2016

People don’t understand the Scriptures; they find them almost incomprehensible. It’s only when they’re taught by the Holy Spirit that everything becomes clear and the soul feels it’s in heaven. Because the same Spirit is in heaven and on earth, in the Holy Scriptures and in the souls of those who love God. Without the Holy Spirit, people go astray and are unable to know God truly and to be comfortable with Him, even if they study all the time. Believe in the Gospel and in the testimony of the holy Church. Then even here on this earth, you’ll taste some measure of the bliss of Paradise. Truly the Kingdom of God is within us and His love grants Paradise ...

As a child, I remember thinking that church was so uninteresting. “Why is the priest repeating himself over and over again?, I would think to myself.  I was so bored by the repetition. Nothing changed in the service: the same words, the same motions, the same responses by the choir and the cantors each and every Sunday. In the car on the way to church, I would forecast it in my head. I could anticipate what would be said and done and how my boredom would follow. I can imagine that there are many other children in our churches who feel the same way, maybe even more so today because of the hurried growth of today's culture. They like to be ...

As the psychoanalytical dialogue progresses through its various stages (which, for the moral conscience, are particularly sensitive), the patients’ attitude toward their personal responsibility for creating and maintaining these moral conflicts manifests itself quite clearly. Experienced psychotherapists and psychiatrists, however, know that neurotic people, who are experiencing an existential moral problem, will never admit that the symptoms of their mental disharmony or disorder are the result of the way in which they are experiencing this moral conflict. Patients always insist that the problem is pathological/anatomical, and for this reason never think to visit a psychiatrist but rather insist on visiting general practitioners, cardiologists, surgeons, and every other kind of specialist except a psychiatrist. And, as prominent psychiatrists testify, often, since ...

On the 24th day of the month of August, the Church celebrates and honours the sacred memory of the holy hieromartyr Cosmas Aitolos. Saint Cosmas is one of those saints of the Church who are called New Martyrs and who appeared in the years of Turkish rule. After the Fall of Constantinople, the Turks became the new persecutors of the Church in the East and then many Christians, man and women, preferred to give up their lives rather than convert to Islam. It was these who, through their example, kept alive the Orthodox faith of the subject Orthodox peoples of the East. Saint Cosmas was born in 1714 in the village of Megalo Dendro, in Aitolia, which is why he’s called “Aitolos” . He ...