In English

In today’s reading from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, we are urged to be firm in our belief that God’s promises will not be broken. People often promise things and then fail to do them. Sometimes, a person simply forgets to do it. Another reason may be that a serious problem or issue has arisen, rendering the fulfillment of the promise impossible. Finally, a person may have vowed to do something that they later realize goes against their own interests, with the result being that they do everything possible to break the promise. With God, it is very different. He is not hindered by human weaknesses. God never forgets or fails to do anything He says, because He is Almighty. ...

For the secular people of today, focusing on an ascetic saint represents a problem. How can the ascetic figure of Saint John, the author of the Ladder, speak to us, when he acquired and preserved the Grace of God through tears, prayers, and spiritual asceticism? In Orthodox teaching, the ascetic life is nothing other than the transcendence of selfishness, the attempt, in Grace, to apply God’s commandments, to live the life of Jesus Christ. The Orthodox ethos is ascetic. The objection made by people today- that an ascetic cannot speak to us- is not true for two fundamental reasons. In the first place, because in Orthodox Patristic teaching, there’s no difference between the monastic and secular way of life, nor between ...

God always helps, He always arrives, but it needs patience. When we cry out, He always hears immediately, but not in the way we think. >Blessed Joseph the Hesychast

An interpretational approach to the doxastiko at Lauds on the 4th Sunday of Lent ‘Come, let us work in the mystical vineyard, producing the fruits of repentance therein. Let us not labour only for food and drink, but let us also achieve the virtues through prayer and fasting. These are pleasing to the Lord of the task and He will give us the denarius through which souls are redeemed and the debt of sin is paid, for He alone is full of mercy’. The first word of the doxastiko at Lauds on the 4th Sunday of Lent is an exhortation: ‘Come’! Can it be that the hymnographer knows that, especially in our own day and age, our powers of endurance aren’t great and that ...

Many of our saints changed dejection into joy through their love for Christ. In other words, they took this spiritual force which the devil wished to destroy and gave it to God, transforming it into joy and exultation. Prayer and the worship of God gradually transforms dejection and turns it into joy. » Venerable Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia

Great Lent is the most holy and the most conservative time in the liturgical year. Among the ancient ritual customs during this period is the particular arrangement of the readings of extracts from books of the Old Testament. In the 7th century, such readings formed the structural basis for the first part of the Divine Liturgy, or the Liturgy of the Word as that part of the service was commonly known. Three extracts were read then, one from the Old Testament and two from the New, that is an Epistle and Gospel. From the 8th century, the Old Testament reading was moved to the Vespers service, because of monastic influence. The use of the Old Testament in modern Church worship is ...

Watch Fr Jonah’s from Taiwan sermon on the Veneration of the Holy Cross (3rd Sunday in Lent).

Meekness and patience have greater power than anger and stubbornness. You can’t put out a fire with fire, but with water. In the same way, anger isn’t conquered by anger, but by meekness and a great deal of patience. It’s better to put a stop to your irritation with a smile than to attack like a wild animal. » Elder Arsenie Boca (of Romania)

Our Orthodox faith, my beloved friends, is called ‘symbolic’, because it’s expressed in symbols. In other words, it’s expressed in simple signs, though these actually have profound significance and meaning. One of these signs, the most important and most sacred, is the Cross. We shouldn’t see the Cross merely as two bits of wood nailed together, one vertical and the other horizontal, but we should think about what happened on that configuration. As you all know very well, my Christian friends, one day, a Friday, on a hill, Golgotha, the incarnate Son of God was nailed to this shape by the lawless Jews and suffered a painful death. But this death of the Lord was redeeming. For those who believe, ...

People can’t know their weaknesses unless they fall into temptations of the body. Then they pray, are distraught and are humbled. » Saint Isaac the Syrian

The harder the struggle, the greater the victory. In the heavenly market-place, there aren’t any cheap wares. The moments of pain and sacrifice are moments of blessing. Beside every cross there’s a resurrection. So what if we’re now in pain and are crying ceaselessly? ‘For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,’ says Paul (II Cor. 4, 17). » Elder Ephraim of Arizona

The crows One time, when the same monk was busy elsewhere, a couple of crows came and ate all his pulses and everything else he had to eat. When the monk returned and saw the damage to his foodstuffs, he began, in his simplicity, to chide the saint, saying: ‘Since I’m being attacked by crows and you’re not protecting me, which other person are you, in fact, protecting and what am I doing staying here for you?’. When he’d finished he went off to do something else, and the crows came back, as usual, to eat. But they immediately went blind and were unable to leave. When the Elder returned and saw the wretched condition of the birds, flapping about aimlessly ...

Doubt is blasphemy against God. It’s insolence, a lie of the spirit of evil that nestles in your heart in place of the spirit of truth. Be as afraid of doubt as you would a poisonous snake, or, to put it better, don’t pay any attention to it at all. » Saint John of Kronstadt

What is the Precious Cross for Orthodox Christians? The Cross is the symbol of sacrifice, the ransom for the salvation of our soul, the guarantee of eternal life. However, apart from being a symbol of sacrifice, triumph and victory, it’s also a symbol of pain and anguish for each of us. Our life is interwoven with suffering and the Cross. Christ’s Cross is a sacrificial altar. On it, the Lamb of God was slain. It’s the means by which the devil was defeated, sin destroyed, and our spiritual freedom pledged. The Cross is the strength and glory of all the saints throughout the ages. The Cross is the cure of the passions, the exterminator of the demons. The Cross is deadly for ...

It’s better for you to suffer evil than to become the cause of evil. The sorrow of someone who’s suffering unjustly is preferable to the joy of someone who’s working with injustice. » Elder Arsenie Boca (of Romania)

In today’s Gospel, Christ wants to talk to us about the mystery of His passion and the cross. How, through the cross and death, He made human nature, which He had assumed, a sharer in eternal life. For this reason His death on the cross became a herald of life and immortality, not only for the human nature He Himself bore, but for the whole of the human race. The cross gives joy and incorruption to every human person. This progress towards the cross and death has become the sole path of salvation for us. If we’re to become sharers in ‘immortal life’, we have also to participate in the sufferings, the cross, the sacrifice of the Lord. We have to ...

All those who’ve been sanctified, and then those who’ve been saved, all those who’ve passed through the furnace of sorrows. Some though illness, some through the struggle against the passions and so on. That is, the whole catalogue of Godly sorrows. These have the right to eternal repose. » Elder Ephraim of Arizona

At the last part of his interview to Pemptousia, Nobuyuki-Gheoghe Nukina, Japanese karate fighter, is sending a message to Japanese people about orthodoxy.

Quite a number of parents simply want to be liked by their children. They think that because their children can have whatever they want, then why shouldn’t they? The parents prefer not to be at odds with the children and so they give in to them straight away, because they think that, by doing so, they’ll gain more ‘points’ in the child’s affections. If you choose to set boundaries for them, you’re running the risk of not always being popular, not always being liked by your children. However, being popular with your children, being liked by them, is not a good yardstick. Strange as it may sound, there are other parents who can’t even be bothered to set any boundaries at ...

One of the most powerful ploys of the devil is to debilitate the heart through sloth. In this way he weakens both our spiritual and bodily powers. In such cases, the heart is drained of faith, hope and love. We’re overcome with lack of faith, despair and insensitivity towards God and to others: ‘The salt has lost its taste’. » Saint John of Kronstadt