Christmas message from the President of the Parish Council of the Greek-Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford Dear Friends Christmas has arrived! With it, the end of another full and creative year for our community. On behalf of the Parish of the Holy Trinity, I wish to all of you a happy and joyful Christmas, and a prosperous 2015. It has also been a turbulent year for humanity and particularly for Christians in certain troubled parts of the world. Our thoughts and prayers should be with them at this difficult time. It reminds us all about the sort of atrocities that can happen when the value of the human person is reduced solely to numbers, economic or productivity indices, labels, diagnoses or groupings by race and religion; and when this value is removed from its historical context and placed in a nebulous utopia in the future. In Christmas we celebrate God willingly coming to live among us at a specific point of time in human history; to share our real life problems and struggles in the full extent of their biological, social and historic context and to invite us to overcome them through joint God-man enterprise. It is along this message that we decided again this year to donate our Advent collection to people currently struggling at the heart of severe historical adversity: Syrian Refugees. 2014 was a very fruitful year for a community with a number of regular and one-off events that deepened our liturgical and social life within it. Looking back I will just highlight a few: In September we celebrated Metropolitan Kallistos 80th birthday with a bring and share lunch (and a birthday cake!) a few weeks later. We are blessed to have had him as our priest and bishop for all these years, and we wish him every strength in Christ, to continue serving this community and Christian around the world for many years to come. The same wish goes to our priest Fr Ian for his tireless efforts at the centre of our community’s life. Our annual fundraising events, the food fair in February and the July Barbecue, were again very successful from the point of enjoyment, participation and funds raised. I am once again grateful to the many members of our Auxiliary Association and parishioners who dedicated money time and effort to make these happen, and to all of you who attended and supported the cause. This year, for the first time we hosted a fundraising concert in March, jointly with the Annunciation Parish, to raise funds for the restoration of our churchs floor. Thanks to a lot of peoples talent, time and effort and the generosity of many of you the concert was a major success and it helped raise the necessary funds. We hope to host a similar one in April next year, so watch the space! Indeed the wooden floor was restored to such a good state in July this year that it is hard to remember how it had been previously. This restoration became possible with all the generous small and big donations and fundraising appeals by a number of members from both parishes; I wish to particularly mention the efforts of those who organised the works and helped with moving the furniture during that week. Our communitys Greek school has continued to prosper and increase in numbers of children, with more than 80 registered this year. On behalf of the whole community I want to thank Danae, our head-teacher, all the teachers and the school committee for the significant work they put in it. In May, our annual general meeting elected a new council for another two years and a few new members have joined. I want to thank the members who have stepped down for serving the community all these years and to encourage you to embrace and support the new council members in the same warm way you have done all these years. In March and October, we held doxology and receptions for the two Greek national celebrations of the 25th and 28th respectively, attended widely by Greeks in Oxford. I want to express my gratitude to our clergy Metropolitan Kallistos and Fr Ian Graham for their continuous serving in our community for all these years. We are blessed to have them as our Spiritual fathers and leaders. Also, to the Auxiliary Association and all of you who have contributed to the regular Sunday coffee meetings, the numerous shared meals and the social events and the celebrations throughout the year; they are so important for the life of our community. I wish you all a Joyful Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Theodoros Bargiotas, President of the Parish Council
Posted on: Thu, 25 Dec 2014 20:05:53 +0000
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