Woe betide Christians who say: ‘This or that political party expresses the way I feel’. They’re a long way from being conscientious Christians. No party expresses the way Christians feel. And you can see that, in some things, all the parties, from the extreme right to the extreme left, are in agreement.
At the Ecumenical Synod at Chalcedon (451), a considerable number of Christians went their own way. They were a group of Churches (the Coptic in Egypt, the Armenian, the Ethiopian, the Syro-Jacobite, the Malankara Syrian Church in India and the Eritrean) which severed relations with the rest of the body of the Church (which constituted what we now call the ancient Patriarchates and the Church of Rome). This break occurred as a result of the Christological discord of the time, regarding the hypostatic union of the two natures (divine and human) in the person of Christ. It appears, however, that this lamentable development was due more to political, cultural and other factors, rather than to theological and ecclesiastical. Saint John the ...
Now try to become as close to God as you can through prayer and a strict life. Keep the rule your spiritual guide has given you and try to feel God.
As regards the origins of the universe, the scientific community traditionally believed in its eternal existence. Going as far back as Ancient Greek thought, the prevailing scientific concept was that the universe always existed and would continue to do so. Everything changed when Albert Einstein introduced his General Theory of Relativity (1915, 1917), and especially when the Russian mathematician Alexander Friedmann (1888-1925) solved its field equations, in 1922, with results which indicated an expanding universe. A few years later, in 1927, the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître (1894-1966), working independently of Friedmann, reached similar conclusions. Initially, his ideas were met with general indifference (in the case of Einstein with downright hostility), but an impressive discovery brought his proposition ...
The second volume of Analogia, The Pemptousia Journal for Theological Studies, has been published recently and is dedicated to St Maximus the Confessor. It is best, perhaps, to introduce St Maximus the Confessor with an excerpt that I wrote some years ago: The most important thing to emphasize insofar as St Maximus the Confessor’s contribution is concerned, is that he does not merely represent a personal theological view among those of other Greek patristic theologians (although he has a strong personal style), but is also an excellent key to the understanding of a considerable portion of the theology of other Fathers. Having assimilated almost every kind of theology before him, he also opened the ways of its future: there is not ...
In its nature, repentance has two sides to it, both of which are beneficial during the course of our life. The first is contrition over the mistakes we’ve made, and the second is correction of the misguided acts through which we’ve transgressed.
"...the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings" (Mal.4:2 ). "And He spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who had need of healing" (Lk.9:11 ). After His baptism, our Lord Jesus Christ had ascended into the wild mountains above Jericho. There, He revealed to us what His kingdom would not be. He rejected every manifestation of worldly authority and rule, and revealed that the kingdom of God is that uncreated reign of God, manifested wherever the will of God is being done by those who accept His rule and place their faith in Him. When our Saviour came down from the mount of temptation, He straight away went up ...
What is the Kingdom of Heaven? Contemplation of God, praising and hymning Him together with the angels. The bare bones convince us that nothing of this world belongs to us.
The ancient Greeks came down into what became their territory at the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. They were an Indo-European tribe with a particular historical dynamism which would be strengthened by their encounter with indigenous, pre-Greek tribes, such as the Pelasgians and with those from Asia Minor, such as the Carians and Leleges, who had already created a striking culture. The Greek gods were cultural creations or composites, which would reach their height after the Mycenaean era, in Homer. Since this paper is not about Religious Studies, we shall simply note the generally agreed view among the experts that, even all-powerful Zeus included, these gods were, to a remarkable degree, creations made in the image and likeness of human ...
People are often two-faced. They say one thing and have another in their heart and mind. This is something which often happens when they pray: although they understand the words and the meaning of the prayer, they don’t like what they’re saying. This means that they’re spiritually dead and are merely spouting words into the air.
Earth is a wondrous place – no matter where we go – how deep, how far, how high, how hot, how inhospitable – in this place we find life. Everywhere we look on our nearest neighbor – Mars – we find – no life. We want to find life. We hope to find life. We theorize life. But we have yet to find it. There is something about life, at least in our earthly experience, that isinexorable. Any individual case of life may be fragile, but life itself endures. In the Genesis account we are told that God blessed this planet and said: Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according ...
Today we celebrate the Great Feast of Holy Pentecost. Today, the tenth day after the Ascension and the fiftieth day after Pascha, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit, Who showed “the fishermen as supremely wise” and Who called all men into unity. Today’s Feast also marks the one-year anniversary of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, which was convened by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and by His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the historic island of Crete in Greece last year on Pentecost (June 19th). As we recall this historic meeting of Orthodox primates and hierarchs, our Holy Metropolis is re-publishing all eight official documents of the Holy and Great Council in one convenient and easily accessible document. ...
Nothing helps you to calm your anger and overcome all the passions as much as love for God and all other people does. It’s easier to win by love than by any other struggle.
And He was promised by the mouth of Joel first, who said, ‘And it shall be in the last days that I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh (that is, upon all that believe), and upon your sons and upon your daughters, and so on; and then afterwards by Jesus, Who was glorified , and returned glory to Him, just as He was glorified by the Father and glorified Him . How abundant this promise was . It confirms that the Holy Spirit will abide with the faithful for ever, and will remain with us, whether now with those who are worthy in the sphere of time, or afterwards with those who are counted worthy ...
David always gives the most joyful meaning to feasts, tuning his dulcet harp to the requirements of the festival. So let this same prophet delight us on the great feast of Pentecost, too, picking out the melody of wisdom on the strings, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Let him speak to us through that divine melody, entirely appropriate to this feast: ‘Come let us raise our voices in joy to the Lord’. First we need to understand today’s gift and then we can use the right verse from the prophet to suit our purposes. Allow me, please, to clarify my sermon on this, insofar as I can, by putting things in order. The human race was misled in its ...
The passion of conceit is present in some form in almost everyone, which is why the Lord begins the Beatitudes with this point. He highlights the pride lurking in our character as another ancient evil. He enjoins us to imitate Him, Who of His own will became poor and Who is, in truth, blessed. In this way, we will draw down upon us a share in His bliss, since we’ll have become like Him by voluntarily becoming poor, insofar as we can and depending on who we are. Saint Paul tells us (Phil. 2, 5 ff). to be of the same mind as Christ, Who, although He is God, did not regard His equality as something to be exploited. Instead, ...
After fifty days from our Lord's glorious Resurrection our Holy Orthodox Church celebrates Pentecost. This feast day is very important for all mankind, because it is the birthday of our Church. It is the day on which the Church, the Body of Christ, begins to function as the living organization in which one finds salvation. It is the day, on which Christ's promise, that He will send the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Holy Trinity, is fulfilled. It is the day, when the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of fire and entered into the hearts of the Holy Apostles and the rest of the disciples opening their mind of understanding. It is the day, when God called all ...
Temptation makes us fractious, worried and creates internal warfare. It knows all the tricks… it drags people down into doubt. This is why there are so many shipwrecks. Do you know what an expert temptation is? It transforms molehills into mountains. It conducts high politics.
Our holy Church offers us another opportunity to remember and honor our dead people, our beloved persons who passed away, and all her members by whom we are in communion through God' s love and the grace from the sacraments, beyond this sense of time. To say it in other words, by this care we confirm the unity of triumphant and militant Church, at our common path to the Kingdom of God, as well as the solidarity of the Body of Christ beyond places, times, and even biological aspects of human existence. It is certainly true that in the life of the Church we can honor our deceased brothers and fathers through many opportunities. From the daily prayer, our specific sequences ...
