February 6, 2021
As a brilliant revelator of wisdom, you have been shown forth as the front-line defender of Orthodoxy, O great Photios, adornment of the Fathers…
(Apolytikion of Saint Photios, Patriarch of Constantinople)
To the Most Reverend Hierarchs, the Reverend Priests and Deacons, the Monks and Nuns, the Presidents and Members of the Parish Councils of the Greek Orthodox Communities, the Distinguished Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Day, Afternoon, and Church Schools, the Philoptochos Sisterhoods, the Youth, the Hellenic Organizations, and the entire Greek Orthodox Family in America,
Beloved Brethren in the Lord,
Our annual celebration of the great and holy Patriarch Photios is an occasion to remember the Saint who presided in love on the First Throne of Orthodoxy, and whose mission to bring the Faith of Christ to the world was one of the most ambitious and successful in history. The Slavic Peoples are forever in debt to him for his vision, courage, an