Sourp Kevork in Limassol: The Feast of Saint George and a Name Day for Two Kevorks

In this article (9)

• Nicosia, first thing
• A church and a school, side by side
• Candles
• The liturgy
• The Archbishop's sermon
• The madagh
• Limassol, by the sea
• The road home
• The day, in short

The Armenian Church keeps the feast of Saint Kevork, Saint George the General, on the last Saturday of September, which this year fell on 26 September. In our house the feast is a double name day, because my father is Kevork and so is my son. He carries his grandfather’s name, as an Armenian first son does, and as I carry my own grandfather’s.

We live in Nicosia, where the Armenian church is Sourp Asdvadzadzin, the Holy Mother of God. The church that bears the saint’s own name stands eighty kilometres to the south, in Limassol, and the next morning, Sunday 27 September, its parish celebrated his feast at the liturgy. So we drove south to be there.

Nicosia, first thing

I began outside Sourp Asdvadzadzin, the white cathedral of the Armenians of Nicosia, consecrated in 1981, and wished a happy name day to every Kevork, George and Roman. Those named Roman belong in that greeting, because on Saint Kevork’s day the Church also remembers Saint Adoktos and Saint Romanos the Hymnographer.

A church and a school, side by side

The Armenian church and school of Limassol share one address, 16 Vassilis Michaelides Street, in the centre of the town. They share a yard as well, and that is the pattern across the island: in Nicosia, in Larnaca and in Limassol, the three towns where the community has both a church and a school, the two stand side by side. Of the roughly 3,500 Armenians in Cyprus, about fifteen per cent live in Limassol, according to a 2016 government booklet on the community.

There has been an Armenian school in Limassol since 1928. Like the others on the island, it has been called Nareg since 1972, and its present building was inaugurated by President Demetris Christofias on 5 November 2008. It teaches in three languages, Armenian, Greek and English, and its name is written above the windows in all three.

The church is small, clad in pale stone, with a porch of white arches and a little white bell cupola above the door. It was built in 1939 and 1940 with the donations of the community, on land that Satenig Soultanian bought in memory of a relative named Kevork, and it was consecrated in 1948 by Bishop Ghevont Chebeyan. It has been much renovated since, which is why a building of 1940 looks so new.

Candles

We went in and lit our candles. They stand in a tray of sand in front of a small crucifix, and the box they are taken from carries a card in Armenian capitals that I liked very much: a heartfelt offering is welcome.

The liturgy

The Divine Liturgy, the Badarak, was celebrated by Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian, the Catholicosal Vicar of Cyprus, who has led the Armenian Prelature of Cyprus for the Catholicosate of Cilicia since 2024. He wore light blue and gold, and two vested servers assisted him, one in purple holding a censer and one in rose and burgundy. Above the altar hangs a painting of the Virgin and Child, and on a side wall there is a painting of the Baptism of Christ, with John pouring the water and the dove coming down.

The Archbishop’s sermon

The Archbishop preached in Armenian. The whole sermon, eighteen and a half minutes long, is on our channel, and what follows is my summary of it in English.

He began in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and asked that the sign of Christ’s victorious Cross protect the faithful from their unseen enemies. The Armenians, he said, are a people bound to the message, the power and the sacrifice of the Cross: they have paid for that bond throughout their history, and they have found peace and joy in Christ’s gospel of peace, equality and love. He welcomed the congregation to a liturgy that kept two feasts at once, the appearance of the Holy Cross of Varak and the memory of Saint Kevork, whose courage and faith the Church honours. Many apostles preached in Armenia, he recalled, but it was Thaddeus and Bartholomew who founded its Church, and Saint Gregory the Illuminator who lit the path of the nation, a light that has burned through centuries of adversity. He also remembered the Armenians who built the church here eighty-six years ago and gave it the name of Saint Kevork, so that the saint would watch over everyone who turns to him.

The heart of the sermon was the bond between Saint Kevork and the Holy Cross of Varak, whose feasts fall together. Saint Kevork was martyred under the emperor Diocletian for refusing to compromise his faith, in the same persecution that fell on Saint Hripsime and her fellow virgins. Saint Gayane, one of that company, took refuge on Mount Varak with a relic of the True Cross, and before she left for Vagharshapat, the city of Etchmiadzin, she hid it among the rocks of the mountain.

In the seventh century, he went on, in the years of the Arab raids on Armenia, the hermits Totig and Hovel were granted a vision of twelve pillars of light around a shining cross, which came to rest on the altar of Varagavank, the monastery on the mountain. Of that monastery’s seven altars, one was dedicated to Saint Kevork. Catholicos Nerses III the Builder then instituted the feast of the Holy Cross of Varak, which belongs to the Armenian Church alone, and centuries later Catholicos Simeon I of Yerevan joined its commemoration to Saint Kevork’s in the Church’s calendar.

From there he turned to what the Cross has meant for the survival of the Armenians. Through centuries of oppression in the Middle East they anchored their identity and their endurance in the Cross of Christ, and that bond gave birth to the khachkar, the carved stone cross. Khachkars stand across the mountains of Armenia, and they have travelled with the diaspora as a lasting testimony of Christian faith.

He then explained the meaning of the madagh, the offering he would bless at the end of the service. It reflects the faith of Abraham and the sacrificial love that Christ, the Lamb of God, fulfilled on the Cross. It is not a pagan ritual, he said, but a covenant of thanksgiving instituted by Saint Gregory the Illuminator, shared in love and offered with prayers for forgiveness, healing and peace.

The foundation of the community and of the nation, he said, is the Christian Armenian family, nourished and held together by the Holy Church. He closed with a blessing on all the faithful and the pilgrims present, and with his congratulations to everyone keeping their name day under the protection of Saint Kevork, among them my father and my son.

The madagh

At the end of the service four baskets stood on the step before the altar, filled with portions wrapped in white, and the Archbishop blessed them with the hand cross. This is the madagh, the offering of thanksgiving that the Armenian Church blesses and then shares out, and parishes named for Saint Kevork commonly bless one on his feast. Our own parish in Nicosia is named for the Mother of God, so for a family with two Kevorks the church that bears the saint’s name was the place to be that weekend.

Limassol, by the sea

Afterwards we walked down to the sea. Near the marina a steel sculpture, a ring around a sphere, stands on the rocks beside a wooden pier. In the port, the cruise ship Aurora was berthed, with the red-tiled roof of a small chapel in front of her.

Late in the afternoon we drove out along the coast road, past the new towers that now line the shore east of the town.

The road home

The motorway back to Nicosia runs within sight of the sea past Governor’s Beach, and a sign sends you straight on for Larnaka and Lefkosia, the Greek forms of Larnaca and Nicosia. It is eighty kilometres each way, and on the weekend of my father’s and my son’s name day it was a drive worth making.

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The day, in short

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My thanks go to Archbishop Gomidas Ohanian, to the clergy and to the parish of Sourp Kevork in Limassol for their welcome on the day of their feast.