To the Editor:

I had to stay home last Sunday due to severe illness and so it was an opportunity to watch the Divine Liturgy on the television on the ‘Antenna’ station that broadcasts it every Sunday. I will ask that this letter of mine be published because it is a letter of protest about what I watched. The Divine Liturgy was broadcast from a church in Florida. There was the priest, a deacon, and three chanters, a woman and two men. The Liturgy was almost entirely in English. The reading from the Apostle was only in English, the Gospel only in English, The Creed only in English, the sermon only in English, they also had a memorial service and said the names of the deceased only in English. And when this Liturgy ended I was so sad that I cannot describe my sadness. And I’m explaining because I felt so bitter. I’m one of the faithful from the first generation and in the fourth age. I’m from those who first built this church in America, or maybe not the first, but right after the first. We did this work with terrible sacrifices and privations but we did it and naturally we pass it on to the following generations. However, we deliver it to them in Greek and we know that one day it will become American, but why so quickly? Why don’t they respect us and don’t appreciate that for all of us from Greece, Greek is everything to us – Greek is our Greekness and they have to go and do what they are doing now. And I write this to protest and to be heard.

Thank you,
Dimitrios Georgopoulos
Queens, NY