This post was originally published on this site
Every convert to Orthodoxy has a story. Some discover the Church through marriage; others through the Fathers, a university course, or more recently, on social media or an internet browser. Their journeys differ, but each requires the courage to step beyond the familiar into something deeper.
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we should remember another story of courage: before people could discover Orthodoxy in America, Orthodox immigrants first had to bring it here.
In my family, these are not merely stories from a history book. Borrowing funds, my uncle left Cyprus at fourteen. He quickly learned how to cut hair on his voyage ($.25/cut) to pay back that loan. My father left the same village with a $20 bill in his pocket and the hope of building a better life. Our forefathers and foremothers arrived with little money, limited English, and few guarantees. There are countless stories of our immigrant ancestors coming to America. Among everything they carried, the greatest treasure was the one they refused to leave behind: the Orthodox Christian faith.
Assimilation would have been easier. There was tremendous pressure to change their names, learn the language, adjust to new foods and customs, and adapt to an unfamiliar religious landscape. They could have walked into Catholic or Episcopalian Churches to find worship. Yet instead of surrendering everything that made them different, they lived into their faith and celebrated their culture with joy no matter the circumstance.
They gathered in homes, storefronts, and rented halls. From hard-earned wages, they gave what they could barely afford. They built churches to baptize their children, to celebrate the Divine Liturgy and Pascha. They taught the next generation to make the sign of the Cross. They sacrificed because the Church was not an accessory to their new life in America; it was essential to it.
We must also remember the clergy who crossed the ocean to encounter the unknown and to serve scattered communities. Wherever an altar could be raised, they celebrated the Liturgy, crowned marriages, buried the dead, taught the Faith, and became spiritual fathers. Together clergy and laity planted Orthodoxy in America. They may have dreamed of the parishes, cathedrals, seminaries, monasteries, and ministries their devotion would one day build. But did they imagine that someone with no ancestral connection to an Orthodox homeland would walk through those same doors and ask, “How can I become Orthodox?”
This is one of the beautiful paradoxes of Orthodoxy in America: our ancestors preserved the Church because they did not want their children to lose it. By doing so, they made it possible for countless others to find it.
Today, an inquirer may first encounter the Faith online, but Orthodoxy cannot be lived through a screen. The seeker must physically enter a parish to appreciate its worship, community, prayer, fasting, and Eucharistic life. Conversion is not merely accepting new ideas; it is allowing Christ to redirect one’s life. Our calling is not simply to provide information, but to accompany people patiently in transformation.
This is where the stories of our ancestors and today’s converts meet. Both resist the easiest path. Our ancestors declared, “We can become fully American without ceasing to be Orthodox.” Today’s converts reveal the other side of that truth: one need not be any particular ethnicity to become fully Orthodox.
America, ultimately, welcomed Orthodox Christians. Now Orthodoxy welcomes Americans. As descendants of those who established the faith in this land, it is our responsibility to receive anyone seeking Christ. The question of this great responsibility is not merely whether we will preserve what we inherited, but whether we possess enough of our ancestors’ courage to share it.
When we proclaim, “This is the faith of the Apostles. This is the faith of the Fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox,” we rightly remember the saints who defended and preserved the faith. In America, we may also remember our own fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers, who crossed an ocean of uncertainty without abandoning their greatest treasure. They carried it here. They planted it here. They sacrificed for it here.
The faith planted by our ancestors is now entrusted to us. We are called to preserve it by offering it courageously to all who come after us. Some may bear Greek surnames; others will have no ancestral connection to an Orthodox homeland. Each will bring a story of how they found the Church, and each will find a place within it. Perhaps the greatest fruit of our ancestors’ courage is to witness people of varying backgrounds and ethnicities gather in the churches they established to share in the love of Christ they never could abandon.
This article is published as part of the America at 250: Orthodoxy in a New Homeland media initiative co-organized by the Orthodox Observer and the Department of Inter-Orthodox, Ecumenical, and Interfaith Relations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America to honor the contributions and experience of Orthodox Christianity in America and celebrate 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
The post Opinion | They planted the faith; we must welcome the harvest appeared first on Orthodox Observer.
