Maria Aroni: The 75 Year Old Vigilant Guardian at the Grave of Archbishop Christodoulos

Maria Aroni is a 75 year old woman who daily visits the grave of the late Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece at the First Cemetery of Athens. Every day she cleans and washes the grave with perfume, then she stands a few feet away all day long. She does this because she will never forget what he did for her, and her gratitude extends to the daily upkeep and guarding of his grave after his death. "I want to be with him. I receive strength from him and with my thoughts of him," she says.

The Last Christmas Message of the Late Archbishop Christodoulos of Greece

A Christmas Message from Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece

Delivered on December 20, 2007

My beloved children,

"TODAY A SAVIOR IS BORN TO YOU." This phrase, which the Angel addressed to the shepherds of Bethlehem on the night of the Nativity, I fear that we have heard so many times that it no longer has a strong impression on us. Nevertheless the Church does not tire of repeating it and today she invites all of us, we the people of the 21st century, to receive our Savior, there in the manger of Bethlehem, God who was incarnate out of love, in our hearts, in our homes, in our cities, in our nations. Everywhere.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy - Jubilee Speech of Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens

Jubilee Speech

SUNDAY OF ORTHODOXY

(19 March 2000)

Sermon of His Beatitude,
Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and all Greece

In all the nations for His Name

"The annual rendering of thanks due unto God, on which day we received the Church of God, together with the delivery of the doctrines of piety and the overthrow of the teachings of wickedness."

Your Excellency, Mr. President of the Hellenic Republic,

FESTIVE AND JOYOUS indeed is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, as we celebrate this Jubilee year of the 2000th year from the Birth of Jesus Christ, a celebration which adorns the Church with a yet more radiant splendour. We recall struggles and agonies, passions and hatred, exiles and persecutions, aspirations and degradations, magnanimity and pettiness -that amalgam of human actions, which passing through the "scheming of evildoers" (Ps. 63:3) has shaped the historic face of the Church. God's saints giving witness to their faith," conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises & destitute, afflicted, ill-treated & others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment & wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth" according to St Paul's characteristic description in his epistle to the Hebrews (11:33-39).