Archbishop Elpidophoros HC/HC Paterexhortatory Graduation Address, May 17, 2025, Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, Massachusetts 

His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America

HC/HC Paterexhortatory Graduation Address 

May 17, 2025 

Hellenic College Holy Cross 

Brookline, Massachusetts 

President Katos, 

Your Eminences and Graces, 

  Members of the Board of Trustees, 

Faculty and Administration, Clergy and Laity, 

Graduates of 2025, your families and friends, 

Sisters and Brothers in the Risen Lord, 

Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη! 

Christ is Risen! 

Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη! 

What a marvelous day this is for you and your families! The entire Hellenic College and Holy Cross Community is gathered to offer its congratulations and blessings to you, the Graduates, for the achievements you have attained. 

It is a tradition that as Archbishop I offer you a Paternal Exhortation, a message of encouragement and inspiration, which would hopefully spur you on in your service to Christ and His Holy Church. 

However, today I would offer something different – a challenge rather than an exhortation. For we live in challenging times and the Church must rise to these challenges. 

My challenge to you – all of the graduates – wherever your life’s journey leads you from this day forward – is for you to take responsibility for how our Holy Orthodox Christian Faith is perceived in the world around us. 

Enormous advances in technology, the advent of Artificial Intelligence, and the ease with which just about anyone can pump content out into the ether – where it can be consumed without guidance, without perspective, and without wisdom – might be the greatest challenge to our Faith of this new era. 

At the beginning of the Third Millennium of our Church, we see more and more self-appointed and self-described so-called “teachers” of Orthodoxy, whose relationship with their audience is almost entirely virtual. And when I say virtual, I mean in a vacuum, void of true relationality. 

Think for a moment of the motto of this School: Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, and the conclusion of this most elegant and profound verse: 

… καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος.¹ 

I know that it is always translated as “and the Word was with God,” but the Greek, πρὸς, points to something much deeper – not merely adjacent – but  something relational, as in Person to Person. 

This bears witness to a fundamental truth of our Faith – that it is transmitted personally, in relationships that are built on both the experience of the “other,” and the embodiment of the grace and virtue of God in a lived and lively way. 

There can be no substitute for this relationality. It cannot be supplanted by an ersatz virtual field of zeroes and ones. No matter the advantages that our technology affords us in daily chores, it cannot replace the concrete person-to-person encounter that leads to the communion of persons in the Divine Presence. Hence, our Lord told His Disciples: 

Οὗ γάρ εἰσι δύο ἢ τρεῖς συνηγμένοι εἰς τὸ ἐμὸν ὄνομα, ἐκεῖ εἰμι ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν.  

For where there are two or three gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them.² 

I know there are times when the Zoom call is convenient, perhaps even necessary. I have many of them, more than I ever imagined. But nothing substitutes for the face-to-face meeting where a true encounter can occur. Where the kiss of peace can be exchanged. Where the embrace of brother for brother, and sister for sister, can be experienced. When the Lord healed, He did by His word and by His touch. We Orthodox, who proclaim the Incarnation as much as the Resurrection, must not be enfeebled by a virtual version of the Faith that was once delivered to the Saints.³ 

And so, my dear Graduates, my challenge to you is this: 

Be authentic and faithful to the Gospel as we have received it. 

Be genuine in your connections to others. 

And be relentless in fostering the person-to-person relationships that build up the Church. Don’t engage or promote the Babel of confusion that is broadcast through digital technologies. 

We are faced with real decisions for our future. Practically all of us employ Social Media to one extent or another, but it is one thing for us to use it, another for it, to use us. Social Media establishes presence in the field, but it is not presence in the hearts of the human person. That can only be conveyed in the encounter – like that of the Elder Symeon and the Infant Lord Jesus in the Temple. 

The Gospel says that Symeon: 

… ἐδέξατο αὐτὸν εἰς τὰς ἀγκάλας αὐτοῦ…. 

… he received Him in his enfolding arms….⁴ 

My dear graduates: this is embodied Faith. This is faith that magnifies the Incarnation of the Word of God, the Second Person of the All Holy Trinity. You can see a Eucharist on your television or computer screen, but you cannot receive the Eucharist through them. You can hear a teaching or preaching on a podcast or YouTube, but you cannot feel the resonance of the one doing so; neither can you enter into a dialectic of wisdom, as the Lord did with His Disciples through His parables. 

And what is, in my opinion, the worst case scenario – although it is very difficult to de-personalize someone face-to-face, you can too easily dehumanize them on a webcast from a lonely basement. And that is what we are witnessing every day in our society. 

Dear Graduates: you came to this Institution, to this Holy Hill to learn the things of God. And you have done well – so well that you are being acknowledged today at this Commencement. 

Do not forget your gatherings of two or three in His Holy Name. Do not give in to the temptation to spout off opinion without a real connection to others. 

And do not forget that to be people of the truth, of ἀ-λήθεια, we commit to remember the teachings of our Master and Lord, and to fulfill them in our lives. 

Therefore, I commend you to the grace and strength of God – to go forth from this place and to meet the challenge of authenticity and credibility in a world that seems to have forsaken truth for the sake of convenient falsehoods. 

But we are Orthodox Christians. Stand in that tradition and be proud. Like the Apostles and Martyrs. Like the Saints and Ascetics. Like the Holy Fathers and Mothers. Like the Luminaries and Teachers of the Church. Taking responsibility for your faith, and sharing it with love, with generosity, and with fidelity. May the Lord always bless you to meet this challenge. Go forth in peace! Χριστὸς Ἀνέστη! Christ is Risen! 

¹ John 1:1.
² Matthew 18:20.
³ Cf. Jude 3.
⁴ Luke 2:28.