2016

Saul, Hebrew by birth, Jew by faith, Roman by citizenship, Greek by education, and thereafter Paul, a Christian in outlook and in his heart, was the cornerstone of European and, by extension, the whole of Western civilization. He regenerated and renewed the whole world, in fact. No other person has affected the course of human civilization, and even life on the planet, as much in the last 20 centuries. The great Paul, with the Greek language as his vehicle, united the East and the West, bringing from the East the message of the Sun of Righteousness, to bring people together, ‘that they might be one’. And he did so not with some coercive, external, still-born political system, but through freedom and, above ...

I reckon all the fine things of this world to be wisps of grass, soap bubbles, smoke, straw and dust.

Blessed Irene was born in Cappadocia, into the bosom of a rich and noble family, after the death of the iconoclast emperor Theofilos (842). When Theodora became regent, she searched the empire for a wife for her son, Michael III (842-867). The imperial envoys took note of the beauty and nobility of Irene and sent her to Constantinople together with her sister, who later married Caesar Vardas, the brother of Theodora. On the way, they went past Mount Olympus in Bithynia and Irene visited Saint Ioannikios the Great (4 November), who greeted her and told her she’d become the abbess of the Monastery of Chrysovalantis. Divine providence prevented her marriage to the emperor and, full of joy and with a light ...