In English

Of course, the evil spirits move us to wickedness but they don’t force us do it. If they could do so, there wouldn’t be anybody who hadn’t committed every kind of sin. But just as they have the ability to lead us to temptation, so we have the strength and freedom to reject it. It’s therefore absolutely certain that the demons have no power over us, except when we surrender our will to them. Abba Cassian

Tonight’s talk will try to express something which is difficult to put into words. It will try to give characteristics and parameters to something which, by nature, is not so much describable but more indirectly perceptible, more concealed. It’s something which you suspect rather than something obvious enough for you to discuss. Aims can be defined, but it’s difficult to confine experiences within verbal frameworks. This is especially true of the authenticity of the experience of faith and of grace, which has to do with the innermost depth of human nature, the truth about us, a mystery which is continuously unfolding. It’s not so much an exposition, an expression, or a mode of behavior to which people conform. When an experience ...

Enjoy everything around us. Everything teaches us and brings us to God. Everything around is a drop of God’s love. The animate, the inanimate, plants and animals, birds and mountains, the sea, the sunset and the starry sky. They’re little loves, through which we come to the great love, Christ. Flowers, for example, have their own grace; they teach us through their fragrance, through their magnificence. They speak to us of God’s love. They bestow their fragrance, their beauty on sinners and on the righteous alike. If you want to be a Christian, you have to have a poetic soul, you have to become a poet… Prayer is approaching every one of God’s creatures with love and living in harmony ...

We would like to inform you that The Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex and Pemptousia are organizing their   “1st Digital Meeting with Archimandrite Zacharias” Thursday 24 June 2021 at 16:00 (UK time) Talk and discussion on: The Christian as an Image of Pentecost You may follow the talk live on these links: English Interpretation via Facebook Live Video https://fb.me/e/JXXG9Y45 Romanian Interpretation via Facebook Live Video https://fb.me/e/HS14IXk2

Given that we are images of God, we long for God and run to him willingly in order to be lifted up by him. We delight in prayer and hymn-singing. Our spirit rejoices and our heart leaps. The more we pray, the more our soul is stripped of our secular desires and is filled with the good things of heaven. The more it’s separated from earthly things and the pleasures of life, the more it enjoys the gladness of heaven. Our understanding and experience confirm this for us. Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis

‘People beyond the passions are revolted with excessive hatred by evil; those who have progressed even further beyond the passions are voracious for the riches of the virtues’ (Saint John of the Ladder) These days we’ve identified wickedness only with whatever conflicts with secular laws. Anything that hursts another person or creates bodily or spiritual wounds to ourselves is wicked only insofar as it contravenes another person’s right to life, liberty and property. Other than that, there’s great tolerance, with the result that we treat evil as a relative category. Good is seen as being self-evident and is not generally acknowledged. News is only what’s deviant, what provokes fear. News is the satisfaction of the desires of famous people. News is ...

When you hear that Scripture tells you that ‘he will render to all in accordance with their works’, don’t think of works worthy of hell or the kingdom of heaven, but rather of works of belief or unbelief in him. Christ will pay each of us for these, not as if he were carrying out a commercial transaction, but as God the creator, who purchased us with his blood. Saint Mark Ascetic

Hesychasm leads to the opening of the heart, an opening towards communion with God and our neighbor. Isolation or sealing yourself off within yourself has no connection to hesychasm. Isolation without the ascetic practices of hesychasm detracts from the sacramental life of the Church and may act more for our condemnation than salvation. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos

Saint John Chrysostom is almost the only Father of the Church about whom his contemporaries and later generations wrote a significant number of biographies. So far, we have more than eight (Byzantine) biographies. Some of these represent a kind of reworking of an earlier version, though not, of course, slavish imitation of the original. In these texts, we occasionally come across information which is entirely new and sometimes significant. How far this information is trustworthy is something which research will determine. It may well be that some of this information will never be confirmed. Apart from anything else, there’s a suspicion that some of it was included by the biographer principally in order to make a good point. When describing ...

“Who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped” According to the Patristic Theology, the Ascension of Christ is inherently connected to the descent of the Holy Spirit. Evidently, the Comforter’s coming is an essential continuation of Christ’s work on earth, as a part of His divine plan for the salvation of humanitymn. By taking the human nature, Christ does not just complete the divine plan of His Father, but also continues to act and to attract the unique human hypostases where He entered as a Forerunner. Read more

Who is Jesus Christ, who is both God and human? What in him is God and what is human? How do we recognize the God in him and the human? What did God grant us in the person of Jesus? All of this is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of Truth’. In other words, he reveals the truth about Jesus, about the God in him and the human being and about what he bestowed upon us. And this infinitely surpasses what our eyes have seen, our ears have heard and our hearts have ever felt. Through his incarnate life on earth, Jesus established his theanthropic body, the Church, and, through this, prepares the world for the advent, ...

‘…each one heard their own language being spoken’ (Acts 2, 6). As a result of this event, some 3,000 people believed and were baptized. The grace of the Holy Spirit made the word of God comprehensible and accessible to the souls of the believers and bore immediate, abundant fruit. Today we celebrate Pentecost, we sing beautiful hymns, full of meaning at the Kneeling Service at Vespers, we preach wonderful sermons about the Holy Spirit, but we also fear the Holy Spirit. Yes, that’s right. We fear him. Because the Holy Spirit has the potential to transform a religious body into the living Church of Jesus Christ. I wonder at those people who insist that the faithful shouldn’t understand what’s said in Church.  ...

Always bear the Lord your God in mind. Fear only him. Forget neither him nor his commandments.  He will then give you the strength to do his will. Because he asks nothing else of you but that you be devoted to him, love him and walk in the paths of all his commandments. Saint Gregory the Theologian

People are shrouded in the darkness of ignorance. They don’t know God, themselves or the enemies of salvation. So it’s easy for them to rob their spiritual home, their soul, of its spiritual riches. Saint John Kronstadtskij

In our prayers, we often ask God, Our Lady or the Saints for something and when we don’t receive it we think God’s being indifferent towards us. But that’s not the way things really are, because there are instances when          the Lord doesn’t give us what we ask for, in order to save us from some greater harm. Dimitrios Panagopoulos

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 mankind to ...

Don’t do anything by being guided by your own will, but feel the presence of God wherever you find yourself. Do everything as though you were standing before God, not before other people. Sain Andronik of the Monastery of Glinsk

Faith and availing ourselves of the sacrament of Holy Communion provide us with the greatest gifts and renew us. Saint Isaak the Syrian

The season after Easter is called ‘Pentikostario’. After the victory over death which was ushered in by Christ’s Resurrection, we go on to the great feast of Pentecost. Fifty days after Easter, we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit onto Christ’s disciples and, through them, onto all of us. This ‘descent’ had been foretold by Christ while he was yet on earth. The feast developed over time. Initially, it was agricultural; later it ‘commemorated’ the historical event of the Testament; then it finally became the feast of the gift of the Holy Spirit, which inaugurated the new Testament on earth. Along with the Passover and Tabernacles, it was the third great feast of the Jews, at which every believer was obliged ...