| A BRIEF
BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT
(click
to read Father Steven's ordination address)
Father
Steven Tsichlis was born in St. Louis, MO on January 11, 1953 and is
the son of the late George and Thelma Tsichlis. Raised in St. Louis at
the St. Nicholas parish, Father Steve graduated from the University of
Missouri in 1974 with a B.A. in history and philosophy; received a
certificate of studies from the University of Thessaloniki in Greek
and Byzantine History in 1977; graduated from Holy Cross Greek
Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, MA with a Masters of
Divinity in 1978; graduated from Yale Divinity School with an S.T.M.
in 1981; and pursued a doctorate in patristics with the late Father
John Meyendorff at Fordham University in New York.
Father
Steve met his wife, Kathleen, in Boston while both
were in graduate school. They were married on July 1st, 1979 at St.
Luke’s Church in East Longmeadow, MA. They have four children.
Father
Steve was ordained to the diaconate in 1980 by the late Bishop
Gerasimos of Abydos at the St. Nicholas Church in St. Louis and served
for several years as the deacon to the late Metropolitan Silas of New
Jersey. In 1983, Father Steve was ordained to the priesthood by
Metropolitan Silas at the Holy Trinity Church in Waterbury, CT and was
assigned by then Archbishop Iakovos to pastor the Assumption Church in
Seattle, WA. In 1997, Metropolitan Anthony of the Diocese of San
Francisco assigned him as pastor of the Church of St. Paul in Irvine,
CA.
In
addition to his pastoral duties in Seattle, Father Steve served as the
vicar of Metropolitan Anthony for the Northwest region of the diocese;
president of the Diocese of San Francisco Clergy Syndesmos; a member
of the Archdiocesan Presbyters Council; president of the pan-Orthodox
clergy council of Washington (state); Orthodox ecumenical
represntative to the Church Council of Greater Seattle; a member of
the Seattle/St. Petersburg (Russia) sister churches program; and was
instrumental in founding the St. John the Almsgiver Ministry, a
pan-Orthodox program to feed the homeless in Seattle.
Since
arriving in southern California, Father Steve has been the vicar of
Metropolitan Anthony for the southern California region of the
diocese. Currently, he serves on the advisory board of the Orthodox
Peace Fellowship; is a member of the Archdiocesan Presbyters Council
and edits their newsletter, The
Presbyter; and is a member of the board of directors for
Project Mexico and St. Innocent’s Orphanage near Tijuana, Mexico.
Click
here to read an interview
with Father Steve by Charlotte Prather of the Roman Catholic Diocese
of Orange's Institute for Pastoral Ministry
The
Priesthood Belongs to Christ
By Father Steven Tsichlis
Ordination! The
word rings in my ears this morning – a frightening word, because to
me it is the final response, the final commitment to the Truth. Standing before Pilate only hours before his crucifixion,
Jesus, who is the only Christian priest (the Letter to the Hebrews), says that the
purpose of his birth, the purpose of his life and ministry, is “to
bear witness to the Truth” (John 18:37). This is the essence of the priesthood and the content of the
priestly vocation: to
bear witness to the Truth.
But Pilate’s next question is one that all of us, in
our cynicism and despair, have asked at one time or another: “What
is Truth” (John 18:38)? And
Jesus’ answer is silence, because he is the one High Priest, the
Truth, and in his presence Pilate is face to face with that which he
refuses to accept.
What was true two thousand years ago in Palestine is no
less true in twentieth century America. In a society such as ours, where truth is determined by
advertising and the mass media, the priest is a marginal person and in
some sense, even a condemned man. He does not fit in and is considered by many to be a fool, a
madman, someone out of touch with the “real” world. For this reason, the priest, if he is to remain faithful to the
priesthood of Jesus Christ, is confrontational: he must not allow anyone – especially himself – to worship
the many idols offered by the fantasies of contemporary humanity:
those of race, nation, class, state.
The priesthood is thus not a “privileged” position. Ordination does not mean that I am somehow “better” than
anyone else. Still less
is priesthood to be conceived in terms of power or domination: the Church is not intended as a power structure to be
arbitrarily ruled by a clerical elite as if it were a business
enterprise. The Church is
the Body of Christ and the priesthood is not something which belongs
to the priest, but to Christ. The
saints of the Church, from John Chrysostom in the fourth century to
John of Kronstadt in the twentieth, are adamant on this point: it is not the bishop or priest who celebrates the Liturgy, but
Christ himself who celebrates his own sacraments. The priest is only the tool, the instrument, the icon whom
Christ uses to call together his ecclesia, the community of
those who hear and respond to the Word of God.
Nor is it the task of the priest to go around nervously
trying to redeem people, to save them at the last minute, to put them
on the right track. No
priest can save anyone, for we are redeemed once and for all by the
Crucified and Risen Lord. The
priest is called to help others recognize and affirm this Good News by
making visible in the daily events of our lives the fact that behind
the dirty curtain of our pain and suffering, there is something great
to be seen: the face of
the God in whose image we have been shaped…
The above article originally appeared in the “Orthodox
Observer” and is part of the sermon delivered by Father Tsichlis on
the occasion of his ordination to the priesthood by Metropolitan
Silas, formerly of New Jersey, on July 3, 1983.
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