In English

Bishop Ignatius was a prominent Orthodox spiritual writer of nineteenth century Russia. Born of a noble family, he completed an education in engineering in St. Petersburg under the patronage of Emperor Nicholas I and was destined for a brilliant worldly career. Later, as an officer, he chose instead to follow the spiritual yearning of his soul and receive the monastic tonsure, as a disciple of the famous Elder Lev of Optina Hermitage. Well grounded in the ascetic writings of the Holy Fathers, Bishop Ignatius captured the spirit of the ancient patristic and monastic traditions of the Orthodox Church in his own works, written in the most eloquent language of the time. His best known work, The Arena (An Offering to ...

A friend of mine met Helen La Kelly Hunt at a conference and was impressed with some of her ideas. He asked me to read and comment on her book, Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance, Five Spirited and Spiritual Women Throughout History. For what it is worth, here are my thoughts… As much as I appreciate what Helen is trying to do in Faith and Feminism, the book presents some serious problems for me.  On the one hand, in a secular context, any acknowledgement of faith, no matter how vaguely presented, is a good thing.  And I particularly found her examples of St. Teresa of Avila, Sojourner Truth and Dorothy Day inspiring.  What Helen seems to miss, however, is that these ...

Why is it that when it comes to drinking nectar, bees make it sweeter than butterflies or hummingbirds?  It has to do with whether the insect dips a tongue into the nector or sucks the liquid up. Sweet nectar is naturally thicker and apparently the bees’ dainty approach is the best for harvesting the most viscous of nectars, is also the most efficient according to American mathematicians who published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. It’s a speed thing that bees have developed over the 150 million years that they have been harvesting nectar and making honey. According to Dr. Wonjung Kim, the lead author of the report, “Nectar feeders, such as ...

Beneficiaries should remember the good deeds done to them, but benefactors should forget them.

PROLOGUE “And God said: Let us make man in our image and in our likeness”. (Gen1,26) Man has been looking for the truth and for the path which leads to it ever since the ancient times.. The ancient, eminent Greek Philosopher, Plato, stresses in his writings that man has to become similar to God: “That is why we should make all haste to take flight from this world to the other, and that means becoming like the divine so far as we can, and that again is to become righteous or just with the help of wisdom”.(Plato, Theaetetus (Θεαίτητος) 176a—e (ca. 395 BCE)(transl. after F.M. Cornford).             However, this happened through the advent of the Lord Word ( Logos) on earth, since He “The ...

Jesus, Son of God, have mercy upon me. Be my consolation in my sorrows.

It seems as if every other year there is a new manifesto about how to be a better parent: tiger mothers, helicopter fathers and Facebook parents have all hit the shelves.  There is a constant race to do more with less. Enter the New Caledonian crow. When it comes to tool use, the crows inventiveness, complexity and sophistication stands well above the other tool using animals such as the bottle nose dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants and even the many armed octopi.  Using more than sticks, stones and shells, crows seem to have no issue with compound tools with laboratory videos displaying birds doing things which initially appear artificial.  The most famous example is a bird named Betty at Oxford University who selects a ...

Your attitude lights a fire within me. It’s as if you’re heaping coals on what’s within me.

One of the most wonderful stories in the Lavsaïko describes the life of a monk who abandoned his monastery and went to the port of Alexandria to work as a dock labourer. Given the fact that it was a port, there was no shortage of prostitutes. The ‘monk’ worked all day, and in the evening he spent all he’d earned, buying the company of a harlot for the whole night. He was the shame of all the Christians in the city and a scandal for the whole Church. Years passed and despite appeals and advice, he continued with his sinful way of life. Then death came, as it does to all of us, and released him, as if it were ...

The great teachers of the Church and of the Greek nation, Makarios Notaras, Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Athanasios of Paros, who lived and worked in the 18th and early 19th centuries, form a new trinity of shining lights of the Church, like the three Fathers of the Church in the past, relatively speaking of course and bearing in mind the historical circumstances they lived through with their similarities and differences. To these three must be added Neophytos of Kafsokalyvia, who started the movement, although he was not as important or active as the other three would later become, thus earning their place in the Communion of Saints. They were nicknamed Kollyvades by their opponents on the Holy Mountain ...

One of the Elders said: Don’t judge any adulterer if you’re chaste. Then you’ll be breaking the law as he does. Because He who said: ‘Don’t commit adultery (Matth. 5, 27), also said: ‘Don’t judge’ (Matth. 7, 1).

The purpose of the Orthodox Artist in the world is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, whereby thousands around us will find salvation, as Saint Seraphim of Sarov said. Her mission is to turn water into wine. To take what seems ordinary, what seems plain, colorless and flavorless and by the grace of the Holy Spirit transform it into something bursting with flavor, beauty, richness and depth. It is the artist’s vocation to permeate the world with the fragrance of humility and mercy. After all St. Paul says that we are the fragrance of Christ. “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” (2 Corinthians 2:15) The purpose ...

The evil one whispers to us not to believe. But not the least thing that the Lord said will fail to come to pass. There’s heaven and there’s hell. And we, the faithful, will be judged more severely.

A young shoot, wherever you put it, will turn the same way. A new receptacle will give off a sweet smell or will stink depending on whether you put something fragrant in it or filth.

Collected Writings on Orthodox Christianity: Various Aspects of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, George Alexander, OCP Publications: Kerala, India (Second Edition, June 2016). In this second edition of Collected Writings on Orthodox Christianity, editor and author George Alexander provides new content as good as the first. This compendium provides a panoply of approaches in contemporary Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions regarding church structure and pastoral life. The writers discuss topics as varied as Orthodoxy in Israel, Ethiopia, India, Armenia, Egypt, Syria, Kenya and the challenges that they face in the modern world. We are introduced to the ministry work of Orthodox missionaries in the far off regions of Asia and Africa as well as the “domestic mission fronts” of Great Britain ...

Since I’ve shared my journey as a young artist and glimpsed the beauty of encountering the Orthodox Faith, we can now approach “The Mystery Of Art”. This book was born out of the synergy of my artistic journey and my love for the Ancient Faith. God is the ultimate Artist and Poet. Being fashioned in His image means that we are also artists and poets, regardless of our vocation in life. We are artists in the way we love. We are poets in the way we pray. Everyone is an artist. We are cosmically bound to one another through a divine tapestry stretching across the ages. Each one of us has a unique part to play in the symphony of God’s ...

Almost thirty years ago Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered an address atHarvardUniversitythat still ranks as one of the most trenchant and inspired critiques of Western culture ever given. Although some of the political references are dated, two observations remain as true today as when they were first spoken. The first is that the philosophical materialism that shaped communism and led to the Gulags now operates in the Western world. The second is that mankind stands at an anthropological threshold. What is philosophical materialism? To use Solzhenitsyn’s definition, it is the belief that man has no touchstone other than himself: To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth . . . we have lost the concept of ...

The monastery’s like Noah’s ark.

Christ transforms death into sleep, into dormition. When people die, the soul is temporarily separated from the body. The body is given over to decay and returns to the dust of the earth from which it was created. From there, God will re-form and resurrect our bodies at the Second Coming and they’ll be united in harmony with the souls, of which they’ll be the eternal temple. After death, the soul lives in expectation of the final judgment of God concerning eternal rest or eternal hell. People, as persons, don’t just disappear, but, freed from the problems of mortal, earthly life, live real life, as a foretaste of their final condition. In the Orthodox faith, death is spiritual, not bodily. It’s ...