In English

Deep in the heart of a typical American city there is a magnificent old Orthodox church. The community housed here was founded about a hundred years ago, a gathering of families who had emigrated fromGreece,Russia,Syria, or some other ethnically-Orthodox land. These newcomers foundAmericavast, confusing, and intimidating. They banded together and formed a congregation, then called a priest from the “old country.” The growing parish was an island of familiarity, a place where they could not only worship in the language they longed all week to hear, but also share news from home, enjoy the foods and dancing that eased homesickness, and choose mates for their growing children. Time passed. The parishioners saved up and bought a church building from a Protestant congregation. ...

It seems like it was just the other day that our 40 Day Challenge disembarked for the harbour of Holy Week. We can now see the Lighthouse; our Journey to Pascha will be more vividly before us as we commemorate the Raising of the Four-day Dead Lazarus next Saturday and Christ’s Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Before then, however, there is one more week remaining in the 40-day Fast. Today, the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent, we celebrated Saint Mary of Egypt – one of the greatest saints of our Holy Orthodox Church. St. Mary is a shining example of our theme this week: Prayer and Repentance. Beginning in her youth St. Mary lived a profligate life, lustfully and without ...

The grace of God has gathered us together today at the heart of Great Lent in order to express to the Lord our longing for His salvation, for the acquisition of the spirit of wisdom and for understanding of His commandments. Holy Scripture, however, warns us: ‘It is impossible for a heartless man to purchase wisdom.’ What is the ‘heart’ for us as Christians, and what kind of man can be called ‘heartless’? The heart of every man is fashioned by God in a special and unique manner. It is unrepeatable and makes up the core of the human hypostasis. Man becomes truly great when he draws near to God with his ‘deep heart’, because there, within him, is ‘the place of ...

Faith is a spiritual mouth. The wider it’s open, the greater the river of the divine waters that can flow into it. Don’t allow doubt and lack of faith to seal your lips, because then the treasures of God’s blessings will be denied to you.

With the vocal resonance which is his hallmark, Archon Maestro of the Great Church of Christ, Grigorios Daravanoglou sings ‘My soul, my soul’ the famous kontakion of Great Lent and the Great Canon. It is one of the most moving troparia of the time of Great Lent, a period of purification and exaltation for all those who desire to be carried along, crucified and raised with Jesus Christ. My soul, my soul, arise. Why do you slumber? The end is nigh and soon you will be troubled. Be vigilant, then, that Christ your God may spare you, for He is everywhere present and fills all things. %audio%

On the fifth Sunday in Lent, the Church brings to our attention an exceptional female ascetic: Saint Mary the Egyptian. She’s someone for us to imitate and has a great deal to teach us. Her Life was preserved for us by Saint Zosimas and written down by Saint Sofronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem (commemorated on 11 March). Saint Mary lived at the time of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century, in Egypt. At the age of twelve she began to live a dissolute life, enjoying and satisfying the pleasures of the flesh. This lasted for twelve years, until she ‘came to her senses’ and realized the error of her ways. While she lived this life, she took no money, but merely ...

The whole series can be read here: The Theology of Gender Byzantine society was a dynamic union of different cultural elements based on Greek civilization and the Christian faith. Although Christianity was the decisive element in the formation of Byzantium, the practical application of the Christian ethos as a way of life met with the resistance of the old cultural principles that were deeply rooted in the consciousness of the people. Accordingly, the theology of gender as expressed before faced two opposing extremes: the chauvinism of the Roman civilization, which pushed women into the background, on the one hand, and the pagan liberality that was a danger for the social ethos, on the other. For this society, it is reasonable to say ...

The follow tips assume that you have a limited budget, and so cannot afford to buy everything at once.  If this is not true in your case, there are some books you could skip, but they are good to have on hand in any case. The most basic liturgical text every Orthodox Christian should have is a good prayer book.  You can read about several suggested texts in the following article: Recommended Prayer Books These prayer books can be ordered from, Holy Ascension Monastery, Light and Life Publishing, or from St. Nectarios Press.  Of the prayer books in that article, the one I would recommend the most is the Jordanville Prayer book. Another very useful text mentioned in that article that I would ...

If you want to get your own back on somebody who’s done you harm, do them a good deed!

Atheists with Signs “A fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God’.” Today I wore a “Billboard for Hell”, the self-professing atheist told me in the produce section of Costco.  I had turned from my cart for a small container of strawberries, and spinning around, I nearly opened them upon him, as he stepped between ‘me and mine’. “Terribly sorry—I didn’t expect anyo---,” I was saying as he interrupted me. “Well I suppose we’re all human—or at least you’d say so. And we all make mistakes, but here you are, wearing a billboard for Hell.  I am an atheist.  Do you want to debate me?” “No, but I will be glad to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you.”  I ...

“… her many sins have been remitted, because she loved greatly” Luke 7, 47.             On the Fifth Sunday of Lent, the Church honours the memory of a “street-walker”, a woman who led such a dissolute life that the word “prostitute” is more of a euphemism rather than an exact description of the depth of her sinfulness. The figure of Blessed Mary is highlighted on the last Sunday of Great Lent: on the one hand, to strike at our Churchy prissiness, since a common harlot is presented as a model of life; and, on the other, to provide an example and a ray of hope for repentance for all those who are slaves to their passions and continue to struggle to ...

The ability to bear pain patiently increases within us through prayer, confession, holy communion, reading sacred books, the recollection of the sufferings of Our Lord Jesus Christ and all His saints. Through visiting those worse off than us and reflecting on the eternal bliss in Paradise. There’s no other path to salvation except that of the Cross, of suffering, patience and sacrifice, as the Savior says: ‘In your patience, you will gain your souls (Luke 21, 19); and ‘Those who show patience to the end will be saved (Math. 24, 13).

Holy and Great Lent began a few days ago and the atmosphere is already solemn and mournful, as befits this period of time. It’s the sweetest and most beautiful time of the year, since it provides us with a great opportunity for prayer and repentance, and deep contrition strengthens this desire. The liturgical life of the Church includes beautiful and solemn services, such as Solemn Vespers, Great Compline and the Salutations to Our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God, which give us special strength. And as we know, Our Lady is our greatest intercessor to God. Why has the Church placed the Salutations to Our Lady in Great Lent? What connection can they have with the Passion and Resurrection of ...

In the Holy Orthodox Church on the fifth week of Great Lent we read the life of St. Mary of Egypt: out loud, as part of compline. St. Mary is a repentant harlot who lived as a hermit for forty-seven years in the wilderness east of the Jordan River in the early sixth century. Near the end of her life, she is found by a certain monk from the monastery of St. John the Baptist, Fr. Zosimas, to whom she tells her story. In the normal course of the liturgical life of the Church, the Synaxarion (book of the lives of the Saints) is read every day at Matins. For Orthodox Christians the lives of the saints function not only as lesson ...

The same is true for the preeminent agents of heavenly paternity in the Church, that is the bishop, the priest and the spiritual father. God gave them and left in them in the world to be witnesses to His own eternal fatherhood and sonship, its bearers and transferrers, the instructors in the mystery of the life of God as criterion and measure for human life and our existence. The glory which God gave to His Son, His Only-Begotten Son, is also given to them (cf. Jn. 17, 22). Herein lies the mystery of sacred Tradition, which is the transmission, within the Church, of the eternal glory of God from father to son in the same way as this same glory is ...

Don’t restrict your children’s education and upbringing to secular wisdom, to the wisdom of this world. They should, at the same time, learn the wisdom that comes from above and the highest form of truth. They should learn the law of God and the commandments of Christ. They should learn all due reverence, the constant remembrance of God and the proper Christian path. Only then will your children not be lost in the ways of human wisdom, only then will they always hold Christian wisdom above all else, the knowledge of God. This is the way we should bring up our children.

The honor and respect of Christianity to women is demonstrated especially in the person of the Theotokos. She is the human closest to God; after Christ, she is the most beloved and honored person by men and God. She has a great place in worship and is most beloved to the Fathers who wrote extensively about her. St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite affirms that the whole world was created for the person of the Theotokos, and that she was created for Christ. In addition, God would have been pleased by the Theotokos alone, even if the whole of creation had become evil and rebelled against God. The Theotokos is she who: “divinized the human race and brought the earth to the ...

Jesus. Detail of mosaic in Aghia Sophia. (phot. by Nikos Loupakis) I am a Christian. I believe in God, the Creator from nothing of heaven and earth and of everything visible and invisible. This Creator-God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is also identically the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. There was a man, born in Bethlehem of Judea, born of a virgin whose name was Mary, a virgin who did not know a man. This man's name was Jesus. He lived for about thirty years in a little town in Galilee, called Nazareth, with his mother and a man called Joseph who was espoused to his mother and who remained faithful to both of them, ...

Conveying the emotions of its thousands of members, the Board of Directors of the Association “Friends of Vatopaidi Monastery” would like to express – and why not indeed shout from the housetop – our joy over the justification of our hopes. The final triumph of the truth was festally occasioned by the recent and unanimous verdict of acquittal by the three-member Criminal Court of Appeals of Athens for all the defendants involved in the multi-faceted, supposed scandal of Vatopaidi Monastery, which was competently – judicially, that is – shown to be a spurious fabrication and a non-scandal. The charge for our Association was sparked spontaneously and instinctively, immediately following what we regarded as the uncalled-for imprisonment of the Monastery’s Abbot, Elder ...