The Fathers tell us that the sense of sinfulness is a great gift from God, even superior to the sight of sublime visions. When we realize our inner darkness,s and the infernal and disgusting nature of sin is revealed- giving rise, as it does, to repulsion- then divine grace brings its own comfort.
Sorrow’s acceptable to God provided it doesn’t deprive us of the courage to strive. We should leave all our requests in the hands of God, whatever we want to ask for, as a child would ask of its father.
Today, too, people can be true Christians only if, on a daily basis, they’re guided by God’s saints.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost We have heard in the Acts of the Apostles how, as the Feast of Pentecost was approaching, Paul the Apostle had started on his journey to Jerusalem to be there together with all those who on that very day received the Holy Spirit. Of all of them he was the only one who had not been present in the High Room where the event took place. And yet, God had given him a true, a perfect conversion of heart, and of mind and of life, and had given him freely the gift of the Holy Spirit in response to his total, ultimate gift of self to Him, the God ...
Some people think that prayer is yoga, that it’s meditation, a technique. That’s wrong. Prayer’s a spontaneous appeal from the human heart to God.
Our life depends on the kind of thoughts we cultivate. If our thoughts are peaceful and calm, if they’re meek and kind, then our life will be, too. If our attention is on our living conditions, then we’re consumed by a whirlwind of thoughts and we can find neither peace nor calm.
When there’s a lot of sin in a country, then its political matters also go wrong instead of proceeding normally.
Even though the saints sinned, they had the strength to arise, simply and robustly. If they sinned, they repented, from the depth of their heart until the day they died, but weren’t depressed and despondent. We, on the other hand, if we have a sin, begin with the ‘whys’: ‘Why do I do it? Why do I think it? Why did I act like that?’ As if it were a wonder that we would sin. Why wouldn’t you do it? Who do you think you are? Somebody so important, so infallible that you’d never fail, never commit a sin?
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So we have come to the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord. Thus we have come to the last day of Christ’s physical presence on Earth. This marks the fulfilment of all things, since His Conception at the Annunciation to the Holy Virgin, His Birth and all the events of His earthly life, recorded for us in the Gospels. Christ came down from Heaven in order to destroy the power of Satan over mankind. Christ was crucified and rose from the dead in order to destroy death. Christ ascends into the skies in order to raise up fallen human nature to the heights of Heaven. But He ascends not ...
When you see that some people harbour ill-will towards you, don’t think of that wickedness as belonging to them. No, they’re acting as tools of Satan, though they don’t understand the deceit of the evil one and become trapped. Pray to God that the enemy will release them and that the eyes of their heart, which have been darkened by the evil one, will be illumined.
The Fathers of our Church, such as Saint Epifanios of Cyprus, Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, Saint Hippolytus of Rome, Clement the Alexandrian et al., refused to accept the above anthropological and soteriological model, as projected by the Gnostics, because it was diametrically opposed to Biblical anthropology and thus removed the possibility of our salvation. Essentially it led to a misrepresentation of the Gospel message regarding our nature, our beginnings, our destination, the manner in which we should live our lives to the full, our spiritual development and progress and, in the end, the possibility of our salvation. Although both ancient Gnosticism and modern views on gender and the removal of the distinction between the sexes begin from different theoretical standpoints, they ...
If we’re possessed of a vainglorious, contemptuous attitude and have been blinded by pride, then, inevitably, we fall into the same sin as the devil.
In the period after Easter, when the services in the Pentecostarion are celebrated, we read the Gospel according to Saint John on Sundays. Essentially, the Evangelist quotes a miracle/cure performed by Jesus and, either before or after, gives his theological interpretation of it. Thus, in the case of the healing of the man who was blind from birth, Saint John refers to the importance of day, of light. The Lord reveals Himself as ‘the Light of the World’ and that He’s labouring to perform ‘the works of Him Who sent Him’ while it’s still daytime. Because Christ said that He’s doing the work of ‘Him Who sent Him’. If we Christians are to be loyal to our Lord, then we, too, ...
Lots of people today go chasing after joy, happiness, and go down roads that aren’t clean, but are befouled by the actions of demons. But if ‘the Lord God speaks’ in our heart, then we should be quiet. We should turn to our heart, learn to pray the Jesus prayer, cleanse our heart with introversion, and then, without wishing for it, without seeking it, we’ll be a ‘city built on a hill’.
The devil is very envious of those people who pray and uses all sorts of ploys in order to stop them doing so. So when the demons see that you’re ready to pray properly, they remind you of supposedly urgent things. Then they’ll make you forget and urge you to go looking for them. Since you can’t remember what they were, you become worried and sad. Then, when you return to your prayer, they remind you again what you were looking for, so as to turn your mind back to them and so that you’ll forget about your productive prayer.
Under the auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, a second international forum on modern slavery convened in Buenos Aires, Argentina, May 5-8, 2018. This forum, entitled Old Problems in the New World, was cosponsored by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Buenos Aires and South America, and the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute (Berkeley, California). The purpose of this gathering was to bring together distinguished practitioners, policymakers, theologians, and scholars, from within Latin America and other parts of the world to explore the myriad dimensions of the scourge of modern-day slavery. The forum was held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Argentina, with welcoming remarks from the President of Argentina, government officials, dignitaries and various religious leaders. A highlight of theopening session was ...
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. At the end of today’s reading, words stand that we pass by very often. The blind man says to Christ, “And who is the Son of God?” and Christ answers, “You have seen Him and He is speaking to you”. For us, the first words are so natural; the first event of our life, the first event of a meeting is that we see a person, but what was this wonder of this man who had never seen anything in the world and who, touched by the life-giving hand of Christ, of a sudden saw! And the first person he saw was his Lord and his God, Christ, the Son ...
‘They saw a man blind from birth’ The curing of the man blind from birth is a terrible rebuke for the Pharisees, who didn’t want to accept the words of Christ. Before this momentous event, Christ had had an extensive dialogue with the Scribes and Pharisees, in the course of which He said to them: ‘I tell you absolutely truly: before Abraham was born, I am’ (Jn. 8, 58). The infuriated Jews didn’t understand Christ’s words and picked up stones to throw at Him (op. cit., 59). In order not to stoke their anger, Jesus hid and left the temple grounds (ibid). It was after this that he met the man blind from birth and cured him, in part so that ...
Spiritual people are all pain. In other words, they feel pain for situations and people, but are rewarded for this pain with divine consolation. They feel pain, but also divine consolation within themselves, because God pitches blessings down into our soul from Paradise. And we rejoice in His divine love. This is joy, spiritual joy, which is inexpressible and inundates the heart.
The state of one-genderism is described in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, where, in answer to a question from His disciples regarding the way to enter the Kingdom of God and our salvation, Jesus answers: ‘When you make the two one, the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, the top like the bottom, that is it. And when you make male and female to be one and the same, so that the male is not male and the female is no longer female… then you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven’. Moreover, at a different point in this same Gospel, it is emphasized that a fundamental condition for a woman to enter the Kingdom of ...
