22 Αυγούστου 2016

Paradise was a divine place, a fitting abode for man, who has been created “in the image and likeness of God”. He lived there in the bliss of the divine attributes, which were integrated into his very essence. He had the sense of being superior and steward of all other created beings. He was dispassionate, lived without concerns, care, or officiousness for his life. He was not hard pressed for any necessity. He only had one task, that of the angels: to constantly and ceaselessly praise the Creator. The fullness of his likeness to God did not allow him to have any doubts and questions. His indulgence was to participate in the fullness of divine consummate love. According to Saint John ...

The great Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung made a significant contribution to understanding the spiritual life by underlining the moral character of most of the personality’s repressions. Jung argued, on the basis of his clinical psychotherapeutic and medical experience, that these repressions were usually of a moral nature. In fact, in some cases, Jung went even further and taught that neurosis, which is today a very common disharmony in the personality, has a religious character. This is why, in his opinion, the problem of neurosis is actually a religious problem. Jung’s view here on the primary content of our modern repressions has been corroborated by many psychological and psychotherapeutic studies, as well as by philosophical thought. In fact, a ...

For approximately 2,000 years, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ has continued uninterruptedly in the world according to His promise. If He should return today, would He recognize His Bride, the Church? If the faith and the traditions of His Church have remained constant, He would certainly be able to recognize the Church which He established. Have those traditions and the faith remained strong in America? A number of holy people of our Church, including Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios of Constantinople and Patriarch Elias of the Patriarchate of Antioch, both of blessed memory, did not think so when they visited the United States a few years ago. They immediately perceived that the spirit of materialism and secularism had infiltrated the lives ...

Our awareness of ourselves as Orthodox Christians does not permit us to overlook the fact that Orthodoxy and Western Christianity cannot share a single ‘Christian identity’. On the contrary, it compels us to stress the fact that Orthodoxy is Europe’s long-forgotten original Christian faith, which at some point should once again serve as the basis of its Christian identity.    The United Europe of the twenty-first century is striving to find its identity. The question of ‘European identity’ did not use to be a serious concern since it was originally shaped only by economic and political factors. However, from the moment that cultural and particularly religious factors had to be taken into account in the attempt to define it, there have ...