Ξένες γλώσσες

Reading the Song in the light of Church tradition and the experience of the holy Fathers we can tell ourselves: ‘It’s absolutely clear that our Lord Jesus loves us who are members of His body, the members of His Holy Consort, and that each of us has been called to love Him back with a love that’s unique’. ‘Christian couples’ who have sealed their love with the stamp of Christ can discover and experience this familiarity with Christ through the mystery of conjugal love: ‘husbands love your wives as yourselves, as Christ loved the Church… this is a great mystery’ (Eph. 5, 25; 32). This Apostolic saying reveals to us the majesty of Christian marriage, and how much closer it is ...

The fear of God is the root of every good work. Never let it out of your heart even for a minute. Like a candle, may it light and illumine all your thoughts, all the inner movements of your heart. It will teach you to make good progress and to do everything as the work of God. It’ll teach you to stand like those who are in the presence of the king. It’ll teach you to go forwards like someone who’s holding a glass of water and mustn’t spill a drop.

Christ’s love for each of us is absolutely unshakeable and unblemished. Our familiarity with Him can’t be lost unless we knowingly cease to take account of His will and no longer communicate with His Spirit. Only our own will can place a barrier- or build a wall- between Him and us. Christ then looks at us with the same love, but through the sorrow of a lover who’s been disappointed, as He looked at Peter after his denial: ‘And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly’. (Luke 22, 61-62). After every error, however serious it is, after ...

There’s no such thing as a Christian without a cross and struggle. There’s no such thing as a Christian who follows the easy path. Some people thought- and think- that to be a Christian is to observe certain commandments and to have an easy life, with comforts, with worldly prosperity and a safe life, in human terms. That’s not being a Christian. Christians are people who struggle every day. They struggle in order to love God. They struggle to love their brothers and sisters.

If we don’t have prayer, we have nothing- only disorder and negligence.

The Internet is the sphere of speed, information and image. It’s therefore difficult these days - especially for young people - to read extensive texts with deep meaning, on the Internet. On the other hand, sayings and short narratives from Orthodox spiritual life are pleasant to read, aren’t tiring and are easily remembered. Pemptousia has understood this reality and has put together the category ‘Words of Life’, with sayings and short stories which the readership has embraced with great interest and warmth. Particularly for those who access Pemptousia from small devices such as smart phones or tablets, ‘Words of Life’ are by far the first choice of reading material. With this in mind, Pemptousia has introduced the application software it ...

People who exercise restraint spend the whole of their lives at ease and in great spiritual freedom. Frugality is what feeds the body, since the organism is able to absorb a little at a time. More than this not only doesn’t feed the body, but it actually destroys it.

In memory of Papa-Efraim Katounakiotis The Song of Songs is the jewel of the Old Testament and, together with the Gospel of Saint John the Theologian, constitutes the centre of divine Revelation. It contains an astonishing message which is expressed with uncommon boldness: Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, harbours for His Church, His Most Holy Mother- who represents the Church- and for each of us individually a love which is as profound, as powerful and as personal as that of a young groom for his beloved bride. Every Christian is called to this mystery of marriage with the Church, to union with it. For Christ, and for us, as well, this love is a source of immeasurable, inexhaustible joy. God expects from us ...

At one o’clock, midday, on 7 January (2018), the day when the Orthodox Church honours the Synaxis of the Honourable Forerunner, Archimandrite Placide Deseille departed this life at the age of 91. Born on 16 April, 1926, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, in France, Père Placide became a monk at the Cistercian monastery of Bellefontaine, at the age of 16. In 1966, together with some monastic friends, he founded a Byzantine-rite monastery in Aubazine en Corrèze. In 1977, the monks decided to become Orthodox. They were received into the Orthodox Church on 19 June, 1977, and in February 1978 became monks of the Holy Monastery of Simonos Petras, on the Holy Mountain. Père Placide was then sent by Elder Aimilianos, the Abbot of Simonos Petras, ...

Wear yourself out over your work. But work with devotion, have faith and prayer within you. In this way, you’ll become holy.

Impatience is wickedness and the opposite of the virtue of patience. People who are in thrall to it avoid any effort to do good works, any sorrow suffered for the sake of love. They always tread the primrose path of perdition and stay clear of the narrow way of virtue. They’re happy, too, with doing nothing about their desires, with merely indulging them and passing their time enjoying themselves.

The day after Christmas is consecrated to the ‘synaxis of the Blessed Virgin Mary: all believers are invited to assemble in honour of her who made the Incarnation humanly possible. In the same way, the day after Epiphany (January 7) is consecrated to the ‘synaxis’ of John the Precursor, who baptized Jesus and, in a way, was the agent in presenting him to the world. In the chants for this feast, at vespers and matins, the Church multiplies the praises of the Precursor: ‘Thou who art Light in the flesh…filled with the Spirit…swallow of grace…who hast appeared as the last of the prophets… and the greatest among them…’. The very richness of these praises makes it a little difficult for ...

External prayer is often said to the detriment of internal prayer and vice versa. This means that when we pray with our lips, or read, many of the words don’t actually enter our heart, in which case we become a two-faced hypocrite.

A monk of the Eastern Church* Epiphany was the first public manifestation of Christ. At the time of His birth, our Lord was revealed to a few privileged people. Today, all those who surround John, that is to say his own disciples and the crowd that has come to the banks of the Jordan, witness a more solemn manifestation of Jesus Christ. What does this manifestation consist of? It is made up of two aspects. On the one hand there is the humility, represented by the baptism to which our Lord submits: on the other hand, there is the aspect of glory represented by the human witness that the Precursor bears to Jesus, and, on an infinitely higher plane, the divine ...

When we talk to people today about mourning, it seems strange to them, because they’re ashamed of crying. If we’re talking about vain, passing things, of course they’re not worth crying over. But that kind of mourning is only about social convention. Spiritual mourning has to do with our relationship with God and is the product, not so much of our own choice, but of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The sense of responsibility for our wicked deeds is such a weight in our heart that it brings about a state of deepest contrition.

In completing the Twelve Days of Christmas, that is the festal cycle of the Epiphany of the Incarnate Son and Word of God, Jesus Christ, we come to the feast of Theophany, at which we recall the Baptism of Christ, at the age of thirty, by Saint John the Forerunner, in the River Jordan. A particular feature of the Church festivities is the service of the Great and Royal Hours, on the eve. In fact, this service isn’t a unified whole, but rather four separate ones linked together. Since they’re celebrated together, without any obvious breaks between them, they’re thought of as one. They’re the services of the First, Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours, which make up the familiar monastic rule ...

Temptations happen to people. To test them, so that their virtue shines through, as happened with Abraham, Job and many other righteous people. So that they can be cleansed of all the stigmas of their sins, as the Prophet Isaiah says. Purged of all the dross that God sees in the depths of the souls of His children (See Is. 1, 25), so that, on the day of judgment, they may appear before Him like pure gold. They’re ‘punished’ as part of their education, because of their sins, as we read in the Psalms: ‘Many are the scourges of the sinner’ (Ps. 31, 10).

By God’s Grace, 30 years have now passed since the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi returned to the coenobitic way of life. For many of Pemptousia’s readers, this anniversary will not be of any particular significance. And rightly so. Anniversaries usually affect us when we have some experience which links us to the event in question. We were fortunate enough to visit Vatopaidi in 1987, as pupils of the Athoniada Ecclesiastical Academy. As became apparent many years later, this blessing was all the greater because, a mere few months earlier, the brotherhood of Elder Iosif had settled in the monastery. We were received and welcomed by the hieromonks Efraim and Athanasios, who bore the title of Pro-Abbot, as was ...