NEW DEACON ORDAINED AT THE PATRIARCHATE
On the night of Friday to Saturday, the 3rd to the 4th/16th to the 17th of August 2013, during the Divine Liturgy at the All-Holy and Life-Giving Sepulcher of the Lord, Templar Monk Agapios Hadjipavlis was ordained deacon by the Grand Sacristan, His Eminence Isidoros, Archbishop of Hierapolis, having as participants Brothers of the Holy Sepulcher, including the Templar Fathers, acquaintances of the ordained and a crowd of faithful.
Before the ordination, the ordaining Archbishop addressed the ordained, saying among other things:
Most pious Subdeacon Agapios,
[…] Your mission as a Monk of the Holy Sepulcher and a Deacon shall be twofold. Apart from safeguarding and caring for the All-Holy Pilgrimage Sites with which the Lord has entrusted us through the centuries, you will have the pastoral responsibility of guiding souls towards salvation.
You shall become the channel, the way through which people afflicted by life’s sorrows will know Christ and find peace.
And this you shall only achieve if you yourself embrace Christ’s teachings, known through his Sermon on the Mount but much more through his personal example.
Love, obedience, patience, forbearance, tolerance, brotherly love, justice, should from now on rule your behaviour.
In this new spiritual struggle lying before you, you must carry your cross uncomplainingly, just as Christ did, and you shall climb your own Golgotha just as our Lord did, always with the hope that crucifixion is followed by resurrection. […]
After the Divine Liturgy, the Grand Sacristan held a reception at the Office of the Church of the Resurrection for the ordained deacon and the congregation, wishing him prosperity and progress in his diaconate, by the mediation of Theotokos and the wishes of His Beatitude Theophilos, our Father and Patriarch of Jerusalem, and of the entire Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher.
From the Secretariat-General
httpv://youtu.be/VzIBVK0Z77A