To the Holy Clergy and the Faithful People of the Holy Metropolis of Attica

Dear Brothers, Children,

Today is the first Sunday of the Great Lent, which is dedicated to the triumph of our Holy Orthodoxy against its miscellaneous enemies, who have been fighting it violently from the first Christian centuries till today.

      Now, we bow piously the heroic defenders of the Orthodox Faith and we recall their struggles and sacrifices with deep emotion and admiration.

      However, beyond that recall and honor, what prevails is the consciousness of our duty to the Faith, that our Fathers bequeathed us. This duty is tripling: to live with consistence, to defend with self - abnegation and to spread out with fervor the Orthodox Faith to those nations and people, that two thousand years after Christ’s coming to the earth they still have never been aquainted with the Gospel of the Salvation.

      In order to discharge this third duty, the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece devotes the first week of the Great Lent to the External Mission of our Church., in other words to the attempt to spread out the Orthodox Faith to the people in Africa and Asia who never met Christ and who for many years suffered a lot because of colonizationism. Our Church together with the other Churches provides all the necessary means for those people to be educated and developed and to improve their living and cultural standards. It funds the construction of churches, schools, hospitals for them and offers scholarships to their children to study to the Universities of our country. In order to realize its targets this blessed effort needs a lot of material means, which the Orthodox Greek People offer.

      Tackling that chance, our common obligation to support the Orthodox External Mission is reminded, because the aim, which that obligation serves, is great and holy and gives anyone the chance to show his / her love to Orthodoxy in action, completing a part of his / her duties towards it.

      Wishing you a good Great Lent from the bottom of my soul, with all my paternal love and hearty thankfulness,

 

The Metropolitan of Attica Panteleimon