Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Inasmuch as the letters of St Paul are apparently the earliest writings in the New Testament, he is commonly—and not inappropriately—thought of as the Church’s earliest theologian. This persuasion, nonetheless, should not be taken to mean that the Church had no theology prior to Paul’s conversion. Indeed, on the very day Ananias baptized him, there already existed an authoritative body of Christian belief —a paradosis or “tradition”— of which Paul himself became both the appreciative heir and the ardent proponent. With respect to Christology, In particular, Paul was familiar with many points from that earlier tradition. He knew, for instance, that Jesus was a human being (Romans 5:15; 1 Corinthians 15:21). He also knew that Jesus was ...
How we should see them 1. As we’ve seen, there are a whole host of religious experiences. Some good, some bad. Beneficial and harmful. Revelations of God and black magic. In all these cases, however far removed they are from each other, in terms of both time and place, however different they are, we see that they represent a unified code of testimony to the existence of a world outside or beyond nature. We’ve been given genuine experiences in Holy Scripture. These are when God has spoken to people, has revealed Himself and the path of our salvation. Such revelations are: His appearance to Adam His appearance to Noah His appearance to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob His appearance in the bush, on Sinai, at ...
The grace of our saints exists even on the wood of the holy icons. Once, in Asia Minor, a Turkish shepherd livestock farmer tried to chop through the old wood of an icon. At the first stroke, the wood started to bleed. The Turk was panic-stricken and gave the icon to some Christians, telling them about the miracle.
August is considered the month of the Mother of God. With the feast of her Dormition in the middle, canons of supplication are sung throughout the month in honour of Our Lady, culminating in the feast of the Precious Belt on 31 August. For centuries the Precious Belt has been kept in the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. According to tradition, the Precious Belt of the Mother of God was given to Vatopaidi by Emperor Ioannis VI Kantakouzinos (1342-1354), who thereafter resigned office and was tonsured a monk- with the name of Ioasaf- at Vatopaidi, where he continued to live. This is the Dismissal Hymn of the Precious Belt, sung in the slow mode, in plagial tone 4, by the Daiilaii ...
When God turns away His face, then you really do fall into the darkness of Hell, into unbearable torments. Then you understand, even in part, what eternal hell will be like.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have been keeping these days the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. There is a passage in the Gospel in which the Lord says to us, “No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his neighbor.” And these words resolve the antinomy between the horror of the Cross and the glory of it, between death and the resurrection. There is nothing more glorious, more awe-inspiring and wonderful than to love and to be loved. And to be loved of God with all the life, with all the death of the Only-Begotten Son, and to love one another (as well) at the cost ...
(previous publication: ) These well meaning Christians in particular no longer recognize that help, both for oneself and for others, requires the “prayer and fasting” commanded by Christ Himself. They resist the very idea that one must learn those difficult arts both through a life within the Church and under the guidance of someone with experience. In refusing such therapy, these Christians implicitly endorse the project which cost our forefathers Paradise: They want to discern good and evil by themselves, and outside of obedience to God. Even if they do sometimes tolerate the idea of such obedience, they refuse to access its meaning by listening to their pastors. They have a deep suspicion of spiritual fatherhood, preferring guidance from therapists, friends, ...
Charity's one thing that shouldn’t be put off. Do it willingly. Because Scripture tells us to give alms with sweetness and joy. If you do it willingly, then you get twice the benefit. Because what's done with sorrow or out of necessity is joyless and without beauty.
‘No one has ascended into heaven other than he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn. 3, 13-17). Christ’s words in this excerpt from Saint John’s Gospel form part of the discussion He had with Nicodemus, the Jewish leader who came ...
Prayer is approaching every one of God's creatures with love, and living in harmony with all of them, even the wild ones.
The Nativity of the Mother of God, the Consolation of Humankind (part 2) (Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi)
And now we come to another matter: I want to choose an allegory, beyond the blessed hopes that divine grace inspires in our souls. We can’t hide our unnatural sinfulness and our multitude of weaknesses. In the morass of difficulties of the times in which we live, we, too, are like a barren woman who despairs of ever becoming a mother. But here we should look at the example of barren Anna and see that ‘what is impossible for people is possible for God’. This is precisely what we find when we investigate the great goodness of Jesus, who has unerringly called us. He is the same Saviour of the world Whom this Maiden drew with her sanctity and forced to ...
The wonder-working relics of the Priest Martyr Vlasios Arkananos and the five other monks who suffered with him are kept in the church of Saint Paraskevi in Palairo, Arkanania. On their feast day, 7 July, the relics are taken to the nearby village of Sklavaina, where services are held at the blood-stained site where the six saints were martyred. In fact, these services are held on the actual site of the long-destroyed monastery of the Entry of the Mother of God, where a newer church has since been built. On the spot where they were killed, other Romans (i. e. subjects of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, or ‘Byzantium’) from the surrounding area also suffered because they refused to ‘bow ...
An unhealthy desire for experiences. The Pharisees and Sadducees sought a sign from heaven from the Lord. They asked for a miracle that would have the features of the miracles of the Antichrist, that is one that would satisfy people with a corporeal outlook and feed their vainglory and egotism. When the Lord heard this request, His answer was: ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah’ (Matth. 16, 4). By ‘the sign of Jonah’ the Lord meant the signs that would accompany His death and resurrection: This was when ‘a sign from heaven’ was given by God. This was when the sun saw Christ crucified and was darkened, though it ...
The Jesus prayer's a good habit. Christ comes into us without our realizing it.
3. A phrase which can be found in the prophecy concerning the Messiah by the Patriarch Jacob provides St. John Chrysostom with the opportunity to speak of the sacrifice of Christ and the Divine Eucharist. “He will wash his garment in wine, his robe in the blood of grapes”. Chrysostom says: “See how the whole of the mystery has been implied for us. The faithful understand the significance of the words: ‘He will wash his garment in wine’. I believe he calls the body the garment which He condescended to put on because of the mystery of divine dispensation. Then, so that you will learn precisely what he called wine, he goes on to say that ‘he will cleanse his ...
