His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros
Closing Remarks Philoptochos Virtual National Board Meeting
June 20, 2020
New York, New York
Your Grace,
Beloved Sisters in Christ,
Today we attained a new and special connection to one another – as real and human as it was virtual. Your devotion to the Church is truly an inspiration to me personally and to the whole Body of the Church.
Whether as natural mothers, adoptive mothers, godmothers, or spiritual mothers who mentor others, you have demonstrated a capacity for nurturing and nourishing the Body of Christ. For this, I bless each and every one of you.
In the Church, where the clergy is male and hierarchical in structure, we sometimes forget that the only image of the sacrifice of the Cross that our Lord ever used was that of a woman giving birth. He said:
When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has brought forth the child, she no longer remembers her distress because of her joy that a human being is born into the world. [*]
So here we are, in many labors to bring about better lives for our fellow human beings. And like the Lord on the morning of the Resurrection when He put aside the pain of Golgotha, we also will put aside the difficulties of these days.
The most important thing of all is that we shall do so knowing in our hearts that we gave all that we could, stood in the breach for our fellow human beings, and made the lives of others better without asking anything in return.
May the Lord grant that we shall always be so minded, and that we may bring every day the presence of His Kingdom to our suffering world.
Amen.
[*] John 16:21.
