“Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them,

and they that are great exercise authority upon them.

But it shall not be so among you:

but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister;

And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant:

Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto,

but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:25-28, KJV)

The word the Athenians used for their Assembly was Ekklesia, the same word used in the New Testament for Church
(and it is the greatest philological irony in all of Western history that this word,
which connoted equal participation in all deliberation by all members,
came to designate a kind of self-perpetuating, self-protective Spartan gerousia -
which would have seemed patent nonsense to Greek-speaking Christians of New Testament times,
who believed themselves to be equal members of their Assembly.)

- Thomas Cahill, Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter



ΦΙΛΟΤΙΜΟ: THE GREEK SECRET

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Do We Really Need These Confrontational Messages?

Today’s Sunday’s bulletin “The Word” had the following message:

"XRONIA POLLA! MANY YEARS! May PROPHET ELIAS, whose memory we commemorate today, intercede for our parish and all our parishioners, as we gather to celebrate the name day of our Prophet Elias parish. [Emphasis added.] FYI: It is Prophet Elias whose intercession we seek in times of drought or too much rain, and also for problems with hernias."

Over the last week we have been pondering the following:

We have been advised by Mr. Floor and have been assured about rumors at the Clergy-Laity Convention!

We have seen the agenda of this year’s Clergy Laity Convention; it appears to be contradictory to Mr. Floor’s comforting (!) message on rumor-spreading.

Today we see the editor of the Sunday Bulletin telling us that there is a separate Prophet Elias parish. Apparently it is a fait accompli to those in the know.

Can somebody in authority tell the rest of us what is going on? Maybe there is a comforting answer. Maybe we ought not to know.

Nick J. Colessides

Posted by TOCB Moderator at 9:41 PM

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