Beloved brother in Christ,
Your Eminence Archbishop Spyridon,
Your Eminences, Your Excellencies and Your Graces,
Esteemed President of AHEPA, Mr. Steve Manta,
Esteemed President of the Daughters of Penelope,
Madame Kiki Walker,
Esteemed Chairman of the Board of AHEPA,
Anastasios Jack Georgalas,
Esteemed President of the Sons of Pericles,
Mr. William Gahagan,
Esteemed President of the Maids of Athena,
Miss Anna Kola,
Beloved AHEPA Family,
Mr. Toastmaster Harry Mark Petrakis,
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

We are most pleased and honored to begin our journey to America by joining you this evening in celebrating the AHEPA Family’s seventy-five years of accomplishment and service.  The history of the Greek-American Orthodox community, and of the AHEPA Family, which serves, protects and advances it, is vast and moving journey. And it is appropriate that we celebrate today here in Union Station, an endpoint and a beginning point, a place of journey and passage, a place where families part and where they reunite.

We are also deeply moved by tonight’s presentation of the Socratic Award to our Modesty.  We take special pride in receiving this symbol of the highest ideals of Hellenic Culture, and which bears the name of a Hellene who was called by the fathers of the Church: “a Christian before Christ.”  This award manifests the deep and abiding connection between the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and Hellenic Paideia, which was the instrument of God to universalize the Gospel throughout the Oikoumene.

Let us remember that the Greek Orthodox Faith has always been destined to be shared with all the world, and in that light, let us consider the journey of your immigrant forebears. Throughout its history, AHEPA itself has reflected and honored that immigrant journey.  Today you, who work for the name of AHEPA and the entire Greek Orthodox community, are in fact the realization of the hopes and dreams seen at its outset by your courageous ancestors. Your lives are a reflection of their faith.  Their journey was difficult; it involved choices and sacrifice. They carried with them both hope, and loss, but most of all they carried their faith, which had guided and fostered them for millennia.

That passage of your ancestors is beautiful metaphor for the journey of spiritual faith on which human souls, individually and collectively, embark.  Today, through the blessings of God, the AHEPA and the Daughters of Penelope stand strong as a voice for compassion, family, faith and community. The AHEPA Family also stands also as a transmitter of both the past and living Hellenism that itself is a gift from God.   And AHEPA promotes Hellenism in the best of ways, as an inheritance relevant to all peoples. In America this is readily apparent.

We see here in Washington the integration, both in physical form and more importantly, in underlying substance and ethos, the living example of many of the most important, and most ecumenical of the Hellenic ideals.  This ecumenical nature also lies at the very heart of your church and your faith. Indeed as Father Georges Florovsky, has so eloquently said: “Hellenism has placed its eternal character upon the Church. It has become an inseparable part of her very being and as such every Christian is, to some extent, a Hellene. Hellenism is not simply a phrase in the history of Christianity but a cornerstone of its life.”  And in this important insight, we must not be mistaken and draw, or convey, a message of pride, but rather an understanding of universal and ecumenical nature of Orthodoxy. A nature for which there is a renewed need, a renewed mission and a renewed future.

AHEPA also stands against the intolerance, which people of all faiths — Christian, Muslim, Judaism, and others — have known and suffered. Your stand against the physical danger threatened by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan was also an important defense against a much more dangerous threat, the threat to the ideal of America itself.

Today to be a Hellene in America is to be admired. To be Orthodox in America is no longer to be a member of small and little known religion, but rather a member of a faith of 300 million worldwide adherents, accepted and respected here in America, and in the process of being reborn with new vitality throughout the world.  Significantly the most important test of AHEPA’s righteousness was proven when, as the threat to your own community subsided, AHEPA joined with others and evolved this important aspect of its work into support for the civil and human rights of other groups.

Of this we are all proud.  Each year we are most happy to receive at the Mother Church a visiting delegation  of AHEPA Family leaders and to share with them a renewal of their faith. They have the opportunity to meet with members of the Orthodox community, with those who work and support our institution and to worship together.   For Orthodox Americans, whether their ancestors came through the gates of Ellis Island, or crossed from Siberia to Alaska, the Ecumenical Patriarchate remains the birthplace and inexhaustible source of their Christian faith. We urge you to come to your spiritual home, and to bring your fellow Orthodox and your children to be welcomed so that we may worship our Lord together.

We understand that Ahepans have also voiced their concerns over the future of our institution and its theological school at Halki to both American and Turkish officials. Our faith that God will provide for us is unshakable, as is our faith that the misunderstandings and fears that we all have, will eventually subside. In this matter the most important lesson for all of us to teach, and to learn, is that ultimately love will triumph.

Here in America, AHEPA has long supported the Church institutions. Many church mortgages have been paid by AHEPA. St. Basil’s has been fostered and sustained by AHEPA and its sisters in the Daughters of Penelope.  Hellenic College/Holy Cross and its students have been the beneficiaries of AHEPA’s love and support.   AHEPA also honors and obeys the message of our Church to welcome and shelter one’s neighbors through its incomparable AHEPA Housing initiative

Across the United States, thousands of elderly Americans, from all walks of life, and all faiths, now live in affordable, safe, clean, and dignified housing through AHEPA. These homes have been envisioned and built with, not only architectural plans and with mortar, but most significantly with the love of one’s fellow man. While even the most well planned and formed buildings and edifices created by man will eventually fall, those created not out of human arrogance, but rather to serve one’s fellow man, to foster his spirit, his faith, to provide for his shelter, are themselves part of something that will never degrade or fall.  That is the simple love of God and the love of the less fortunate, which is a direct glorification of our God who motivates works of this type.

AHEPA President Steve Manta, Daughters of Penelope President Kiki Walker, we offer our gratitude to you and the membership of the AHEPA Family across the United States and Canada for this opportunity to share in your celebration. We have only touched upon a few elements of your countless good works and your success. But what is clear is that blessings of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ are apparent in those works and in your motives.  Your journey has just begun. As your most humble intercessor before God, we remain faithfully and lovingly in support of your work. May our All-Good God in Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, protect and keep you in His embrace, now and forever and unto ages of ages. Amen.