Archives for May 2017

(Supreme Court of Cassation)

The resurrection of Christ is not a simple thing. It is the most complex, precisely because it is the culmination of our life and nothing can be compared to it, as no other element on earth can be compared in value with our natural life itself. And this is what we all know about our personal experience. This is the content of the Sacred Texts, the Gospels, and all the books of the New Testament.

Everything is written and immortalized for 2,000 years to teach us how to understand the Resurrection, but also the way we have to go to get there.

For that’s when there is meaning in our lives, our daily life, and our future life. This was the reason why apostle Paul raised the issue of the resurrection of Christ to our ancient ancestors in Athens, in order to indicate to them a new way of approaching the presence of the living God by not repeating old forms but by starting a new individual and personal course of life, which may have a starting point, but not a finish line. On the contrary, assimilated to the resurrection of Christ, it is enriched in intensity and content by the presence of God in everyday life, and this results in increasing rather than decreasing, as unfortunately happens in our natural life.

(Supreme Court of Cassation)

It is obvious that, especially for the modern Greek believers of the resurrected Christ, what was said in Arios Pagos and the conditions under which they were said, have substantial content. Not only because of the aspects of faith that are highlighted, and we may have not noticed otherwise, but also because there, in Arios Pagos, there are clarified critical issues of relations between the two worlds, the Greek and the Judaic.

At this meeting, for the first time, the word of the Resurrection is heard and for the first time the “audience” hears in their own cultural environment the occurrence of the Resurrection, not with the mantle of Jewish historical tradition but with the power of endless life. This brings the “audience” – even today – into confusion and responsibility. Confusion because the fact of the resurrection, though prophesied, does not spring naturally through tradition, is not imposed on the coreligionistic and does not encompass forcefully all the people who participate in this tradition.

Responsibility, because faith in Resurrection is transferred from collective to individual, from the nation to a natural person, like you and me, and we accept and follow or reject and depart with the corresponding consequences in our personal life.

(Supreme Court of Cassation)

After 2000 years, it is obvious that Arios Pagos is a symbol; a symbol of strong content and lasting, eternal character and meaning. For the Greeks, Arios Pagos may be a place in the center of Athens, next to the Acropolis and the Temple of Hephaestus, but for all of humanity it remains a symbol of special importance, that must be understood. The meeting of two civilizations, Jewish and Ancient Hellenic, did not take place in Arios Pagos with the visit of the apostle Paul. It is known that Jewish people and Jewish Synagogues already existed in Athens, and therefore one culture knew the existence of the other and coexisted.

The new element that Apostle Paul brought on that day to Arios Pagos was not the Jewish religion, but the resurrection of Christ, and the power that raised Jesus. This was the message, not the replacement of Ancient Greek religion with the Jewish one.

The new wine made by apostle Paul in Arios Pagos was not intended to turn the Greek people into Jews, to repeat what they had done in their own past, but was intended to bring the personal and highly individual element of repentance to the center of every human being . An element that would contribute to the renewal of the perspective of life and not to the destruction of the past.

The position of Arios Pagos is between the Acropolis and Thissio, in the center of Athens, in one of the most famous places in the world, because that is where a meeting took place, which is known to have influenced human history, as far as we know it.

In Arios Pagos, the apostle Paul met the spirit of ancient Greece, a spirit that was cultivating its thought and the search for the truth for centuries. The time was not accidental, because the conditions were mature for a substantial change in the religious practice of the ancient Greeks, who continued to sacrifice animals to the gods of Olympus.

The message that Apostle Paul brought on that day to Arios Pagos was the message of resurrection, not as a philosophical parameter, but as a practice of releasing power that relieves people of the fear of death.

Although the ancient Greeks knew and cultivated to a high degree the thought from which measurable results are produced in everyday life, however, the dimension of the resurrection and the power that caused it was outside of their own agenda, precisely because it presupposes the existence and cultivation of faith to a god who does not have needs, but has the supplies, his gifts to his creations for the temporary earthly but also the eternal afterlife.