Κατηγορία

In English

It doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist (Saint Silouan the Athonite)

Κατηγορίες: In English

Each of us will have an opinion about God that’s commensurate with the measure of the Grace of the Holy Spirit we have. Because, how is it possible to think about and judge things we haven’t seen and don’t know? The saints say they’ve seen God. But there are people who say God doesn’t exist. It’s obvious that they talk like that because they don’t know Him; but that doesn’t at all mean that He doesn’t exist. The saints talk about things about things they’ve actually seen and know about. They don’t say, for example, that they saw a horse a kilometer long, or a ship that was 10 kilometers. I believe that, if there wasn’t a God, they wouldn’t ...

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The Three Keys (Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos)

Κατηγορίες: In English

In Cheesefare Sunday’s Gospel, the Church takes three pieces of gold from the Sermon on the Mount and gives them to us to make keys to open the door of Great Lent. a. Forgiveness of those who have wronged us The first key is our willingness to forgive those who have wronged us in any way. In essence, Christ is repeating here what He said in the Lord’s prayer (Matth. 6, 12): ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’. As we see, the purpose of the commandment to forgive those who have wronged us is not the improvement of our social profile, nor even peaceful co-existence with other people. Before all else it’s a call to be like Christ. The ...

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Fasting: Same Rules for Everyone (Desert and Big City)

Κατηγορίες: In English

One of the more curious features of living in Greece is that, if you go to a football match on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, one of the messages relayed to the crowd at half-time is always: “The Triodion is open! Bring your family and friends to Such-and- Such Taverna”. There follows a long (long!) list of all the amazing meat dishes they will prepare for your delectation, mostly over a charcoal grill. I confess that there have been occasions, when, after an insipid first half, I have cut my losses and repaired to the said taverna and supported these stalwart culinarians in their noble efforts.   This is not, of course, what we usually associate the Triodion with, ...

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