A witness of Orthodoxy who with all her life but also with her crucifixion and her encampment in the last months, boldly faces the throne of our Lord with parsimony. I am sure that the Lord will say to her: "Good servant, good and faithful, enter into the joy of the Lord"
The church could not accommodate the people who came to accompany her on her last journey. I believe that all of us, clergy and laity, felt that we were burying a holy woman who was ready to leave, after fulfilling her obligations on earth. He was an angel who came down from heaven, to prove to us that in our time there are saints, and in fact in the world, they live among us, beside us.
These thoughts swirled in my mind at the time of the procession, when the crowded dance of priests and bishops, including Fr. Panteleimon's husband and one of her sons, who is also a priest, her other six sons-, sang the wonderful hymns, with divinely inspired verses, which remind us of the vanity of the worldly.
My thoughts became certain when I heard her priest son say goodbye to her with love and resurrection hope. She shared with us some of her children's experiences, not to honor their mother, as she stressed, but to set an example for the rest. She told us that she faced the ordeal of her illness with patience, unceasing prayer and composure, glorifying the name of God, fully surrendered to His will. With the arrest of a Christian martyr! And the most wonderful thing: her body, thirty hours later, when the twelve women of the Christian Association went to dress her, did not have the rigidity of a dead man!
That is why the saints whose images and holy relics were brought to her headrest to worship, rejoiced in her struggle and her love for God, and smelled. He especially begged Saint Luke the Doctor, Saint Nektarios, Saint George. Her soul longed for divine communion to the end.
Our Angeliki loved the church and the saints from a young age. She and her husband, Father Panteleimon, were happy to have seven sons, whom they nurtured with the namas of our religion and our homeland. Seven Levantine sons, who, in addition to human suffering and crushing, carried her coffin, chanting. As if they were handing over their mother to the One who loved so much. These children taught us how Christians should deal with death. As if they were sure that their mother was going somewhere better. God called her to him.
I feel very blessed that I shared with her the same office at the Lyceum of Ethnomartyr Kyprianou in Strovolos, nine years ago. From the beginning we bonded, I felt it. He used to say to me: "My brother", as we are both monogamous. She conveyed to me her meekness and serenity, I tasted the myrrh of her love, I experienced her kindness, selfless offering, forgiveness, her eternal care for the other, her brother, who was the image of CHRIST.
At the same time, I admired her hard work, philoponias, administrative skills, her training and her literary armament, her love for children all over the world. Magnificent and dignified, modest and submissive, she won over her students with the kindness of her soul, the spaciousness of her heart, her humility and her kindness. The smile was not missing from her face. He always had a good conversation for everyone. He never hurt anyone, he never spoke badly, he never got angry. She was the model of the Christian teacher in practice.
I will never forget as long as I live, how much it hurt for a child who came from a troubled family. What efforts did he make to help it. How many hours did he "waste" to get it on the straight path. But also how much prayer he must have done to help the Virgin Mary.
Her presence inspired respect. She was a real lady. I will never forget her advice, her interest and her nobility. He seemed to make the fight good, not for "being seen", but consciously, heartily, internally. It seemed that he was not of this world. That she wanted to save her soul.
Her nephew and daughter-in-law told me how much they enjoyed going to her house, where love and serenity reigned. How they loved the big table, around which the whole family gathered and all together chanted and praised God. She was the great mother who constantly cooked for her children and grandchildren, who she was happy to have. He never calculated any effort, no sacrifice. Everything for others, nothing for herself. It was the embodiment of the heterocentrism of love.
We really lost a great man and a unique girlfriend. But, paradoxically, we do not feel that we have lost it, but that we have gained an ally in Heaven. A loved one who will intercede for us in the Saints, whom we will invoke day and night to help us.
Her free soul flies to the "meadows the panther" of paradise. He passed to immortality!
Her memory is eternal!
* Zina Lysandrou Panagidi is a Philologist