Vasiliki Tsigas-Fotinis is our Woman of the Week, nominated for her drive to live out the ideal that we are One Church. You see her here with her mother when she was young, as well as winemaking with Orthodoxy Off The Vine. We asked her to share how this vision has shaped her life and that of her commUNITY!
GROUNDWORK
“My parents, Konstantine and Spiridoula, came to America in 1962 from Greece. My brother was two and I was 10 months old when he was ordained, four days before getting on the ship to come to America from Greece. As a matter of fact, it was the future Archbishop Demetrios who walked him to his ordinations; they were both members of the ZOE spiritual movement in Greece. My parents would sing ZOE songs during all our car rides–we didn't need a radio! I wish we had more Orthodox songs in addition to hymns in English which could help bind us all together across jurisdictions and localities.
“People from Northwest New Jersey wanted to start a church and needed a priest. Some from similar regions of Greece, heard there was a priest on the next ship coming from Greece. They went to get him and his family. So we ended up here by the grace of God, arriving with just one chest.”
“The newly formed Saint Andrew Church had about 70 families, which became our family since we had left our family behind. Everyone in church was my aunt and uncle. We grew up thoroughly in the church and helped with all the ministries. The whole church was really a community: my mother and father used to call it the “Family of Saint Andrew’s”. I grew up very much in a community context. At a young age, I started a HOPE/JOY group and later became very involved in GOYA (Greek Orthodox Youth Association). I started the PVP’s (president and vice president) committee of the NJ State Youth Committee to foster more youth leadership and responsibility when I was VP of my parish GOYA.
“But my deeper encounter with God happened in my college years. When I engaged with and later embodied: 1. Plato’s Cave narrated by Orson Welles, and, the book The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware, which both really resonated and challenged me. My prayer life deepend. God provided great mentors, young and old. Simultaneously, a priest came from our diocese then, and introduced us to the concept of a Young Adult League, based on Liturgy, Witness, Service and Fellowship. I ended up coming out of that meeting as President of the NJ YAL, even though I went in saying I wasn’t going to be that involved since I just started college.
“Representing NJ, two of us were sent to California for a Youth Rally followed by a Clergy Laity Congress. +His Grace Bishop Anthony told us, “You know, it’s good to do the Greek cultural things, but the services should be in English so people understand and to learn.” The Youth Rally had some amazing speakers: Fr. Peter Gilquest, Bishop Maximos, … At the youth rally, Fr. Angelo Gavallis, the newly elected youth director for the Archdiocese of North and South America, was there from NY. My now Koumbara, Debbie from New Orleans suggested to Fr. A. to make me the Archdiocesan Coordinator for the Young Adult Movement. So he did.
“We had zero money, no budget, but we had a lot of love for God and for each other, and seeing the different expressions of faith and witnessing all over America really enlivened all of us. As part of the youth committee of the clergy-laity, we found the old minutes saying that we should be having a conference or retreat every year at a national level. So Archbishop Iakovos said “Let it be”!
“At the first conference in Dallas, TX we had around 750 young adults from all over America. They were mostly Greek American, but there were some Palestinian, Lebanese, Canadian, and Argentinian present as well. We had incredible interactive seminars during the day and we partied really hard during the night, and we'd all get up really early to go to the services in the morning. The conferences gave us the opportunity to be CommUNITY: bishops, clergy, church leaders and participants were interactively alive together. We met people on fire for God, some of them had left the Orthodox church and had come back, and you know, I've never seen people loving God as much as I did then.
“That experience inspired me. I continued to lead the young adults for North and South America for the first five years. By the fourth conference which was in Boston, we had 4,000 young adults. This is why we knew the grace of the Holy Spirit was working, because we had no funds, it was just locally run by whatever they collected. By the grace of God again, I worked part time for People Express Airlines, so I was able to travel for free. On weekends I was doing young adult ministry all over the country and weekdays I would be in college classes in NYC.
“So yes, I've been involved in many ministries of the church at all levels, at different times and places. Because my background is in education and from my conference experiences, Fr. Dr. Frank Marangos then said, “Hey, I know you just had kids. But can you work with me part time remotely?” This was before remote work was in style. I coordinated the ingenious High School CANA curriculum and published Grade 9 Unit I. [It would be wonderful if the CANA Curriculum created by Fr. Marangos were used in ALL our religious education because it is profoundly Orthodox and educational.]
"Currently, I teach at a Community College, eight minutes from my house, and online for St. Athanasios College. I also offer retreats and seminars, in person and online. Wherever I speak, I go to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Churches of America website and I look up all the Orthodox parishes in the Directory within a certain radius and ask the host committee to invite the neighboring churches, so that we can meet each other.
“We learn so much more together. The Greek word for hospitality (philoxenia) literally means ‘friend of the stranger’. They'll always be strangers unless you invite them into your heart, home and church. And learning only happens when you go beyond what you see in front of you. True Metania = transformative thinking/learning”
Growing up we always had a Presanctified Divine Liturgy with the two other Orthodox Churches nearby. That was one of my favorite services of the year. We would take turns hosting and the different choirs introduced us to a variety of musical expressions. So over the 62 years I’ve been in the area, we got to know our neighbors as extended family. Thus it made it easier to also go and worship at their churches for different services. The last few years I have tried to attend additional parishes in the tri-state area. I get the e-bulletins from a number of different churches so that I could know what services and what events they are having, and I let others know with my extensive email list.
In Northern New Jersey, now as part of the newly formed IPA (Inter-Parish Association) we have a Wine-Tasting fundraiser for International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) [May 3, 2025]. We start the evening with a joint vesper service, followed by the event. People from all the different jurisdictions come. It’s a useful event for getting people to mix because you have to keep getting up to get a little wine and food at a time.
“Heaven, I say, is a place where we're going to have to get to know every single human being that God ever created from the beginning of time. So we've got to start working on it now.”
As always, we asked Vasiliki Tsigas-Fotinis, our Woman of the Week, to tell you about her morning routine:
“Every day is very different for me. If the weather is good, I walk in nature taking my prayers with me, giving me a multi sensory experience being with God in His creation. I use the Eikona app, which has the morning prayers and the hymns of the saints of the day– and they're in English. However, wherever they use the word ‘man’ I always say ‘human being’ the actual word from the original Greek anthropos instead, and ‘by the prayers of our holy mothers and fathers’ or ‘our Holy CommUNITY’. If I have early morning classes, I do the prayers in the car as I pass 2 Orthodox churches on my way and have breakfast when I return.
“Mostly I'll have coffee because I really love it. I love the whole process of percolating it over gas. But even so, sometimes I'll drink tea instead because I want to make sure that I still can make that decision and that it hasn’t become a habit I can’t change. I’ll read the scripture of the day with my iPad because it allows me to use larger print, while I have breakfast.
“The other thing I do is a continuation of something my parents did. Pascha was our big open house event. My mother would make most of the food herself. My father served the whole of Holy Week and then we’d go to a farm to get a lamb. (Someone called him ‘the Greek rabbi’ because he would help the farmers shear the lambs, so they would give him a lamb and he would sacrifice the lamb.) We would eat the lamb for Pascha and invite everyone who didn't have a home or didn't know anybody. They always had an open house. Some people in our community have been coming for years, so we took it over after my parents had retired to Florida (my father is now in the Heavenly Kingdom). We also started inviting all our students, neighbors, co-workers and the people from all our local churches, because even during Holy Week, I go to the different churches for services. We gave out little invitations to everybody and people would come from all the neighboring churches, so it's a divine celebration. We always say Christ Is Risen in as many languages that our guests know. We pray, sing, dance & eat together! I think when you invite people into your home, you invite them into your heart, and we rejoice in the perichoresis (circle dance) of Holy Trinity.”
Thank you, Vasiliki!