Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church

Sunday of St. John Climacus April 11 The memory of this Saint is celebrated on March 30, where his biography may be found. He is celebrated today because his book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, is a sure guide to the ascetic life, written by a great man of prayer experienced in all forms of the monastic polity; it teaches the seeker after salvation how to lay a sound foundation for his struggles, how to detect and war against each of the passions, how to avoid the snares laid ...by the demons, and how to rise from the rudimental virtues to the heights of Godlike love and humility. It is held in such high esteem that it is universally read in its entirety in monasteries during the Great Fast. Apolytikion Plagal Fourth Mode With the rivers of your tears, you have made the barren desert fertile. Through sighs of sorrow from deep within you, your labors have borne fruit a hundred-fold. By your miracles you have become a light, shining upon the world. O John, our Holy Father, pray to Christ our God, to save our souls. Kontakion Fourth Mode Truly the Lord has set you in the sky of abstinence, as a fixed star giving light to the ends of the world, O John, our teacher and Father.

April 10th On this date -200 years ago - Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory V was hanged by the Ottomans at the main gate of the Patriarchate in Constantinople because of the Greek uprise for independence in 1821. The entry has remained sealed shut to this very day. In 1871, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Greek Revolution, the body of the Holy Patriarch was transferred to Athens and placed in the Metropolitan Cathedral with the greatest solemnity. Today we comme...morate the Holy Hieromartyr Gregory V, Patriarch of Constantinople. St. Gregory served as Patriarch of Constantinople three separate times: 1797-1798, 1806-1810, and 1818-1821. In 1821, he was hanged on Pascha of 1821 after celebrating the Patriarchal Liturgy in retaliation for his support for the Greek Revolution and his inability to suppress the uprising that has begun less than a month before. He was hanged in full vestments and his body hung by the gate for three days before being thrown into the Bosphorus. A Greek sailor took the body to Odessa in Russia where it stayed until the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Today St. Gregory’s relics are located in the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens and is referred to as an ethnomartyr or national martyr. The gate where he was hanged at was welded shut and remains shut to this day. O Holy Father, intercede for us! Troparion in Tone 4 You righteously served the God of all as a priest, and offered yourself to Christ as a chosen sacrifice by struggling well. Wherefore by your hanging, you were truly shone to be a deliverer from slavery to the nation of the Greeks. Therefore O Hieromartyr Gregory we honor you.

Third Sunday of Lent - Sunday of the Holy Cross