We shouldn’t be sad when our weaknesses are exposed… In temptations, we’re taught to see all sides of our soul, both the good and the bad. Experience often shows us how to distinguish the good from the bad, and it takes not a little time to acquire this.
In a festal atmosphere, with twinkling lights, the giving and receiving of gifts, with parties and food, with everything our consumer society and secularized Christian life dictates, we celebrate Christmas. The rather more ‘spiritual’ view sees Christmas as the event of ‘peace on earth’ which God brought with His advent, with a nod towards His failure, since we know that, from the time He came until today, very few years have been without war somewhere in the world. And then again, the more ‘spiritual’ view, with a theological foundation, will say that Christ became human ‘in order to save us from our sins’, making sin the basis for the astonishing fact of God’s incarnation. In other words, something negative. Amid all this secular, ...
It needs repentance such as that shown by the Ninevites to change the Lord’s decisions. Otherwise many tribulations come into the world.
At this time of year, people often talk about the ‘spirit of Christmas’. But are we all talking about the same thing? I think not. It seems to me that if the ‘spirit of Christmas’ is only the presents, shopping in general, family meals, gatherings and relaxation, then Christmas, especially these days, must be very depressing for a lot of people. It causes depression, because many of us don’t have the means to shop, to go out and to enjoy themselves. But the issue’s more serious than we think, because it has another dimension. Even those who do live with all the above, still experience a different kind of unhappiness; they aren’t full of joy, either. It’s obvious from their ...
Like every virtue, love must live in the heart. Unless it does so, it doesn’t exist, in practice. Because God didn’t say ‘Love’, ‘Be humble’, ‘Be merciful’ , ‘Pray’ and so on for our ears but for our heart. So we have to have love, humility, kindness, prayer and all the other virtues. And when they’re in our heart, they’ll certainly find external expression, just as a fire gives off heat and myrrh exudes fragrance.
The road to perfection is long. Pray that God will give you strength. Bear your lapses with patience and, when you’ve quickly regained your feet, start running. Don’t stand there, at the place where you fell, crying your heart out and sobbing unconsolably, like a little child.
The Feast of Christmas today, my Christian brothers and sisters. We celebrate the dogma of our faith, that God became human, a real human person, with flesh, bones, blood and a heart. A person like us in every way, except, of course, as regards sin. This is a very great feast, the mother of feasts, since all the other feasts follow it: the baptism, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. This is why it’s been called the mother of feasts. At this feast, we see the Son of God, Who formerly, in heaven, had only a divine nature, take on human nature at His incarnation. He is now God and human. Perfect God and perfect human. So, with ...
Christ came to earth in two capacities, the human and the divine. At His Passion, His body suffered. He was crucified, and, despite knowing that He would rise, He overcame the temptation to descend from the Cross so that people would know He’s God. We today are saved through the Cross. Through prayer. A woman said to me: ‘I don’t know how to pray’. ‘Take a komboskini and say the Jesus Prayer’, I advised. And her mind was enlightened.
Christmas Encyclical Despair is everywhere. Deep darkness envelops the entire earth. A black veil covers everything. There is no hope. Some voices are heard. The prophets of Israel and the wise men of Greece cry out. The prophets say: the Messiah is coming. He is the Redeemer. He is the Savior. And the wise men explain: If the mighty will not descend from the heavens, there is no salvation. The Messiah came. He is the Son of the Virgin. The God-Man Christ. The only Redeemer and Savior of the world. He requested a place for lodging and we refused Him. We did not recognize Him. We forced Him to be born in a manger for animals. He did not take offense. He did not ...
What we call ‘kalanda’ (carols) are the songs of praise and goodwill which are sung on the eve of the great Christian feasts and which belong, in anthropological terms, to what we call good luck rituals. The carols for the Twelve Days of Christmas are still remembered, though those for the other feasts of the year are almost forgotten. One good custom in the past was for the carol-singers to go out at night. Some would take lanterns with a paper surround and they’d also have little sticks with which to knock at people’s doors. The musical instruments which accompanied the carollers varied, depending on the tradition of the region. In Kastoria, there are many carols for the master and mistress ...
Pastoral Message for the Nativity of our Lord of H.E. Metropolitan Silouan of Byblos, Botris and dependencies While we celebrate the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, I feel ashamed for not being able to find in me an answer to the question: “Where the Christ was to be born?” (Matthew 2: 4), however, I found it and I find it in your love and in your apostolic service, a service carried out with dedication, self-denial and sacrifice. I found it and I find it in the faces bathed by the tears of abandonment, of loneliness, of need, especially in a distant land, but who stand firm in goodness, in truth and in prayer. I found it and I also find it ...
The Sunday before Christmas is full of names. Both in the Epistle, but particularly in the Gospel reading, there are long lists presented of people who preceded the Lord Jesus, and who, despite the variety in their ways of life, are all characterized by the common denominator of the anticipation of the Saviour, Redeemer and Benefactor of humankind. And this expectation, which of all of them shared, had common ground on which it grew: faith. This is why today’s Epistle reading begins with the words ‘By faith’, proclaiming that which should dominate our progress towards Christmas. This is because you can’t meet Christ, can’t celebrate Christmas, without faith. At every feast of the Church, the war is cunningly fought, with subtle ...
The Gospel reading today is the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew and, of course, of the whole New Testament. At first sight, the first page of this Holy Book seems to be the most tedious and perhaps the most off-putting page in world literature, consisting as it does of a tiresome list of Hebrew names. But a more careful examination reveals that it contains the glad fore-tidings of our salvation since it’s the family tree of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. It records Christ’s ancestors by name, beginning with Abraham and ending with the righteous Joseph, the apparent ‘husband of Mary’, but whose mission (duty) it was, in reality, to protect the Ever-Virgin. ‘Glory to your condescension’ We have ...
When we sit and collect our thoughts and see that we’re nothing; when, in humility, we put ourselves to shame, then our tears in God begin to flow, sweetening the heart and igniting divine fire.
Before us once again is the central Feast in the calendar, Christmas, and all of us who believe in Christ as our Saviour, Redeemer and Benefactor celebrate with joy and gladness, knowing by experience the theological depth and fundamental importance of this Feast. Christ came into the world and affectionately called us to Himself. He came and became a human person in order to give us the opportunity to be ‘gods by grace’. He came and became as we are in order to give us hope we can become as He is. He came and gave us His love in order to teach us to love. He came and brought us His peace on earth in order to teach us to ...
In today’s Apostolic Reading, we heard with how much faith Abraham and his descendants obeyed the voice of God and with great certainty and patience they waited for the promise He had given them to be fulfilled. Abraham is called by God to leave relatives and his home country, everything, in order to move and relocate to an unknown land. God does not reveal to him which land he has destined him for. Instead, He simply tells him to “leave” and “I will show you the place where you shall be settled.” Abraham does not question God about this land he will be dwelling in, but shows complete trust in Him like a child holding tightly the hand of his father. ...
There’d be no need for words, if our life shone. There’d be no need for teachers, it we had works to show. Nobody would be an unbeliever, if we were true Christians.
Our modern civilization prides itself and boasts about the fact that it’s managed to improved the everyday lot of humankind. From our primitive ancestors, who strove to dominate the rest of creation in order to survive, we moved on to the great scientific and philosophical advances of antiquity (in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome and so on). A good deal later, we saw the transition to industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries and the advent of machines in our daily life. And now, in our own day, we’ve reached the so-called ‘scientific revolution’, where we’re trying, through computers, IT and robots, to study and configure things that, only a generation ago, would have been considered unthinkable or the stuff of ...
The Doxastiko at Lauds on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ in plagal tone four (Των νομικών διδαγμάτων ) by the late Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas, Archon Protopsaltis of the Great Church of Christ, performed by himself and his choir at the lectern. Recorded at St. Dimitri’s, Ambelokipi, on 21-12-1969. Text and video edited by Andreas Margetis
You gain two graces when your strive on the side of God. One is the comfort of the Holy Spirit, which fills the soul with joy, peace, delight and so forth. The other grace is what we call the experience of temptations. This grace of experience is indelible in the soul, in other words it never leaves us, because it’s united to the heart which was subjected to the experience of the temptations. The first grace, that of the Holy Spirit, sometimes comes and sometimes goes. At times of temptation, the second grace, that of experience, is more useful because it illumines the soul as to how to get through the temptations, since it has experience of them and so ...
