You’ll be a spiritual person when you can see that making money and spending it freely is no more than a short-lived fantasy, when you know that the virtuous and God-pleasing way of life is very different from wealth. When you consider this carefully and retain it in your memory, you won’t sigh, you won’t mourn, you won’t speak badly about other people, but rather you’ll thank God for everything, seeing those worse than you depending on words and money. That’s the worst passion of the soul, together with desire, glory and ignorance.
The consumer society and capitalism are associated with the effort to accumulate wealth and material goods and with personal prosperity. But when some people manage to concentrate in their hands a great deal of material wealth, this means that some others are deprived of it. In this way, social injustice is created and people are divided into the rich and the poor. Of course, the ‘spirit of capitalism’, as desire, ostentation and enjoyment is associated with all social classes. We shall look below at how the Christian Roman Empire (‘Byzantium’) addressed the problems which arose from social injustice. With its headquarters in Constantinople, so-called Byzantium, the Christian Roman Empire was distinguished for its charity, which is how it survived for a ...
During the reign of the Emperor Diocletian, a devout and wealthy Christian couple, Dorotheos and Evsevia, being childless, asked God to give them a child, and promised to dedicate any such offspring to Him. Their prayer was heard and, one Sunday, they had a daughter, whom they named Kyriaki, for that reason . They baptised her and brought her up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord”, according to Saint Paul (Eph. 6, 4) and, true to their promise, kept their daughter unmarried, in order to offer her to the service of the Lord. One day, a rich idolater who happened to be staying in the city, heard tell of the beauty and character of the young maiden and decided ...
You can’t reach the spiritual heights all at once or even very easily. You have to have labored and striven over many years, with trials and various temptations before you reach the perfection of defeating the passions. Once you’ve been tested with pains and labors and have courageously endured all the temptations occasioned by wickedness, you’re deemed worthy to receive the great honors and gifts of the Holy Spirit, as well as the divine riches. You then become an heir of the Kingdom of Heaven. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, each of us gains the salvation of our soul. But we have to contribute as well, through our own efforts.
Gian Giudice, is the new Head of CERN's Theory Department. Following his inspiring talk during the FCC Week 16 we discuss with him about the LHC results and the present global landscape in particle physics as well as his view on the future developments in the field. Following the LHC discoveries, how would you describe the present situation in the field of particle physics? Today the situation in particle physics is largely dominated by uncertainty. It is too early to draw definitive conclusions, as the LHC Run 2 has just started. However, we cannot deny that most of our pre-LHC theoretical expectations have not been confirmed by the first data. As a result, the field is dominated by a sense of uncertainty. The uncertainty of ...
There’s no doubt that, after God, humans are the most mysterious and enigmatic beings. From the beginning of our history, it can be seen that within us co-exist two opposing forces which attempt to gain domination and win us over to their side: good and evil, life and death, God and the devil. Each in a different way and by different means. But what’s the factor by which we feel and discern not only these circumstances, but all the realities which are in the perceptible world around us? No sooner do we acquire our senses in this world than we see and feel with them and we describe all the material things around us. But though dumb beasts see, with their ...
Grace doesn’t begin to act within us unless we want it and seek it. God doesn’t want to trespass on the freedom He’s given us. Otherwise we’d all become saints in the blink of an eye at God’s divine command.
Having lost the understanding of the redemptive nature of suffering, society today believes that to endure suffering is the evidence of mental aberration. This reflects the secular and humanist understanding of earthly life as being the totality of existence. If there is no God and if there is no Eternal Life, no Heaven, no Hell, then suffering is futile and foolish. Those who are Christian however, have the promise that earthly sufferings are but as jewels in the Crown of Salvation. Like gold refined in the fire, we will be made more beautiful through suffering in Imitation of Christ. To counter the culture, the Church must strongly teach that avoidance at all costs of humiliation and suffering is not the Christian ...
Sloth, stubbornness or any other passion is always followed by the commensurate punishment. When my internal disposition towards God and His holiness isn’t good, then I feel this punishment within myself, in my heart, like a fire that burns.
This brief study aims at a short review and analysis of today’s culture, the thoughts and ambitions of people nowadays, especially those in Europe, who have a large impact on others around the world. We’ve used the word ‘Europe’ but we would not wish to restrict ourselves to geographical confines of the term of ‘badly ageing Europe’, but rather we mean both civilizations, East and West, which, despite their different forms and expressions, belong to the same camp of atheist humanism. We would like to focus the attention of our people on the lurking danger of abandoning our ideals, our traditions, our heritage, for the sake of the new-fangled and erroneous ideas which are flooding our society through all available ...
It’s often been observed that some nuns find it difficult to express certain troubling thoughts to the Abbess, and that they find it easier to do so to the Elder. Of course, it’s obligatory for the Abbess to agree to hear the thoughts of all the nuns, but in such a case we see that the Elder can be of help in the resolving the situation to the spiritual benefit of the nun concerned. Besides, the Elder is more easily able to reconcile and placate the nuns regarding any friction or pettiness which disturbs the interpersonal communion of the nuns, especially when certain passions are prevalent which tend to appear more often in the feminine nature, such as envy, jealousy, complaining ...
My dear friends, This evening it has been my pleasure, after accepting the honour of an exceptional invitation, to speak from the chair of the late Archbishop Iakovos. To speak, that is to say, from under the shadow of a radiant person and servant of the Church who was known for the acute perception of his gaze. But also to speak from the chair of a migrant to whom the Ellis Island medal was awarded in 1986, for his creative integration into and contribution to American society. And we all know what Ellis Island was. I shall end, therefore, with his words, which demonstrate the immediate and imperative need on the part of the modern world, and particularly of the Orthodox Church ...
