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Saint Justin Popovich Today (29th of August), we also specifically glorify the first Evangelist and Christian Confessor, the first to confess God in the New Testament world.  Consider how fearlessly, openly and directly he confessed God’s Truth: ‘King, it’s not right for you to have your brother’s wife, your living brother’s wife. You’ve taken your brother’s wife away from him. All of the laws of heaven and earth are against you, and I quote these laws of heaven and earth to you, because this is what I was sent to do. King, you can’t have your brother’s wife’. Bold and undaunted, like an immortal lion, like one of the Cherubim in the flesh, he was the first Confessor of Christ’s Faith, ...

Saint Justin Popovich Today is a little Great Friday, a second Great Friday. Today the greatest man of those born of women, John, the Holy Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord, is slain. On Great Friday, God, was murdered, God was crucified. At today’s holy and great feast, the greatest of all men was put to death. The choice of the expression ‘the greatest’ is not mine. What are my praises of the great and glorious Forerunner of the Lord, when the Lord Himself praised him more than anyone among men, more than any of the apostles, the angels, the prophets, the righteous, the wise? The Lord declared: ‘among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John ...

God doesn’t exist logically. A saint, Symeon the New Theologian, said so. He said God doesn’t exist in any modus essendi, any mode of being, that we can grasp. He’s a ‘non-existent being’, God. He does exist. But not in any way that can be compared with this world. In other words, God can’t be understood through reason, or through philosophy, but only through experience. When you have experience of God, then the nous can express that experience. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol

Monasticism is an imitation of the life of the Mother of God, which was from the beginning to the end an imitation of the way of Her Son and God. In essence, the handmaiden of God Mariam had prophetically followed the way of the Lord in Her life even before He came into the world, and She partook more than all in the judgment of the Son of God. The life of the Holy Virgin was prophetical, because She was not only overshadowed by the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation, but also filled with the Holy Spirit. Rather, She was carried about and led by the Holy Comforter. She uttered a word only once, singing Her hymn to the Lord, after She ...

The Coexistence of Wickedness and Virtue Good and evil are comingled in such a way that they’re colored by each other, so that the wickedness of evil can show, as can the benevolence of good. In this way, we can learn from both. Let us see, then how this interlacing occurs and what we can learn from it. A) The intertwining of wickedness and virtue. three people represent wickedness and three represent virtue. The former are Herod, his wife and his daughter, Salome. See what happens. Herod’s celebrating his birthday and, instead of thanking God for the occasion when he first saw the light of day, he troubles God with his drunkenness. Instead of releasing the Forerunner, who was his prisoner, ...

Expressed with great inspiration in a poetical form, today’s apostle reading is rich in meaning. The first Christians lived with the greatest fulness of fervour and grace in comparison with the later generations, as they were ready for martyrdom at any moment. And yet the apostle never ceases to instruct them through his word and persistently remind them of their lofty purpose to become the temple of the Living God. ‘We are labourers together with God.’ God fashioned man from clay, out of nothing, but He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life which made him a living soul. He granted him the great honour of being created in His image and destined to become His likeness. God calls man to ...

Seek love. Ask God every day for love. Together with love come all the other benefits and virtues. Love, so that you’ll be loved by others. Give your whole heart to God, so that you’ll dwell in love. Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis 

We shouldn’t be bothered with sins, nor should we think about them. We should confess them and then change course and deal with beautiful things instead. Abbess Theosemni, Monastery of Chrysopiyi, Hania, Crete

Nothing makes a soul so philosophical, conciliatory and mild as continuous recollection of its sins. Saint John Chrysostom

However difficult a bodily struggle might appear, a spiritual one is far more so. Because, as Saint Paul says, you’re not dealing with ‘flesh and blood’, in other words with something visible, but with the invisible forces of darkness which labor, striving ceaselessly, in order to wound people and make them spiritually moribund. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos

Stand firm: watch yourself, watch your feelings. If you keep the memory of God peacefully in your heart, then you see the robber demons that want to take it from you stealthily, on the sly. Because if you guard your thoughts carefully then you can sense those who want to enter and pollute you. Wicked thoughts bring turmoil to the mind. But those who recognize this wickedness remain calm and pray to the Lord. Saint Isaiah the Anchorite

Living as we do among pressing and sometimes frightening temptations, it’s good to keep the Lord before us at all times and, through his presence, to pray continuously and retain this greatly-desired presence of our sweetest Christ. Saint Seraphim Romanchov of the Monastery of Glinsk

The saints are our friends and the friends of God, the people we always flee to. On the one hand to receive comfort and strength; on the other to have as models tested by God for our everyday life, our everyday tribulations, people who’ve been tried and been found to be ‘like gold in the furnace’. Their lives aren’t merely moving stories, but a guide to our own way of living. Elder Christodoulos, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Koutloumousiou

The logicality of the Christian faith is often so paradoxical and strange, especially for Orthodox Christians today, that we need to delve into the texts of the Fathers in order to have a feel for it and attune ourselves to it. Though it must be said, of course, that the acceptance and gradual familiarization with this reasoning leads to the ‘jolt’ of the taste of the other way of life which was brought by Our Lord Jesus Christ- to the opening of the eyes and spiritual senses so that the faithful can see and feel eternal life even in what’s considered this narrow and wretched life. So that they can see the unseen and eternal, as Saint Paul says. To be ...

At its historical core, the narrative has the experience of the danger Jesus’ disciples once felt on a stormy sea and the way in which the presence of their teacher saved them. The event took place immediately after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, which is the subject of the Gospel reading on the previous Sunday. Apart from the actual experience, which shook the disciples emotionally, the Evangelists preserved the event because they saw in it a more profound meaning for the Church. The crowd which had witnessed the multiplication of the loaves was in a frenzy of messianic enthusiasm, believing that the moment had arrived when their needs would be met. Jesus knew that this fervor could mean the ...

After the multiplication of the five loaves and the two fishes in the desert and the feeding of the multitude, the Gospel states that Jesus ‘constrained’ His disciples to board the ship and go to the other shore of the lake so as to disperse the crowds. The multitude had been following the Lord and were amazed at the signs He was performing. However, they had not been able to enter into the mystery of His word. Having been satisfied by the bread and fish, and, of course, the blessing that went with them, the crowd were ready to declare Christ King, in the worldly sense. Before the Resurrection and, more specifically, before the coming down of the Holy Spirit, the disciples ...

All the sins and passions are ready to invade the soul. Fight against them vigilantly and with courage to your last breath. See your sins and passions as dreams of your fantasy, as illusions from the evil spirits. Saint John Kronstadtskij

We’re engaged in an on-going spiritual struggle, because we’re continuously being attacked by an enemy who ‘prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour’. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos

All people have the same nature. It’s so natural for us to love other people, that those who cease to do so cease to be human beings. Elder Efstratios Golovanski

We must absolutely test whether God exists, and there’s a way. Our Fathers, the saints of the Church even showed us the tool to use to discover whether God exists. What is it? The heart. Christ said: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’. The organ of sight, the organ through which we’ll locate and see God is none other than our heart, and the method is cleansing of the heart. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol