2016

The more I contemplate this phrase, the more I realize that it holds the key to living our lives the Orthodox way. First, to live each day as if it were the Second Coming confirms the first postulate of Christianity: that we accept the first coming of Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Secondly, if we lived each day as if it were the Second coming, we would be better people – better mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends, co-workers, etc, in that we would be more forgiving of others. As my parish priest also says that we have to make amends with people in this life because once we are on the other side it’s too late. We must forgive not ...

  “Why worry, when you can pray? “ Growing up in a Christian home, I used to hear this phrase frequently. The words had even been set to music in a cheerful, upbeat chorus. When I would hear the song as a teenager, I remember cynically thinking that it wasn’t as easy as all that to not worry about things. I struggle with the passion of imagining about the future, or analyzing the past, rather than living in the present, and so I have always worried a good deal! Prayer erases worry, aligns me with my Lord’s heart, opens my eyes to an eternal perspective, and introduces me to the Kingdom of God that is within. Nothing illustrates this better than how prayer ...

The Prophet Joel also gives us a beneficial word that is able to enlighten our mind and to sustain our heart in a perfect relationship with God and with all His creation. He says: ‘The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because the sons of men put to shame joy.’ According to the Prophet, there is only one joy that deserves our honouring. This is the joy that is sourced in God Himself, because only this joy is perfect and ‘full’. The joy that God gives to man works by the Holy Spirit. We honour this precious ...

Over the past few years, there has been an enormous popular interest in Gnosticism and early Christian writings. Book shops are full of material on the subject and, on Christian holidays, the media bombards us with television productions on the topic. But the Gnosticism that is today being hailed as the ‘original Christianity’ is anything but the Gnosticism that plagued the Christian Church between the second and fourth centuries. One of the main characteristics of Gnosticism was an ethos that saw the material world as inherently evil. To the Gnostics, therefore, the idea of God made flesh (a thing evil and beyond redemption) was repugnant and ridiculous. For the Gnostics, salvation could only be achieved by an escape from the body ...

Saint Silouan the Athonite (24 September) Saint Siouan- Symeon Ivanovich Antonov, before his tonsure- was born in 1866 into a peasant family in the Tambov region of Russia. From the age of four he began wondering: ‘Where is this God? When I grow up, I’ll travel the whole world looking for Him’. When he was a little bit older he heard about the life of a holy recluse and the miracles that happened at his grave and thought: ‘If he’s a saint, that means God’s with us already, so there’s no need to go wandering the world to find Him’. At this thought his heart became inflamed with love of God. His mind focused on the continuous recollection of God and he ...