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Through their faith and their loving union with God in the person of Christ, Christians become fundamentally spiritually equipped to overcome the fear of death. They’re saved from spiritual death and are no longer afraid of biological demise. It’s precisely their faith in the Resurrection of the Lord which fills their souls with courage, hope, optimism and patience. The whole of the otherwise insurmountable problem of death undergoes a change of content and is transformed into an encounter and direct communion with the person of Christ. By the same token, time, from being a drift towards death, a movement towards meaningless darkness, becomes a movement towards resurrection, towards an effulgent revelation. In short, it’s natural for Christians to mourn and to ...

The earliest church prohibited Christians from participating in capital punishment, as is evident from the following pronouncements by Christian writers before the Decian Persecution of A.D. 249-251. This time period marks the 200th anniversary of the beginning of distinctively Christian literature, and also the first quarter-millennium of our era. Dating from before the division into modern-day denominations, such writings are the common inheritance of all Christians. In addressing a rebellious faction in the church at Corinth, 1 Clement 45 recalled that when in the Old Testament the righteous were persecuted or put to death, it was only by the wicked, the unholy, and the hate-consumed. Variously dated between A.D. 70 and 97, 1 Clement is one of the oldest extant Christian ...

The Miracle of Truth Saint Photius was the chosen vessel of God in his times. He was, in other words, the outstanding, genuine bearer of Tradition and for that reason was the most famous and therefore the most significant theologian of the period. His outlook and his theology were an expression of the being of the Church and the result of enlightenment by the Holy Spirit. This fact, which is not so common as we would like in the Church, has warmed the hearts of the faithful to Photius over all the centuries since, and has made him a symbol and beacon of the truth. It is proper, therefore that the Church has decided to celebrate his memory (6th February) in ...

Life without Christ, death without Christ, truth without Christ, the sun without Christ and the universe without Him- all of that is absolute madness, a terrible martyrdom, a Sisyphian torment, hell! I don’t want either life or death without You, Sweetest Lord. I don’t want truth, justice, paradise or even eternity. No, no! All I want is You. For You to be in all things, in all people and above everything.

The newly-weds are our spiritual children, members of our parishes. It’s the duty of clergy to celebrate the ‘feast’ of the couple in a splendid manner, with formality, seriousness and dignity, while at the same time preserving the corresponding religious and liturgical ethos. It’s a help in this if there’s a choir, so that the ceremony can be performed in a prayerful manner. This is, in itself, an encouragement to those taking part to behave accordingly. Not hurriedly, and worrying over the next wedding. If the sanctity of the service is to be preserved, pastoral effort is required, as is the spiritual cultivation of the couple and, indeed, of the whole parish. At this point, the responsibility of the clergy ...

Let’s struggle with all the strength that God’s given us. Let’s entreat Him to agree to help us, so that we keep His commandments and that His will may be accomplished within us, by the coming of His kingdom, that is His Grace. May the All-Good Spirit visit us and thus restore the tripartite balance of our soul. Then we’ll be counted worthy to obtain not only the image but also the likeness, and to become children of God by grace. Photo by Spyros Drosos How does divine Grace visit us and dwell within us? First of all, God seeks pure and untainted faith. If you’ve got real faith, it’s not possible that you won’t have works, as well. As Saint ...

Bodbe Convent, where the relics of St. Nino, Equal to the Apostles and enlightener of Georgia lie, is situated in eastern Georgia (Kakheti), two kilometers south of the city of Sighnaghi, in a picturesque place, at the feet of the Great Caucasian Range. The convent has a miraculous view of the Alazani Valley and the snow-capped mountains of Caucasus. According to ancient literary sources, the convent was founded right after St. Nino’s earthly life, in the first part of the fourth century. St. Nino’s ancestral roots lead to Cappadocia. Her father Zabulon, a general of the Roman Emperor Maximian, introduced Christianity to ten fiefdoms of the Gallic lands. He was married to Sosanna, a sister of the Patriarch of Jerusalem. Their only ...

There is more to Lent than fasting, and there is more to fasting than food. This principle lies at the heart of the Lenten Triodion, the main hymnbook of Lent. Lent is without doubt the richest and most distinctive season of the ecclesiastical year. The Lenten services, the spiritual lessons of the Triodion and the biblical readings for the season invite us to simplify our lives and to immerse ourselves in the ‘bright sadness’ of repentance. Written for the devout Christian, the Triodion is full of warnings against pride and hypocrisy – the ultimate spiritual sins to which religious folk are so susceptible. Orthodox Lent begins on ‘Clean Monday’, seven weeks before Pascha, when Orthodox Christians celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection. But ...

All the professions which we Christians practice are like nets. When we work for ourselves, we’re ordinary fishermen. But when we become Apostles, each in his or her profession, then we become fishers of people.

Many a time even the law of gravity was hardly noticeable, because everything was complemented and relieved by the grace of obedience and self-denial. We continually inhaled the fragrance of the resurrection and of eternity.

            “Grief in the Lord(or grief for the sake of the Lord- Πένθος κατα Θεόν) is the state in which the soul feels gloomy; it is the disposition of the aching heart, which does not cease fervently seeking that for which it feels thirst. The longer it takes for it to attain to this goal, the harder the heart struggles chasing after it and runs after it with painful lament”.( Saint John of the Ladder, 7th Word on On the joy-producing grief”)             Grief and  what follows from it, are the most valuable tools and spoils of repentance. Without them our repentance is doubtful. What other means or tools could the penitent show when he is called upon to appear at ...

3. But while the Lord, in this manner, is presented as a “sign gainsaid” and “is set for the fall and rising of many”, depending on the attitude of each person, it remains a reality beyond all doubt that each one of us, will have to take a stand, once and for all, either for or against Christ. A lot of people imagine that it is possible to adopt an indifferent attitude, neither giving the Christian faith a warm welcome nor being hostile towards it. This is self-deception. Because the Lord said that “those who are not with me are against me (Matth. 12, 30).  This so-called neutrality, which even in international affairs gives the impression of refusal and unwillingness ...

With the appearance of coenobitic monasticism and the foundation of the first great coenobia in Egypt by Saint Pakhomios, things became increasingly organized. The first coenobium- and this is of great symbolic importance- took the Greek name of “Κοινωνία”, i.e. “Community”. Everything was common: common work, common financial management, common liturgical life, common refectory, common instruction. Work was divided and specialized, with overseers responsible for its co-ordination. At the end of every year, there was a financial report and the monasteries with a surplus met the financial shortfalls of the monasteries with a deficit. The fundamental element however, was that the founder of this “Community”, Saint Pakhomios the Great, conceived and understood it with spiritual characteristics, as a visible expression ...

Our good God created us in His image and likeness. The image is common to all people, but only very few have the likeness. So let’s examine what the likeness is. The likeness is when we imitate God, as much as we can, as the Saints did. If people have only the image, not the likeness as well, it does them no good, even though they’re human persons and supposed to be rational. When they possess reason and still do stupid things, how can they be called rational? When they don’t imitate the Lord, insofar as this is possible, in humility, meekness, righteousness, charity, wisdom and purity, but instead engage in foolish and beastly works, how can you call people like ...

Don’t seek positions which bring honours and relaxation, but those which demand self-sacrifice, self-denial, and a spirit of love and humility.

February 3, Feast of Saint Werburga While it may be true that history doesn’t repeat itself, it is also true that human beings do. Each generation, each person, is born into the same spiritual state as the generations who have gone before. It’s true that a child will benefit from a loving environment, a good education and a proper formation in the faith, but that child’s children will not directly inherit any of this; the process needs to be started afresh. That said, similar circumstances will tend to produce similar results. The persecutions in the Late Roman Empire did not directly produce martyrs: the martyrs- ‘witnesses’- suffered because they felt obliged to testify for their faith. Had they not, had they ...

(Extract from a sermon preached at the University Church of Great St Mary's, Cambridge, on 19 May 1985) And then, lastly, two events which I would like to bring together. The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the Crucifixion. Every male child first-born of a woman was to be brought to the Temple as an offering. If we read back into the Old Testament about the institution of the act we discover that God commanded the Hebrews to bring the first-born male children of every family to the temple as a blood offering, as a ransom for the first-born of Egypt, who had to die that the Jews might go free. Every first-born male child was therefore brought and God ...

With great emotion, Symeon the righteous holds the divine infant in his arms. His heart is inundated with joy. His gaze is fixed upon the heavens and his lips move devoutly, in the fervent prayer which has risen to his mouth at that blessed moment: “Lord, now you  are letting your servant depart…”. This thrice-blessed elder then turns to Our Most Holy Lady, to tell her words of great moment. With the air of a prophet illumined by the spirit of God revealing the will of the Most High, he says, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign gainsaid”. Truly prophetic words, which Our Lady hears, not merely with emotion ...

Through sin, we did not only set aside God’s commandment but also engendered within ourselves a false idea and notion about God. In reality, the false idea and notion about God are actually the very essence of satanic deceit. This is why our fall, became His ‘fall’: in the human conscience, God is no longer Who He really is. The human conscience, wallowing in the tyranny of our desires, can think only in a post-fall manner about any form of authority and control regarding everything within it and around it. Just as we tried to become God by violence, so now our centres of power, even religious ones, demand absolute authority and domination, and there’s no way round this. God can ...