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The Parish of St. Andrew and St. John the Baptist Mesa Geitonia Tel. 00357-25722762 Fax: 00357-25720897 email: andreas@mesageitonias.com |
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THE CHAPEL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST
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OUR PARISH
From the beginning, one of life's basic problems was man's need for personal acquaintance and communication with others. For this reason men always tried to organize their lives in small communities so that they could know each other and help each other, to rejoice together for the joys of life and share in her sorrows.
But the problem of personal communication and heart-to-heart contact between men is not only ecological, but is above all spiritual. Proof of this is the fact that today, in our day and age, when people live in adjoining apartments and live so close to each other, yet actually feel more like strangers and suffer from loneliness that at any other period of time.
The Parish, as an institution within the life of the Church, was established particularly for this reason: to give the faithful the opportunity to get to know and live the Church, not as an impersonal religious establishment, but as a family, as a community of brotherly spiritual love.
And it is understood that Christian love is not so much the love towards strangers or in general mankind, but is chiefly the love towards our neighbour, in other words, towards them with whom we live together in our daily life, as are our family, relatives, our neighbours, our work colleagues, those from our community, etc. In this way the only course of life which Christians lived in the first Christian Communities, when (the heart and soul of the multitude of the faithful was one), is continued to be lived by Christians within the compass of Parish life. Every Sunday and every Feast-day, with the ringing of the Church bells, Christians leave their homes and their everyday chores, they put aside their passions and the personal demands and come to the temple of God to partake in the Divine Liturgy and to live more deeply this relationship which unites them together. Because only the Holy Altar can unite people divided by sin. And with the Bread of Life that she offers them to transform them into one body. It is like the grains of wheat that someone scatters on the plains, which become, with the kneading of the dough, the bread that we eat.
With the heart-moving services, the preaching of God's word, the weekly talks and the catechetical meetings, the Holy Scripture gatherings, the works of charity with so many other beautiful manifestations of love, our Parish is truly an inexhaustible spiritual fountain which irrigates with the waters of truth and the beauty of Christian life, the hearts of the people of this community.
Therefore we all have a duty and obligation to love our Parish and to participate and contribute, each in his own way, in the common responsibility for the growth and progress of the divine work that it executes.
Because above all, our Parish safeguards faithfully the authenticity of the Christian Gospel, exactly as Christ taught.
There is no doubt that the Parish is the nucleus of the spiritual life of our Church. And if today there is a hope for the rebirth of our ecclesiastical life, then this hope cannot find support anywhere else, but in the rebirth of the Parish. From this point of view, we believe that our Parish, with the blessing of His Eminence, our Metropolitan Bishop Athanasius, has at its disposal a praiseworthy and commendable potential, which if cultivated and appropriately put to good use, will bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Suffice for us to all desire and all to help.
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