In English

2. Besides, the person of the Patriarch Isaac, his birth and the offering of him as a sacrifice to God by his father Abraham have attracted the attention of many interpreters of the Holy Scriptures.             Isaac truly was born through the promise of God. He was born of a mother who was sterile and a father who was well-stricken in years. According to Paul, this means that we, the faithful, “are offspring through the promise of Isaac”, precisely because Isaac was born from a sterile mother, just as the Church was sterile before the advent of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit.               With reference to the sacrifice of Isaac, Saint John Chrysostom initially underlines the fact that Abraham ...

(Previous publication:...) "P".: Is there any fundamental problem you have seen with the way bioethics functions today? “Cornelia Delkeskamp-Hayes”: When we speak of “how bioethics functions today”, we speak, first of all, of a huge network of scholarly institutions. These are attached either to medical schools, or to medical humanities departments, or else to philosophical faculties. Here medical students are introduced to the moral quandaries of their profession. So far, so good. But here also the so-called bioethics experts are trained. These experts then serve as consultants on all levels of health care institutions, law making, policy design right down to the nitty gritty of conflict resolution in the hospital, when the interests and commitments of hospital owners, hospital managers, the medical staff, ...

Humility and hardships liberate people from all sin: the first cuts off the passions of the soul; and the seconds those of the body.

Rev. Patrick H. Reardon By way of showing the parabolic teaching of Jesus to be a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, the Gospel of St. Matthew (13:35) cites a line from Psalm 77(78):2: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world.” The first half of this quotation, found in Matthew alone among the four Gospels, comes verbatim from the traditional Septuagint version of the Psalms, but no extant version of that text explains precisely where Matthew derived his wording in the verse’s second half. It is reasonable to think that he was quoting the psalm from memory, which would explain why he quoted it inexactly. However that may be, two expressions ...

Vasiliki Kouzari was born in 1891 in Varosi, Famagusta, in Cyprus, in what are now the Occupied Territories. Her family was very poor. She had another four siblings, though she herself was the youngest. She lost her mother when she was very young. A man called Konstantinos Psaras, a widower with two children, asked to marry her sister Milia. Milia made it a condition of their marriage that she should bring with her her 10-year-old sister, Vasiliki, and he agreed. Vasiliki brought up the two orphans and another seven children which her sister had with Konstantinos. All the children loved her more than they did their mother, because she loved them so much. As a reward for her efforts with his children and ...

Indignation may be linked to anger, wrath, mischief, irritability and resentment. There is righteous and justified anger, which brings forth indignation, sometimes holy indignation, from the turmoil in the soul which has been affected. This is a dreadful eruption which is expressed publicly, by indignant people protesting in a variety of ways, some extreme, at being mocked, lied to, fooled and deceived. This is a sudden, spontaneous, general expression of outrage, a wave of wrath, a storm of disapproval, a powerful, simmering anger. Scandals among leaders and the powerful caused sparks to fly, irritability, a flare-up of reactive determination, a culmination in the protests, stress, acrimony, fury and hostility. And so there came an eruption of passions, an outbreak of demands. ...

Eucharistic Gathering I. The Church is founded on a rock. “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against her.” These words could be inscribed on the front of the main churches of all confessions, including Rome, but, of course, without the Roman interpretation. The belief that the Churchof Christis unshakeable and unconquerable comprises one of the most basic convictions of Christianity. In the epoch of deep world crisis and in the dusk of man’s historical paths this unshakeable quality of the Church is a haven for the Christian soul. The face of the earth is changing; mankind is entering unknown and unexplored paths, and we ourselves, just like ...

It's not the history of the Jews, it's the pre-history of our Lord Jesus Christ. They have to understand this. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob may be the forefathers of the Jews, but in spirit they're ours. Saint Paul says so (Gal. 3, 7-9). And the Lord said to the Jews: 'Don't think it's any good to say that you have Abraham for a father, because you don't live like him’.

Evidence for C.S. Lewis’ status as a prophet could be argued from two of his works, one of which is The Abolition of Man, written as a pamphlet in 1943.  (The other work is a short essay entitled, “Priestesses in the Church?”, written in 1948, well before his Anglican Communion began ordaining women to the priesthood in the 1970’s).  Lewis would, of course, utterly dismiss any suggestion that he was a prophet, and I use the term here very loosely.  What is beyond dispute is that much of what Lewis (who died in 1963) predicted and feared has come to pass.  In this brief essay I look a little more closely at the slim volume The Abolition of Man, for ...

This  is a Bible Game for helping your students learn to “follow” the Ten Commandments. In the book of Exodus, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments to share with the Hebrew people. The commandments help us to understand God’s nature and what He considers to be right and wrong, but they don’t actually help us get close to Him. For that, we need Jesus! Object: For students to follow the path of the Ten Commandments, which leads to Christ Jesus in Graceland. Materials Needed: 1 copy of the Ten Commandments 11 pieces of construction paper 1 dark crayon Preparation: Cut the first 10 pieces of construction paper into the shape of a foot print, or simply draw a footprint on each. Number each foot print 1-10 using ...

The sacrament of the Divine Eucharist was prefigured by a variety of events in the era of the Old Testament. These events were investigated from as early as the time when the New Testament was being written. They were interpreted and analyzed by the writers of the New Testament, and thereafter by the Fathers of the Church, not only because they’re noteworthy in themselves, but also because they were harbingers of the Truth. The advent of Christ didn’t mean a commentary on the old, nor a transfer from the relative to the relative, but a progression from the old (enslavement) to the new (liberty. His presence “makes all things new, and the very fact of His incarnation is “he only ...

People today have become like robots. Judgment's ceased. The only people who'll have any judgment are those doing research, the rest will be like machines.

(Previous publication:...) "P". At the Religion and Politics Conference in Alba Iulia, in Romania, we saw you were with a group of Orthodox bioethicists from the USA. Just how important is bioethics and are bioethical issues? Is it worthwhile for Orthodox Christians to spend so much time on them? "Cornelia Delkeskamp-Hayes": The conference in Alba Iulia focused on both political theory and theology. It engaged theology as a resource for cultural criticism. Our group of friends and disciples of Engelhardt share his insight about the cardinal role which the bio-medical complex plays in our own secularized Western culture. This culture is defined in terms of the Enlightenment and its moral principles, as brought to political salience in Europe through the French Revolution and ...

Ms. Jessica Precop traveled to the Dormition of the Mother of God Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan to interview Father Roman Braga, who grew up and served in Romania under a communist regime. We are very thankful to Ms. Precop, Father Roman, and the Sisterhood at the Monastery for making this interview possible. Father, to start with, what can you tell us about the monastic way of life?  This is a good question. First, however, you have to understand the Romanian cultural environment when I was young – in the 1920’s -1950’s. The Romanian people, I think, were always inclined toward the monastic way of life, because being monastic and leading a monastic type life does not mean only to go and ...

Let us consider the cosmological and ecological functions of liturgy. In the understanding of the early Greek Church, liturgy is not merely the lex orandi of believers, but is cosmology in action. The fullest example in the Christian tradition of the metaphysical, theological and ethical unity of science, religion, contemplation, and asceticism in a cosmic vision that is profoundly unifying, reconciling and ecological is the liturgical cosmology and cosmic liturgy of St. Maximos the Confessor, a great theologian and philosopher who lived in the 7th century.1 Liturgy in the sense that St. Maximos uses it, and in the sense that the Greek Orthodox tradition has embodied, is not to be considered in terms of conventional church ceremonies consisting of outwardly ...

Few lines in the New Testament, I suspect, better anticipated the development of Christian theology than these from the Acts of the Apostles: Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia. After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them. So passing by Mysia, they came down to Troas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night. A man of Macedonia stood and pleaded with him, saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” Now after he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go to Macedonia, concluding that the Lord had ...

Being a monastic isn't an easy life, it's hard and, as Saint John of the Ladder says: 'Monasticism is constant violence against nature’. In other words, it's a continuous struggle against nature. People can't easily accept this and 'not everyone can take this in'.

Love for Christ knows no bounds, neither does love for your neighbour. It should extend everywhere, to the ends of the earth. Everywhere, to everyone. Let me give you an example. There was a monk who had two disciples. He tried very hard to bring them up to scratch and make them better. But he was worried about whether they were really making any progress in the spiritual life, if they were making headway, and if they were ready for the kingdom of God. He waited for a sign from God about this, but didn’t get an answer. One day, there was going to be a vigil in another skete that was a good few hours away from theirs. They’d have ...