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Christ Himself sanctified this on the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ God, why have you done this to me? What did I do to you? Am I not your Son’. The same question as mine and one which also went unanswered. At least it seemed to. But events provided the answer. Many such ‘whys’ came out of the mouth of Job the Much-Suffered and from the stylus of wounded David, two men whose tragic loss of their children marked their passage through history and who are often presented to us as unique models of faith, fortitude and patience. We address this question to God, we ask it of ourselves, we repeat it to people we feel are ...

Recognize the gift of autonomy. You aren’t subject to any created being, only to the one and only Creator. Always serve Him, in all gratitude, as God and Creator, as Father and Lord.

Saint Luke bore bravely not only the death of his wife, his illnesses and his blindness but all the mocking, reproaches, false charges and slander, the absurd and never-ending interrogations, the persecutions, the exiles, the unjust imprisonments and the horrible tortures to which he was subjected by the people of the totalitarian state of his time. And all for the love of Christ, in the name of Christ. He kept his confession to the end, though it could have cost him his life. When they forced him to take down the icon of the Mother of God from the operating theatre, he stopped operating. He resumed only when her icon was back on the wall . His internal spiritual state ...

By Orthodox Christian News in Orthodox News Jun 15, 2016 ⋅ 0 Comment(s) ⋅ Tags: Holy And Great Council WHO: Rev. Dr. John Chryssavgis, director, Ecumenical Patriarchate Press Office for the Holy and Great Council WHAT: Webinar-hosted media conference on the upcoming Holy and Great Council, June 16-27, 2016, Orthodox Academy of Crete WHEN: Wednesday, June 15, 17:00 hrs in Crete (UTC +3) Jun 15, 2016 10:00 AM (GMT-4:00) Eastern Time (US and Canada) WHERE: Register at https://goarch.zoom.us/webinar/register/2fbeca7b18df91034ac87b605f06faf5 After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. BACKGROUND: The Press Office of the Ecumenical Patriarchate hosts a website,www.orthodoxcouncil.org, which provides background information on the Holy and Great Council, which will meet in Crete June 16-27 and gathers approximately 500 representatives from the autocephalous ...

Because they know in advance the great effort required for the journey, the big birds that migrate to warmer countries show great love and bear on their wings any smaller ones they come across. But they’re often verbally attacked by chickens whose eyes are puffy from all the filth they scratch around in every day, to the extent that they can’t see straight, the poor things. It would be in such people’s best interests to take a pair of scissors to their tongues rather than go to Hell, since they find it so hard to keep their mouths zipped.

Blessed ‘whys’. It’s a question that’s so common, so profound, so powerful in its expression and so difficult to answer. It’s a question that’s so true, so human, so demanding, but one which, by its nature, is difficult to deal with in words, it’s not expressed through the mouth, it doesn’t fit into words, it’s not something to express in front of an audience, much less is it answerable by single words from people supposedly in the know to others who are patently suffering. It may be the outstanding issue on which there can’t and shouldn’t be any speeches. It’s too deep for us ever to be truly aware of it. It’s too painful to for us to countenance as bearable. ...

In this way, hospitality avoids the danger, the anomaly of favouritism and shows it to be a veritable sea of compassion. If you love your brother, you love the stranger. In any case, as Saint Basil the Great notes: «there is one nature, both this person and that are people. There is one poverty, one penury for both of them. Give to your brother and to the stranger. Do not turn away from your brother, but also make your foreign brother familiar. You should see straight. Do not prefer your friend over the stranger when it comes to dealing with their poverty… We are all related, all brothers, children of the same Father. If you look for your spiritual father, ...

We should feel that Christ’s our friend, because He is. He says so Himself when He says: ‘You are my friends…’. We should look upon Him and approach Him as a friend. Do we fall? Do we sin? With familiarity, love and trust we should run to Him. Not fearing that He’s going to punish us, but with boldness that will make us feel we’re his friends. We should say: ‘Lord I’ve done this or that, I’ve fallen. Forgive me’. And at the same time, we should feel that He loves us, that He’ll receive us tenderly and will forgive us. Sin shouldn’t separate us from Christ. When we believe that He loves us and we love Him, we don’t ...

In recognition of the state of the culture, those in authority within the Church have the awesome responsibility to unceasingly teach the doctrines of the Faith especially in the crucial area of morality. Sadly, many have chosen to remain silent. In a few cases doubtless, this silence was occasioned by culture-related attitudes manifested especially among those whose background is reflective of foreign birth and nurture far from the American concepts of freedom of speech and dissent. Then there is the silence of the naive, those who believe as did one elderly bishop that "Orthodox people don’t do such things." But the silence of the vast majority who should have spoken but have chosen to remain mute is the result of ...

We have started registration for the 9th edition, 4-8 July 2016 This year’s edition will combine the holiday atmosphere of a festival via evening concerts, services and interactive meetings with that of a workshop, through various practical courses (Large Ensemble, Women’s Ensemble, courses of intonation and interval theory, canto and instrument technique). The academic level of the event will be increased, like every year, by lectures on liturgical, historical or palaeography topics, meant to complete the training that a Byzantine music chanter will receive during five days. Main Topic We shall focus our attention, via training courses in psaltic art interpretation, on the Relation between ornaments, intervals and stresses in the musical execution of theses. From a musical-liturgical perspective, this year, discussions ...

Veria, 6 June, 2016. Most people, even Christians, are frustrated, discouraged and wearied by the sorrows of life, which are unavoidable: ‘We must suffer many tribulations to enter the kingdom of God’ . We shouldn’t see the sorrows of this life through the prism of transitory reasoning, but through that of eternity. This is when life acquires meaning and the meaning of sorrow in our lives is revealed to us: in the end they form the way of the Cross which we must follow in order to reach salvation and sanctification. Saint Luke, Archbishop of the Crimea and a doctor, is one of the saints who really did experience the way of the Cross and, with this experience and the gift of ...