When there are good thoughts in your soul, you feel happy and calm. When peace and joy are in your heart, then the spirit of good, the Holy Spirit, is within you. When you’re overcome with bad thoughts, then you feel out of sorts, upset, and the wicked and cunning spirit of evil is within you.
Sinners are punished for reasons that are important for their character building. Two of these are obvious. First, through punishment, God corrects and brings people to the true path of salvation. Second, by making an example of them, He deters others from committing the same sin.
The lack of simplicity, sincerity and authenticity in relations between people leads to social hypocrisy, meretricious morality and formality and, at the same time, provokes adverse reactions among younger people. The problem is worse when there’s no simplicity even among so-called spiritual people. “When spiritual people don’t live simply, but are all straight-laced, they’re not helping young people”, the late Elder Païsios used to say. And he went on: “When they see straight-laced Christians, hidebound people dressed up in ties, all from the same mould, they don’t see any difference between them and secular people and so they react… They become frustrated when spiritual people themselves and priests try to keep them in check with secular systems… People understand if you hurt ...
Watch Fr Tom Soroka’s speech at the 2nd International Conference on Digital Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care DMOPC18 which took place from 18th-21st June 2018 at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, organized under the High Auspices of His All Holliness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
God allows proud people to be humbled and brought low when they think that they’re secure in their own strength.
Don’t let the devil fool you into thinking that the love and mercy of God will save us. God saves those who strive and make an effort with all their strength to achieve this. Only those who have the pure and clean garment of sanctity will share in and inherit His kingdom.
Watch Fr Ionel Ungureanu’s speech at the 2nd International Conference on Digital Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care DMOPC18 which took place from 18th-21st June 2018 at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, organized under the High Auspices of His All Holliness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Prayer is a gift. God grants it where there’s ardour and humility.
A homily of the abbot of the Great and Holy Monastery of Vatopedi, Archimandrite Ephraim, in the refectory of the monastery at the Feast of the Mother of God on September 8th. *** The Panagia has a central place in divine worship. Feasts of the Mother of God frame the ecclesiastical year; it begins with the feast of the Birth of the Theotokos, and ends with the feast of the placing of the Holy Girdle of the Theotokos. Today is a cause for spiritual joy and rejoicing, my dear brothers and fathers, for today we celebrate the birth of the ever-virgin and God-bearing Maria, that most fragrant flower who sprung forth “from the root of Jesse.” We celebrate the “birthday of universal rejoicing,” ...
Pride wreaks havoc with the nerves, heats the blood, stimulates the imagination and maintains our fallen state. Humility calms the nerves, cools the blood, stops you from day-dreaming and puts a stop to our fallen state. It gives the life which Jesus Christ brought.
Watch Andriy Us’ speech at the 2nd International Conference on Digital Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care DMOPC18 which took place from 18th-21st June 2018 at the Orthodox Academy of Crete, organized under the High Auspices of His All Holliness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
The inclination towards sin isn’t overwhelming in itself. It becomes so from the moment the soul begins to contemplate and plot ways of satisfying the desire.
Watch Fr Jonah’s from Taiwan sermon on the healing of the possessed young man (Matthew 17, 14-23).
If you ever want word to get out about something, get hold of somebody who’s feather-brained, tell them it as if it were a secret and ask that it remain between the two of you. That’ll be enough for it to spread all over the place, given that it’s ‘strictly between the two of us’.
Gina Poulou, who is a soprano with the Greek National Opera, has had the most astonishing experience. When the Holy Belt, the relic of the Mother of God, was in Nea Ionia, Athens, in 2017, she reverenced it. A few days before, a small tumor had appeared on her neck as had others in her breast. These unsettling symptoms, together with the pain she was feeling, terrified her and she was depressed at the thought of undergoing examinations and changing her daily routine. Through the Internet, she learned that the Holy Belt was in Athens and a friend of hers sent her a message, telling her to go and reverence it, both for help and also to gain strength and courage. ‘When ...
Never judge anybody, even if you see them sinning at the hour of their death. Because God’s judgement is beyond our ken. Some people have clearly committed grave sins, but have also done far greater good in secret. So those who gloat are deceived, because what they held in their hands was merely smoke, not the rays of the sun.
Sinners who don’t submit to the law of God, the law of love and peace, are outcasts from God’s creation. There’s no room for them. The reason they feel so trapped is that they’re hounded by God, by their own conscience and by the whole of creation.
Asceticism which is undertaken in accordance with the Law makes people understanding, sensible, modest, able to restrain their anger, to rein in their desires, to perform acts of charity, to be kind to others and to practice all the virtues.
Christianity isn’t a philosophical system, nor does it depend solely on our system of knowledge. It has more to do with our will and emotions. Because people who are Christians don’t have simply the education of the spirit as their starting-point, but also the formation of the heart. This is why we’re called upon not only to recognize the theories, but to implement them.
