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(Previous publication: http://bit.ly/2zFm6yQ) It is written that wine makes glad the heart of man (Psalm 104: 15) and that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8: 10). The Holy Spirit pours the divine wine in man's good wineskin, in the one who has kept himself unspotted from the world (James 1: 27) and its corruption which reigns through sin unto death. O’ Mother, you are the intercessor of the souls who run out of wine, their wineskin bursts, and their souls withers to the point of death; you intervened in the right time at the wedding of Canna of Galilee. After the Son completed the economy of Redemption, you, O' Mother, began to minister to the bridal souls teaching them ...

We should also note that we priests often lose the wonderful entry into the presence of God at the Holy Sacrament of the Anaphora, because we weren’t in God’s presence enough before we came to the Divine Liturgy. The same is true for all of us when we come to the Divine Liturgy. If we haven’t enjoyed the stillness of God’s presence, if we haven’t stayed in quietude to the extent that we’re able to, then we lose the power of Holy Communion, which is a communion of Christ’s grace, a communion of the gifts of all the saints.

On the 6th Sunday of Luke, the great Redeemer of the human race, while He was in the land of the Gadarenes, opposite Galilee, relieves, redeems and liberates a man from a terrible threat. The ‘sick’ servant in today’s Gospel is suffering from a spiritual illness. He’s possessed, that is profoundly under the influence of the unclean spirit of the cunning devil. Indeed, according to the reading, he was so enslaved to the demons that he no longer dwelt in a house, but lived among the graves. It would appear that the tormented man, being spiritually dead, found no comfort except among the dead. The possessed man is a terrible case which everyone finds appalling. This was not a psychiatric illness ...

Like everything else, marriage between Christians should involve decorum, and decorum is modesty.

‘A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan’ (Psalm 68: 15). Mount Athos in Greece is the mountain of the good wine and the divine olive oil. This is the divine redemptive gift of this land. SAMSUNG CSC The store house of oil and wine is in Mount Athos because my Mother, the Virgin, made it her garden. God gave it to her because she is the only faithful one who trades well; there is no place for any kind of loss in whatever she is entrusted on. She knew how to make this mountain a garden of wine and oil, which the natural land of Greece is abundant with. O’ Mother, you attracted your children to your garden. You were ...

God wants everyone to be saved and we should be thinking about the salvation of everyone and should pray for them all. But neither revelation nor experience provide us with a basis for claiming that everyone will, in fact, be saved. Freedom is a great gift, but a terrible one.

A Hierarchical Great Vespers was held on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto for the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, presided by His Eminence Metropolitan Sotirios and assisted by 17 priests. His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew honoured 10 Greek-Canadian Orthodox Christians across Canada with the title of Archon. At the conclusion of Great Vespers, the Investiture Ceremony for the Archons was held. Three new Archons were invested: Nicholas Aroutzidis, Archon Kastrinsios; Frank Topos, Archon Maestor; and, Dimitri Soudas, Archon Depoutatos. The remaining Archons will be invested later in the year during similar Great Vespers and dinners in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively. After the Archon Investiture Ceremony, a dinner was held at the Metropolitan Centre next ...

Through patience, we arrive at humility and thereafter we enjoy God’s grace. Boldness towards God is acquired through a clear conscience and works of virtue.

When people of merit avoid political power, then it’s left to the undeserving to assume it. Naturally, Christians would prefer the implementation of civil power to be in the hands of people of the faith. In the early centuries, however, Christians didn’t seek secular office because they considered this to be inconsistent with their primary goal. The nature of a good Christian doesn’t necessarily mean success in the exercise of political power. The aim of civil authority is to regulate this present life, not that of the future. Saint Paul states that obedience to state authority has its limits. It’s understood as submission to the demands of the common weal. Everyone should submit to the higher authorities which exist, because these ...

The source of all wickedness is vainglory and love of pleasure. If you don’t hate those passions, you won’t be able to root out any of the other ones.

To live in an Orthodox manner means: a) I love God very much; b) I try not to sadden Him; c) through my life, I bear witness to Christ.

We feel sad, worried, exposed and afraid not only because of external events, but also because we ourselves have lost the centre of our lives. We’ve become subject to the temptations which Christ rejected in the desert: gluttony, vainglory and the desire for power. We’ve chased after easy money. We’ve sought to climb the social ladder. We’ve become imprudent investors. We’ve organized our lives around selfish aims, love of pleasure and popularity. Even if we consider ourselves believers and claim to acknowledge the virtues of the Gospels, we apply them only insofar as it suits our personal interests. Our relationship with God has become contractual. Even the Churches have become places for the pursuit of interests and ambitions, where shepherds ...

TORONTO—I recently attended a leadership workshop where a guest speaker spoke about the importance of listening, supporting her point by articulating that “God” gave us two ears, but only one mouth, so that we would listen more, and talk less. It was quite a surprise to hear that word, God, in such a setting, since He has been largely removed from the public square. Her reference reminded me of an article from July written by veteran columnist Susan Delacourt, in which she employs former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s famous 1979 “crisis in confidence” speech as a framework for predicting the rise of the current White House occupant. Among the key points I took away from re-reading his speech—many of which Delacourt highlights—two ...

In accordance with His plan, God allows each person to be tested with various sorrows, so that it will be obvious who it is who loves Him.

People today, who are indifferent towards so many things, are also indifferent to matters of the faith. Naturally, some sociologists and anthropologists are not slow to interpret this phenomenon as ‘the end of faith’. And there are historians who analyze it as ‘a turn towards modernity’ which is typical of our times. But, as will become clear below, none of this is true, both because there have always been people, throughout the course of history, who have been indifferent to religious matters and also because if the souls of such people ever warm, they become fervent in the faith, to the point where they surpass, spiritually, many who have been in the Church for years. One of the causes of indifference ...

We must be people of grace, so that those who meet us find relief.

Paper delivered by Prof. Goutzioudis at the 3rd Hagiological Conference on the subject: ‘The Apostolic Fathers and their Era’, which was held in Smyrna and Ephesus (4-8 May 2017) The name of the Apostle Barnabas was linked to the authorship of the work in question by Clement the Alexandrian, Origen, Didymus, Hieronymus and other ecclesiastical writers. There are indications in the text that it can’t, in fact, have been composed by the apostle himself, and point more to the identity of a Gentile Christian with a good knowledge of Jewish tradition. The anonymous author must have been a teacher in the community to which the epistle is addressed*. Even very early on the attribution was viewed with suspicion and Eusebius is ...

The dogmatic boundaries of the Church The significance of the right faith for the existence of the Church God’s love knows no bounds, it’s without limits. As Saint Gregory of Nyssa puts it in his Dialogue on the soul and resurrection, the divine life is activated through love and God’s agapetic. Energy has no boundaries. The creation of the universe and, in particular, the human race, is an expression of God’s boundless love, as is the whole history of His dispensation, with its culmination in the incarnation of the Son and Word of God: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son so that all who believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life (Jn. 3, ...

Listen to me, listen to me all you bad judges of other people’s sins. Because if it’s true- and it really is- that ‘For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged’ (Matth. 7, 2), then rest assured that we shall fall into the same sins, be they bodily or spiritual, for which we’ve condemned our neighbour. It can’t be otherwise.

We haven’t reached rock bottom yet, we’ve still got some way to go, but once we do then things will start to sort themselves out.