On Palm Sunday, April 28, 2024, His Eminence Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden and All Scandinavia presided over the Divine Liturgy at the St. George Cathedral of Stockholm, assisted by the V. Rev. Archimandrites Sosipatros Stefanoudis and Bartholomew Iatridis, during which he ordained the Rev. Deacon George Arvanitidis to the priesthood.
The candidate for ordination, after glorifying the Triune God, thanked Metropolitan Cleopas for his paternal love, support and care toward him and his family, adding that he considered it a special honor and blessing to be ordained as a Presbyter on this solemn day of our Lord’s entry into the Holy City, which also marked his own entry into the Holy of Holies.
In his response, Metropolitan Cleopas began by noting the importance of Palm Sunday in the life of the Church, while also offering paternal words to Father George, pointing out that: “on this joyous Palm Sunday, the All-Holy Spirit, which conducts the sacraments, has deemed us worthy to celebrate your ordination to the Priesthood today.
I am certain that at this very moment of your ordination, you will feel the tongues of fire that appeared on the day of Pentecost descending upon your heart and soul. You will feel the breath of the Holy Spirit, calling you to serve, sing praises, and glorify God.
Soon, we will call upon the Holy Martyrs and we will glorify Christ, the head of this celebration, the exultation of the Apostles and Martyrs, the reason for triumph and victory crowns. We will proclaim the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity. You will walk around the Holy Altar three times, led by your brother priests.
All of us who serve the Church minister to the people and celebrate the sacrament of their healing, salvation, and union with Christ. Your work is to bring the problems and needs of the people into the midst of the Church and strengthen them. Do not forget that the Lord’s prayer begins with the words ‘Our Father,’ and not ‘My Father.’
A Christian life is genuine when we love the cross more than we love our comforts, when we love the struggle more than the victory, when we experience the Kingdom of God as more real than the events of history, when our faith is stronger than our rationality, when we discern the truth more through the Sacraments than the things we can rationally comprehend, when we are more prayerful and less pensive during difficulties, when we ascertain that grace is more effective than the strength of our individual struggle, and when our brethren are closer to us than our very selves.
Hold the love of God and not the views of people as your criterion and guide, and do not heed the pettiness of hypocrites or the excessive fanaticism of those who twist the faith.
I pray that you may always walk on the path of the Resurrection, on your personal and familial journey to Emmaus. Stand before the Holy Altar and experience the reality that the Lord is present on the Holy Diskarion and that His Most Precious Blood is inside the Holy Chalice, so that you may undergo transformation through divine Grace.
Be eternally grateful to God for choosing you to minister to Him, and to your brother clergymen, who serve in our parishes with devotion, here at the far end of Europe, and they shall support you, together with our faithful people.
We all pray that the feeling of joy inside you today will grow day by the day and blossom into a lifetime of responsibility and voluntary self-sacrifice in the Risen Christ.”
The hymns were chanted by the Cathedral Byzantine choir.
A reception followed at a local restaurant, hosted by the family of the newly ordained clergyman.
