Hospitality’s the greatest of the virtues. It attracts the Grace of the Holy Spirit. My child, in the face of every stranger, I see Christ Himself. » Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos
Every time we celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God, it’s like Easter all over again; the summer Easter. Our Lady the Mother of God prepares this Easter, this ‘glorious Passover from death unto life’, for us. A second Passover, holy, spotless, life-giving for the human race, because truly, today, ‘the terms of nature are overcome’. Saint John the Damascan cried aloud: ‘How the source of life goes towards life by passing through death!’ The death of the Mother who was the source of life for the Lord Himself transcends the notion of death, so that it’s not even called death but ‘dormition’ and ‘divine translation’, or a progression or procession towards the Lord. And even if we call it ...
Be patient with your own passions and be patient with mine. Then you’ll become a saint. » Elder Ephraim of Katounakia
Think good things about other people. With your prayer, through Christ, you can have a beneficial effect on others. Don’t think ill of other people, because then you’re a bad influence on them.
Because people don’t look to their own wickedness, because they don’t weep over their dead self, they’re incapable of doing anything at all to put themselves to rights and so they’re constantly concerned with other people. There’s nothing that angers God more, nothing that exposes us so much and leads to our isolation than gossip, than condemning and slaughtering other people.
Fasting was a commandment given to us to observe right at the beginning, but our first ancestors didn’t obey.
People need humility and the fear of God more than the breath they take. Two wrongs don’t make a right, so if anyone does you harm, respond with a good action and in that way you’ll cancel out their wickedness.
Heaven’s newspapers write everything that happens here, all the good and the bad. Believers should be simple in their actions and pure in their thoughts and feelings. They should seek God with a pure heart and encounter Him in simplicity, because ‘a pure heart easily passes through the gates of heaven’.
People aren’t worth less than an animal which, according to the law, if it falls into a ditch, you have to pull out and look after (Deut. 22, 1-4). So how kind should we be to our fellow human beings, when we’re enjoined to have pity even on dumb animals?
Christ is here! Why don’t you believe? Believe and everything will be fine. Just believe. Wait. Don’t be afraid. God’s Grace is protecting you. Wait. Ask the Lord for love. All the virtues are hidden away in love.
Yesterday and today we have a great feast of the Lord, the Transfiguration of Christ the Saviour. We shall say a few words about the feast, based on what the Gospel tells us. Not long before His crucifixion, Christ took three of His disciples, Peter, James and John, led them up onto a high mountain called Tabor and was transfigured before their eyes. His face became as bright as the sun and His clothes shone white. On His left and right appeared two figures from the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah, who represented the Law and the Prophets respectively. The disciples were unable to bear the light and fell to the ground (Pentecost had not yet happened). One of them, ...
When we speak to people today, about mourning, it seems strange to them, because they think it shameful to cry. Of course, when we’re dealing with passing, vain matters, it is indeed not worth crying. But that mourning’s just on the level of social convention. Spiritual mourning has to do with our relationship with God and is the product not so much of our own choice, as of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The sense of responsibility for wicked deeds weighs down upon our heart and this gives rise to the sad state of mourning.
Temptations happen to people: to test them, and so that their virtue will shine through, as was the case with Abraham, Job and many others of the righteous; to cleanse them of all the stains of sin, or as the Prophet Isaiah puts it, all the rust God sees in the depths of the souls of His children (cf. Is. 1, 25) so that, on the day of judgment, they can appear before Him as pure gold; or so that we can be chastised for our own good, because of our sins, as we read in the Psalms: Many are the afflictions with which the Lord scourges the sinner (Ps. 31, 10).
On the occasion of the feast of the Transfiguration, the Greek Byzantine Choir, under the direction of the late Lykourgos Angelopoulos, Archon Protopsaltis of the Most Holy Archdiocese of Constantinople, sings, in plagal tone three, the verse from the Psalms ‘Lord they will walk in the light of your countenance and rejoice all the day long in your name’, from the Selection of Psalms for the Lity. The musical setting is by Ioannis Koukouzelis (c. 1280 – c. 1360). From the live recording of a concert at the historic town of Mystra, 6 July 2003. Your browser does not support the audio element.
In the Gospel , concerning the young man who was possessed, we’re given the opportunity to examine the shortcomings in the way we bring up our children. Bringing children up outside Christianity If we’re to see the shortcomings in the way we bring up our children we need to look at both the children and who’s doing the teaching. Since, apart from society, the children’s teachers are the family and the school, we shall examine the nature of the children, the parents and the teachers. First, the children. From the Gospel reading, we understand that the young man ‘is sorely afflicted. He often falls into the fire or into water’. Life teaches us that, despite the simplicity and sincerity that children have at ...
Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that sickness is removed with the coming of Christ into the world, despite the fact that, when announcing the cure of the sick, Christ also indicates the presence of God in His own Person. Apart from telling them to sin no more, Christ also prophetically warns: ‘lest worse things befall you’. This warning is not only of a personal nature to the invalid concerned but is also a prophetic lament over the afflictions which will accompany the future of humankind. The mystery of the divine dispensation is now an accomplished historical fact, through the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. Our clay has been therapeutically and unifyingly assumed by the divine nature and now sits ...
If your tongue’s like a sharp sword, then you can use it to murder people. It’s what we often do, without thinking that we’re killers. We wound our neighbour’s heart with slander and lies, we insult their human dignity and we agitate their hearts with malicious talk. Is that not spiritual assassination?
Love for your enemies isn’t possible except by the Grace of the Holy Spirit.
On Wednesday, 1 August, at the beginning of the fast for Our Most Holy Lady, whom he loved so much, Archimandrite Gavriil Tsafos, the parish priest of the pilgrimage church of Saint Andreas, in Leukosias Street in the Archdiocese of Athens, fell asleep in the Lord. Father Gavriil (baptized Yeoryios) was born on 6 June, 1944, in Athens, and was the fourth child of Vasileios and Eleni Tsafos, devout refugees from Asia Minor, who settled in the refugee neighbourhood of Polygono. Influenced by the experiences of ordinary people, as well as by his mother’s stories about the Asia Minor disaster and the resulting flight from the ancestral homelands, he always spoke of the tradition of Asia Minor, emphasizing the fervent faith, ...
Disbelief comes from pride. Proud people reckon they always know best, through their mind and through science, but knowledge of God is always beyond them, because God can be known only through revelation by the Holy Spirit. The Lord is revealed to humble souls. It is to these that He shows His works, which are incomprehensible to our mind. With our natural mind we can understand only earthly things and even these no more than partially, whereas God and the things in heaven are known through the Holy Spirit.
