A Second Chance Bangor’s new Greek Orthodox priest makes the most of his gift of life

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The lights will go out in St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Bangor at 11:55 p.m. today.

Inside the small church on Sanford Street, Eastern Orthodox Christians will pray in the dark for five minutes. Then, at midnight, the Rev. Adam Metropoulos will proclaim the Resurrection on Pascha – Easter Sunday.

Worshippers will fill the church with candlelight, and the 39-year-old priest will lead them in a traditional procession outside and around the building for the first time in more than 20 years.

Because St. George is the only Eastern Orthodox church north of Lewiston, Russians, Albanians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Romanians, Syrians, Serbs, Lebanese and Greeks will worship together in the early morning hours.

Men, women and children will travel to Bangor from Aroostook, Washington, Piscataquis, Waldo, Hancock and Penobscot counties for the Easter service.

Protestants and Roman Catholics follow a different calendar in setting their Easter, which this year they marked on March 31. The Eastern Orthodox Church continues to use the Julian calendar and mandates that Easter should fall on the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, April 26 this year. The holiday always occurs after, never before, the Jewish celebration of Passover has ended.

Metropoulos, a former high school chemistry teacher in Millinocket, will be celebrating his first Pascha service as a priest. He and his wife, Elizabeth, 47, settled into the parish house on Sept. 1, but they are familiar to the far-flung congregation. They attended St. George before he entered seminary in Brookline, Mass., in 1997, and Metropoulos often assisted his predecessors at services.

“I’m ecstatic to get the chance to have my first Easter here,” Metropoulos said recently in his small office at the front of the church. “The climax of the Orthodox year is the Pascha service. It’s indescribable how excited and nervous I feel.”

Indeed, as Easter represents new life, Metropoulos’ own experiences have involved new lives.

He grew up in Saginaw, Mich., and originally entered seminary right out of high school. He was 18, and the experience fell far short of his expectations.

“I went there thinking it would be the holiest place in the world,” he said, a broad grin spreading across his bearded face. “It turned out to be a normal place, full of normal young men. I was so young and naive in my disappointment that I decided to hold off on the seminary.”

So he enrolled in Saginaw Valley University, graduated with a chemistry degree and went to work for Dow Chemical. Metropoulos said he succeeded but was not happy in the corporate world. So he decided to pursue his doctorate at the University on New Hampshire.

Then, his studies were put on hold. At 25, he was diagnosed with cancer.

He won’t say what type of cancer, but that by the time he was diagnosed, it had spread to his lymph nodes, which were removed. He had three major operations and underwent intense chemotherapy, spending nearly a year hospitalized.

Metropoulos said it was a time of prayer and reflection.

“I remember doing a lot of praying and learning a lot about putting my trust in God,” he said. “Later, when I knew I’d recover, I realized that God had given me a second chance and I began thinking, ‘What am I going to do with it?'”

He opted out of his doctoral program and pursued a master’s degree in education so that he could teach. Metropoulos earned his degree, got married and started teaching at Stearns High School in 1990. Elizabeth Metropoulos taught English as a second language.

“When I was teaching, I really enjoyed it,” he recalled. “The kids responded well to me and, as a younger teacher on the staff, they came to me to talk. Some wanted to start a Christian support group, so I was the sponsor. But every summer my wife and I did missionary work and learned more about our faith.

“During 1996, I took a full year to pray about becoming a priest and look introspectively. … Everything in my life has been in preparation for being a priest. For me, being a priest is saying to God, ‘See what I’m doing now, that you’ve given me a second life.’ But it is never me only. God works through me.”

Since his arrival last fall, Metropoulos said, attendance at St. George has been growing slowly but steadily and contributions are rising. He said some people who had not attended church recently have returned. He noted that since he arrived, he has baptized 23 people and expects to marry five couples this summer. He also regularly visits elderly church members.

Although services are conducted in Greek and English, the 50 to 60 worshippers who attend on a typical Sunday morning include men, women and children from Russia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Crete, Albania and other countries. He said that about half the parish is of Greek descent, with some the grandchildren of St. George’s founders.

The church was built in 1930 by Greek immigrants. The descendents of George N. Brountas, Bangor’s first Greek settler, still attend. Jack Rozos, 45, of Poland Spring often returns to St. George for Easter.

Metropoulos said his congregation’s ethnic diversity offers “more spice,” but added that Orthodoxy also has many converts. Among them: his wife, Elizabeth.

She was reared as a Unitarian in New Mexico, although her grandparents are from Lewiston. At 20, the former teacher and Peace Corps member became an evangelical Christian. She began investigating Orthodoxy when she accepted her husband’s proposal and converted about four months before they were married. Now, she is learning to chant the prayers and is a reader during services.

Metropoulos and his wife have made a favorable impression on the congregation. Many expressed joy at having a permanent priest after nearly eight years of temporary religious leaders. Metropoulos also is the first married priest to serve St. George’s in almost 20 years.

“He’s a very dedicated man, really a religious man,” said Lambros Karas, 56, the chanter at St. George. “Not only does he believe, he has the enthusiasm of a young priest. He’s very hard working and always prepared.”

George N. Brountas, owner of Captain Nick’s restaurant in Bangor, is the grandson the city’s first Brountas. A member of the parish council, he said that Metropoulos has greatly improved communication within the church and “is really devoted to the church and his ministry.”

“Adam can relate to a lot of different people,” said Brountas, 54. “He’s young, he’s energetic, he talks at everybody’s level and puts a lot of effort into everything he does. He has the best interests of the church at heart.”

When he leads his new congregation out the front doors of the small white church at midnight to share the light of Resurrection, Metropoulos may startle the neighbors.

But the priest will be carrying on a tradition nearly 2,000 years old. And he will be showing how he is using that second chance at life.