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Today marks the anniversary of the repose in the Lord of beloved Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodoulos. The...

The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, His All Holiness Bartholomew I, will arrive on his ancestral island of Imvros on Sunday,...

The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, His Holiness Kirill, conveyed his blessing and best wishes to Russian athletes that...

Pay no attention to the slanders of the enemy against other people, to his hatred, his wickednesses and his selfish actions. Look upon everyone as images of God and behave towards them with simplicity and respect. Don’t think badly of anyone without reason. Saint John Kronstadstskij

Through habit, unceasing vigilance, and continuous prayer, you become a difficult target for the evil one. If, together with those, you also cultivate love, mercy, faith, empathy, contrition, self-awareness, hope in God, regular confession and regular holy communion, you’ll acquire a strong armory. You’ll give yourself the armor of God’s grace and make yourself almost impervious to the deadly arrows of the devil. Elder Haralambos Dionysiatis

Those who remember that their body and soul belong to God have a respect and a secret fear for them, which contributes to wanting to keep them pure and free of every stain, in uninterrupted communion with him, by whom they are sanctified and fortified. Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis

‘Do not become accustomed to being defeated in the spiritual war, because habit becomes second nature’ (Saint Efraim the Syrian). The great Saint Efraim the Syrian makes a profound psychological and also spiritual observation, the truth of which we can all confirm from our daily experience. Who doubts the power of habit? If we do something once and then repeat it, it becomes difficult to stop. So much so, that repetition of what we’ve become used to ends up as second nature. Any effort to stop a habit is often experienced as tearing up roots. This is where the importance of habit in spiritual warfare becomes clear, in the struggle waged by the faithful in their efforts to follow the path of ...

On 26 January, the Church celebrates and honors the sacred memory of the Blessed Xenofon and his family. Saint Xenofon, his wife Mary and their two sons, Arkadios and Ioannis, are a model of a holy family, very instructive, particularly in our own day and age. There is a general concern and anxiety that the institution of marriage and of the family is undergoing a serious crisis and all right thinking people are seeking ways to support this fundamental constituent of the body politic, the family. Examples such as the saints we celebrate today are particularly edifying for us Christians. In any case, this is precisely why we’re encouraged by the Church to read the Lives and Works of the ...

Among the multitude of the saints, that is the people who loved Christ ‘with all their heart’ and who expressed this love through denial of the self and acceptance of their cross, there are the so-called ‘fools for Christ’. Usually monastics, they presented themselves to the world as lunatics, acting contrary to common sense, saying and doing things which made them look insane and immoral. Their behavior, however, concealed their conquest of the passions, their faith, their gifts and their sanctity. This kind of spiritual struggle was a gift from God, not a personal choice. It was a particular gift granted to certain people in specific circumstances, in a specific society. Most often the society was one of secularized Christianity which ...

For a good number of years now there’s been a virus going round infecting societies. It’s the illusion that ignorance is as compelling as knowledge. This means that, in order for people take a stand in the public arena, they choose to be disgustingly rude and to exercise violence in order to get their point across. The strange thing is that this behavior gains viewers and admirers. This is particularly true in politics, though it has spread from there into society at large, through the mass media. The desire to be right, not because you have anything of value to say but by any means possible, inevitably leads to incivility and boorishness. This is the competition of personal survival, the ...

We shouldn’t see the sorrows of life here through the prism of evanescent reason, but through the prism of eternity. Then our life acquires meaning and the significance of sorrows in our life is revealed to us. In the end, these trials are the way of the cross which we have to tread if we’re to attain salvation and sanctification. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos

Study of the Old Testament requires discernment and a firm grounding in the knowledge of the holy books. You might, for example, be surprised by many of the expressions you read in Leviticus, precisely because it requires genuine learning, an evidence-based and subtle approach to interpretation. So why are expressions used which present God as being vengeful? Or why are phrases employed which imply violence? The discipline of history teaches us that, if we’re to understand an event in the past, we have to transport ourselves back to the time when it occurred or was recorded so that we can examine the situation and circumstances, as well as the religious and cultural features of the region. Theology is another important discipline, ...

Through constant repentance and asceticism, Christians seek to overcome the sin and egotism which riddle society. The more we’re cleansed of our passions, the more we acquire the possibility of real communion with God and with other human persons. Elder Georgios Kapsanis

No one has gone through life without ever being worried, hurt, or driven to tears. As children of Adam, all of us, young and old, have to live with the consequences of the fall of our forefather, precisely because that forefather is each one of us. There’s no need to find support for this view of the human condition, since life itself is evidence of the difficulty, the trials and the cross which accompany all of us on our path through it. This is why all of us need support, a shoulder to lean on, a kind word to sustain us at a time when it seems impossible for us to bear our cross. Christ himself needed a Cyrenian , even ...

We call the Lord ‘God’, but in reality we have our own gods. This is why we don’t do the will of God, but submit to the will and desires of our flesh, our heart and our passions. Our gods are our flesh, entertainments, money and vanities. Saint John Kronstadtskij