Ξένες γλώσσες

When we speak to people today, about mourning, it seems strange to them, because they think it shameful to cry. Of course, when we’re dealing with passing, vain matters, it is indeed not worth crying. But that mourning’s just on the level of social convention. Spiritual mourning has to do with our relationship with God and is the product not so much of our own choice, as of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The sense of responsibility for wicked deeds weighs down upon our heart and this gives rise to the sad state of mourning.

Temptations happen to people: to test them, and so that their virtue will shine through, as was the case with Abraham, Job and many others of the righteous; to cleanse them of all the stains of sin, or as the Prophet Isaiah puts it, all the rust God sees in the depths of the souls of His children (cf. Is. 1, 25) so that, on the day of judgment, they can appear before Him as pure gold; or so that we can be chastised for our own good, because of our sins, as we read in the Psalms: Many are the afflictions with which the Lord scourges the sinner (Ps. 31, 10).

On the occasion of the feast of the Transfiguration, the Greek Byzantine Choir, under the direction of the late Lykourgos Angelopoulos, Archon Protopsaltis of the Most Holy Archdiocese of Constantinople, sings, in plagal tone three, the verse from the Psalms ‘Lord they will walk in the light of your countenance and rejoice all the day long in your name’, from the Selection of Psalms for the Lity. The musical setting is by Ioannis Koukouzelis (c. 1280 – c. 1360). From the live recording of a concert at the historic town of Mystra, 6 July 2003. Your browser does not support the audio element.

In the Gospel , concerning the young man who was possessed, we’re given the opportunity to examine the shortcomings in the way we bring up our children. Bringing children up outside Christianity If we’re to see the shortcomings in the way we bring up our children we need to look at both the children and who’s doing the teaching. Since, apart from society, the children’s teachers are the family and the school, we shall examine the nature of the children, the parents and the teachers. First, the children. From the Gospel reading, we understand that the young man ‘is sorely afflicted. He often falls into the fire or into water’. Life teaches us that, despite the simplicity and sincerity that children have at ...

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean that sickness is removed with the coming of Christ into the world, despite the fact that, when announcing the cure of the sick, Christ also indicates the presence of God in His own Person. Apart from telling them to sin no more, Christ also prophetically warns: ‘lest worse things befall you’. This warning is not only of a personal nature to the invalid concerned but is also a prophetic lament over the afflictions which will accompany the future of humankind. The mystery of the divine dispensation is now an accomplished historical fact, through the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection. Our clay has been therapeutically and unifyingly assumed by the divine nature and now sits ...

If your tongue’s like a sharp sword, then you can use it to murder people. It’s what we often do, without thinking that we’re killers. We wound our neighbour’s heart with slander and lies, we insult their human dignity and we agitate their hearts with malicious talk. Is that not spiritual assassination?

Love for your enemies isn’t possible except by the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

On Wednesday, 1 August, at the beginning of the fast for Our Most Holy Lady, whom he loved so much, Archimandrite Gavriil Tsafos, the parish priest of the pilgrimage church of Saint Andreas, in Leukosias Street in the Archdiocese of Athens, fell asleep in the Lord. Father Gavriil (baptized Yeoryios) was born on 6 June, 1944, in Athens, and was the fourth child of Vasileios and Eleni Tsafos, devout refugees from Asia Minor, who settled in the refugee neighbourhood of Polygono. Influenced by the experiences of ordinary people, as well as by his mother’s stories about the Asia Minor disaster and the resulting flight from the ancestral homelands, he always spoke of the tradition of Asia Minor, emphasizing the fervent faith, ...

Disbelief comes from pride. Proud people reckon they always know best, through their mind and through science, but knowledge of God is always beyond them, because God can be known only through revelation by the Holy Spirit. The Lord is revealed to humble souls. It is to these that He shows His works, which are incomprehensible to our mind. With our natural mind we can understand only earthly things and even these no more than partially, whereas God and the things in heaven are known through the Holy Spirit.

We have another instance where the righteous suffer without guilt, as in Job and Tobias. In these cases the answer is provided by Scripture itself: the aim is to manifest the loyalty of the believer and to glorify God’s name: ‘May the name of the Lord be blessed’. There is also the prophetic/eschatological perspective of sickness, as we might call it. The Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah bears the sicknesses of the people of God and suffers with the aim of atoning for the sins of his people (Is. 53, 4). We should mention that, in the Old Testament, it is nowhere forbidden to have recourse to medical science for the healing of sickness. On the contrary, in the Wisdom of Sirach, ...

Only God and the conscience know the hidden things of the heart. This is why each of us should correct ourselves by listening to these two voices: those of God and the conscience.

…When he was in deep meditation in a praying posture with his hands open to the heavens, he saw suddenly how Shesha-Ananta descends down into his open palms. However, he experienced neither fright nor surprise at this prodigious spectacle: he had experienced a moment of truth. He realized that in his spiritual labors he strove after and achieved Samadhi: a meeting with the infinite and absolute, in which the ultimate goal and meaning of all these labors lay, the meaning of the experience that was the object of his persistent search. The apparition of the Divine Snake Shesha-Ananta, the symbol of infinity, was nothing but evidence of this meeting. And then he began to express the truth about the event ...

Transgression against the commandment brought the fall, which is our estrangement from God and everything that has to do with Him. God accepted our repentance and return to our obedience to His divine will after He’d restored our relationship with His love and sanctity. The most acceptable form of repentance, according to the Fathers, is fervent tears which well up from the pain of the heart that feels its obnoxious guilt and its betrayal of God’s paternal love.

Your life on earth is tapering off. Everything betrays you: relatives, friends, acquaintances, riches, things pleasing to the senses, even your body itself will at some stage abandon you. All the elements of nature deceive you. So make sure you cleave to God, because He alone is love.

In one of the most beautiful modern examples of our ecclesiastical education, Sister Magdalen of the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Baptist at, Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, says that we can’t speak drily about this sensitive subject, and not feel involved. And even if we think that we can’t feel involved in sickness when we ourselves are healthy, if we have the merest smidgeon of Christian self-awareness we won’t claim that we don’t feel involved in sin. A great danger lurks for those who make an effort to see the relationship between sin and sickness from a theological standpoint: that they’ll close the subject with harsh stereotypes which often enough can be heard even from the pulpit and will present theology ...

Some Christians, either through their own fault or that of others find themselves trapped in the sickness of guilt, and a lot of secular people suffer from a worse illness: pride. Now spiritual guilt is dissipated through Christ and repentance, at confession. But the pride of people living ‘in the world’’, far from Christ, doesn’t disappear.

Christ performed many miracles. He performed miracles on people, such as when He cured the paralytic at Capernaum, the ten lepers, the son of the widow of Nain and so on. He also performed miracles which showed us facets of His personality, such as the miracles of the Transfiguration, the Resurrection and the Ascension. Finally, He performed miracles on inanimate material, such as when He multiplied the five loaves and cursed the barren fig-tree. In today’s Gospel reading, He calms the waters of the sea and makes the wind drop. The absence of Christ After the multiplication of the five loaves, He told his disciples to ‘get into the boat and go before him to the other side’ (Matth. 14, 22). When ...

Patience is a virtue so long as it exists as the fruit of hope in God. Sorrow leads to patience, patience to a tried and tested character and a tried and tested character to hope. And, in the end, hope doesn’t disappoint. Patience is the first of the virtues, since salvation is crowned with it.

Don’t ask anyone’s opinion if they’re not on the same path as you, no matter how wise they are.

Through the prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon me’, we’ll gain everything. Through this prayer, we’re cleansed, burnished and sanctified. This prayer is the life-belt of the body and of the soul. It’s the basis of perfection. You won’t be weighed down and you’ll fly. There’s no other way of salvation, purification and sanctification than prayer of the heart. It’s filled paradise with saints.