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As the lights dimmed on the set for the Clergy-Laity Congress Opening Ceremony, it wasn’t unlike the kind of initiation we experience at the start of a service in church. The opening prayer and Agiasmo (“blessing”), led by His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and the Reverend Protopresbyter Peter Orfanakos, President of the Archdiocesan Presbyters Council, transformed the four walls of the convention center into a truly communal gathering— not only through the liturgical music of our Archdiocese’s cantors and choral singers, but through the voices of the clergy, laity, and monastics who joined them.
