Ordination

On Saturday 6 May, College student Panteleimon Toumbelekis was ordained to the holy priesthood by His Eminence Archbishop Makarios of Australia at the Greek Orthodox Church of St Gerasimos (Leichhardt, NSW). In his guiding speech to the newly ordained priest, His Eminence emphasised that Christ with his Resurrection offered man the possibility of restoration, pointing out that this restoration “is not transferred exclusively for the hereafter, for the End Times”, but “this change of the inner man, the ‘good alteration’, the beginning of our salvation is here in this present life and remains to be completed in the Kingdom of God”. He recalled, moreover, the example of the Apostle Paul, who, from a terrible persecutor of the Church, became the most ardent preacher of the Gospel, and pointed out that the only explanation for this fundamental conversion was his meeting with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus. Based on this, he invited the ordinand to walk, observing the proportions, to meet the Risen Lord: “This is the path for every Christian, according to his gifts and his inclinations. Your vocation is the path of the holy priesthood, which you must perceive as a path of meeting the Risen Lord, to which you must invite as many fellow travellers as you can. This is your ministry, through the priesthood to lead the faithful, whom the Church entrusts to you, to the meeting with the Risen Christ”. Fr Panteleimon had been ordained to the holy diaconate by His Eminence on 23 April, and is now the newly appointed parish priest of the Church of St Gerasimos. He and his Presbytera Metaxia are blessed with two young children.