Celebrating Palm Sunday at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Shrine, Flushing
By Catherine Tsounis
“If you lose Faith, you lose it all,” Eleanor Roosevelt, American diplomat and former First Lady of the USA.
Three liturgies from 6 A.M. till Noon were celebrated on April 13th, Palm Sunday at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church Shrine Church at 196-10 Northern Blvd., Flushing, New York. A packed church with standing room only made this a religious event to remember. Rev. Economos Aristidis Garinis presided over his first Easter service as Protopresbyter (First Priest). Retired priest Rev Paul Palesty, who served the community as protopresbyter for 27 years and Rev. Alexandros Douvres celebrated the service in the liturgies.
I attended the second service at 8:45 a.m. The parish council with volunteers managed the crowds efficiently. Michael Giannakos, whose family is from Parakalamos, a village in Pogoni, Ioannina, Epirus captured outstanding videos and photographs Mr. Giannakos has volunteered for many years with the unknown unsung volunteers in the background, creating an atmosphere of faith and safety.
The date for Easter was set at the Council of Nicaea at 325 A.D. It falls on the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, which is the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. Orthodox Easter often differs from Western Christian Easter because the Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar, while Western churches follow the Gregorian calendar.1 This year in 2025, all Christian faiths celebrate Ester Together in harmony and unity.
Why is this important? Warren Treadgold, Byzantine scholar, explained “Ever since a population exchange in 1923 removed most of the Greeks from Turkey, few people have spoken Greek outside Greece and Cyprus. Yet a patriarch of Constantinople remains in Turkish Istanbul as head of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Eastern Orthodoxy remains the majority faith not only in Greece and Cyprus but in Russia, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and Belarus. Eastern Orthodox Christians remain significant minorities in Albania, Syria, and Lebanon–and in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Most Armenians and many Egyptians and Ethiopians remain Eastern Christians without formally belonging to Eastern Orthodoxy. All of these groups have inherited much of their culture from Byzantium.,, If Byzantium had a strong sense of superiority over its neighbors, it usually did surpass them in wealth, political and military organization, literacy, and scientific and philosophical knowledge.. While Byzantium’s complacency and lack of aggressiveness may have contributed to its fall after 1,168 years, that was nonetheless more than five times as long as the United States has lasted so far.”2
References
1. https://www.calendardate.com/
2. ia902307.us.archive.org/4/
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