It is common today to assume that theological arguments regarding the nature of the Trinity are of interest only in abstruse academic circles. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The Holy Trinity—one God in three Persons—is at the core of our belief and faith as Christians. The Trinity is not some abstraction to be philosophically debated by scholars. It is the source and meaning of our lives.

Teva: First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the time for this interview and for sharing your thoughts with the readers of the St. Nina Quarterly.

You grew up in an enclave made up primarily of Romanian immigrants in a small town in New England—a type of environment that is increasingly rare for many Orthodox Christians living in non-Orthodox countries. How did the experience of growing up in an ethnic “village” help to shape your life in the Church?

The Acts of Thomas is one of our earliest documents for the history of Syrian Christianity. In it, the first person to recognize God’s messenger is a woman; the first person to heed the Gospel message and to leave the familiar world of marriage, family, and political loyalties for the sake of the Gospel is a woman. Women are the first to receive and the first to pursue the Gospel.

St. Gregory the Theologian says that as Christians we undergo three births. The first is our physical birth from our mother, when we are born into the life of this world. The second is our baptism, when we are reborn through water and the Holy Spirit as members of the body of Christ. The third birth is the resurrection, when all of us hope to be born anew into the Kingdom of Heaven.¹ At this glorious feast we honor the most holy Mother of God and celebrate her new birth into the resurrection. We pray that by our Lord’s grace, and through her prayers, we may one day be with her where she has gone before us.

I always thought my parents named me after my grandmothers. Being especially fond of them both, I told everyone with no small amount of joy and pride that I was named after both my father’s and my mother’s mother: Christina Marie. Yet my family rarely called me Christina when I was growing up. They all thought it was “too big a name for such a tiny person” and nicknamed me Tina. This was fine by me; I never liked my name until I got to college and learned that Christina means “one who is of or follows Christ.” It was at this time that I took my name seriously and strove to live up to it. I felt very blessed to have such a special name. It brought back happy memories from my childhood name day celebrations. How could I have ever thought that Christina was not a suitable name for my parents to give me? The life of this great martyr is one of courage, beauty, and love.