Order’, that is, the restoration of the Old Pagan Order.

Resistance by Greece to the ethnocentric atheism of Western Europe is vital. Geopolitically, Greece is the key. If it falls, then the rest of the Balkans will also fall. And the EU tyrants know this. For if Greece is after all corageous and does choose freedom from the EU, then all the Balkans will also look north to Russia and the developing Eurasian Union, as the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has already pointed out and as was evident when bankrupt Cyprus almost chose Russia instead of the EU to come to its rescue.

Let us pray for courage in the Church of Greece.

Chomsky Says Germany Wants Hold on Greece

http://eu.greekreporter.com/2013/04/10/chomsky-says-germany-wants-hold-on-greece/

MIT Professor and philosopher Noam Chomsky told an audience in Dublin on April 3 in a speech entitled Solidarity and the Responsibility to Protect that he believes Germany wants to impose its will and economic slavery on Greece.

The American linguist, philosopher, political critic and activist said: “There are people in Germany who want to obtain whatever valuable has Greece, imposing conditions of economic slavery and psychological stress to Greeks”.

Chomsky suggested the creation of a common front in Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy in order for the South to put a stop to the “inhuman demands of the North,, while he underlined that now there is a chance for this front to be created, because the anti-German sentiment is high.

Germany is the biggest contributor to $325 billion in two bailouts for Greece to keep the economy from collapsing, but Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted on unrelenting pay cuts, tax and slashed pensions, making her an enemy to many Greeks who have been pushed into poverty as a result.

Chomsky said he believed that Alexis Tsipras, leader of Greece’s major opposition party the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) was correct in his assessment that Greece needed European assistance without harsh conditions and the same kind of help that was given to West Germany in 1953 to help its recovery.

Chomsky also criticized European Central Bank (ECB) chief Mario Draghi and the austerity-only policy of the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-ECB that he said are destroying the social fabric of Greece and other hard-hit EU economies.