Κατηγορία

In English

15 Ιανουαρίου 2020
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Saint Maria of Olonets: They Saw her Face Shining in Life and after Death

Κατηγορίες: In English

The suffering hermit lay in bed for about three weeks. Each day, after the Liturgy, a hieromonk came with the Precious Gifts so that she could make her communion. On the fifteenth day, her face was transfigured; it shone with a supernatural light and took on the expression of blessed peace. All her features reverted to the beauty they’d had when she was young. Even the black marks round her lips disappeared. Her face took on a pale color, like melted wax. She calmly called for the astonished Akylina and before Matrona and Pelagia, her two nieces, she said: ‘I want to confess. Get batiushka (‘my spiritual father’). The lips of the suffering hermit moved so that she who had spent her whole ...

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14 Ιανουαρίου 2020
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Like the robber (Elder Filotheos Zervakos)

Κατηγορίες: In English

Through repentance we experience a second baptism and are cleansed of the sins we’ve committed since the first one. When we repent, confess our transgressions, decide not to repeat them, to hate them, we immediately receive remission of our iniquities and, from one moment to the next, go from being sinners to righteous, as did the robber, who gained Paradise because he repented.

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14 Ιανουαρίου 2020
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Papa-Fotis, the Fool for Christ: in his Vestments in a House of Ill Repute!

Κατηγορίες: In English

One evening, Papa-Fotis visited one of the houses in town where he sometimes stayed. Before he went to sleep, he told the man of the house: ‘First thing in the morning, you and me have got work to do’. They got up, left Mytilini and went to his little monastery. He quickly gathered the holy vessels and his priestly vestments and went to the picturesque chapel of Our Lady Galatousa, up near the old fortifications of the town. He served the Liturgy. Then he took the Holy Chalice and the spoon and, just as he was, in his vestments, went off to one of the brothels that were in that area at the time. There he gave communion to a prostitute, Evlambia, who was ...

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14 Ιανουαρίου 2020
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Theological and Scientific Theories of Knowledge (George Mantzarides, Professor Emeritus of the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Κατηγορίες: In English

Orthodox Christian theology has always distinguished between two kinds of knowledge: the secular and the divine. Secular knowledge functions on the level of created matter and is unable to approach the uncreated, that is the divine, which reveals God’s purpose for the world. Secular science is empirical in nature. It objectivizes the world and always and everywhere seeks objectivity. While it depends on the individual and makes its leaps through personal inspiration, it avoids subjectivity. As knowledge about changeable and relative things, scientific knowledge is changeable and relative. And as an attempt to understand the finite world, with its infinitude of dimensions and phenomena, it is always both finite and never-ending. Divine knowledge is of a personal nature. It doesn’t function on ...

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