Ordination of a Deacon in Souflitranslated

In the wake of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the Saturday after the Exaltation, September 19th AD, the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Didymoteicho, Orestias and Soufli, Mr. Damascenes officiated at the Holy Metropolitan Church of Agios Georgios in Soufli, where he first performed the Subdeacon ordination and during the Divine Liturgy in to Deacon ordination of Lazaros Doumanidis, native of Soufli, graduate of the Theological School of the University of Thessaloniki.

Addressing the ordained, His Holiness emphasized that the Lord's Cross from being an instrument of death penalty becomes a plank of salvation, as the Lord said: "I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (John 12:47). However, the pre-eternal energy of God for the salvation of the world presupposes sacrifice, emptying, offering. Sacrifice, he continued, is a product of love, because one sacrifices only when one loves. The Cross presupposes love and love is expressed on the Cross. The Cross is the measure of God's love for man. Finally, he noted that the Cross brings man's reconciliation with God, with his fellow man, with the environment and with himself.