In English

The Church is not opposed to the human body. This is why the Fathers were so careful not to damage their body with their ascetic efforts. They tried to submit it to the Holy Spirit and to God’s commandments, so as not to seek the pleasures and lapses of the flesh, but they never accepted that their bodies should be damaged. In Patristic literature, there’s a saying that ‘we don’t slay the body, but we do slay the passions’. It’s sin and the passions which kill, not the body, which is the temple of God. And if, at times, it appears that the saints seem merciless and harsh in their treatment of the body, it was not to kill it, ...

A Divine Liturgy will be celebrated this Sunday with simultaneous sign language interpretation for the first time in Cyprus. The Diocese of Tamasos and Orinis has invited a theologian well-versed in Greek sign language to come from Greece for the service in St. John Chrysostom Church in Lakatamia in the Nicosia district, Cyprus Mail Online reports. According to parish priest Fr. Kyriacos Kasparis, the interpreter is scheduled to come once a month at first, eventually increasing to once every two weeks plus major holidays, depending on his schedule. “This arrangement is aimed at satisfying the needs of the deaf faithful who have never had the opportunity to follow a liturgy and have someone explain to them the deeper meanings in their own language,” Fr. ...

Whatever difficulties and temptations you face, just remember that they’re nothing compared to the trials experienced by the Lord as a human being here on earth.

All the Pharasiotes began their preparations at once, just as Father Arsenios did. First he baptised all the unbaptised children, including the village president's child, at which time the following event occurred: The child's parents wanted to give him the grandfather's name, Christos. Father Arsenios, however, did not agree, because he wanted to give him his own name, and he said to the parents: "It's natural that you should want to have someone follow in the grandfather's footsteps, is it not also natural for me to want to leave a monk to follow in mine?" He then turned to the godmother and told her: "Arsenios is the name you will give him." Indeed, from an early age, this child did aspire to become a ...

Any reference to the Apostle St. Matthew, author of the first book of the New Testa­ment, is made with such solemnity and reverence that speaking of him as a man seems almost sacrilegious, so close to the divine is he con­sidered. But when Jesus came upon Matthew, he was a man who could scarcely be viewed with little but contempt by the human eye; the divine sight of Christ, however, saw in this man which He beckoned to His service that spark of greatness invi­sible to the rest of the world. It is doubtful that Matthew him­self was aware of what lay dormant in him that was to place him in the forefront of Christianity. Matthew was a native ofCana, the ...

Don’t open your mouth and heart to all and sundry. Only one in a thousand will understand you.

Sunday’s Gospel of the Good Samaritan has as its core message ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’. But the story is a reply to a specific question and obviously doesn’t exhaust all facets of the issue. For example, in this particular case, the ‘neighbourly’ thing to do next would be to guarantee the safety of the road so that future travellers would not fall victims to robbers. In today’s terms, it’s clear that we must look after refugees and provide them with shelter, food, medical facilities and an environment acceptable to them, but also that we should be working towards making their countries of origin self-sufficient and safe, to the extent that the refugees can return and prosper there ...

The monastic life has been called the angelic state, as being the pre-eminent way of imitating and following the life of the angels. Monastics are always striving to live as citizens of heaven. They consider themselves no more than temporary visitors on earth and their constant desire is to be ‘a little less than the angels’ (Ps. 8, 5). They want to live an angelic life here and to replace the ranks of the fallen angels. Indeed, the organizer of the common monastic life in Cappadocia, Saint Basil the Great, in his 2nd letter to ‘his comrade’, Gregory, asks: ‘What then is more blessed than to imitate the state of the angels?’ The ascetic Fathers declare: ‘Let the life of a ...

The holy and renowned Apostle Philip came from Bethsaida in Galilee, that is the same town of which Saints Andrew and Peter were residents. He was distinguished for his depth of understanding and spent a great deal of time studying the books of the prophets in the Old Testament. He remained chaste throughout his life. The Lord found Philip in Galilee, after His baptism and urged him to follow Him. Philip lost no time; he immediately followed the Lord and became His disciple. Not only that, but when he met his friend Nathaniel shortly afterwards,  he said to him: “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son ...

God can’t be described and is not finite. Neither can His properties be. If, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, people enter into the bosom of glorification, they experience all these endless, imperceptible, untraceable and boundless properties. This is why I said that there’s no end to repentance.

The human person is the temple of the living God. This is an Apostolic teaching of our Church, which means that, just as the grace of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit, resides in a church, the same is true of the human body and we are temples of the living God. We call God living because He’s not cut off somewhere in the heavens and we simply believe in Him, accept Him, but because He resides in us and we are His temple. Naturally, Saint Paul doesn’t mean that part of our existence is the temple of God, but that the whole person is destined to become the temple of God and when this is achieved, it becomes ...

According to the Greek Orthodox calendar, the period from the 15th of November till the 24th of December is a fastening period, a time of preparation before the great feast of the Nativity of Christ. During the 12th century the Orthodox church established the Christmas fast as an opportunity for Christians to offer something to God and to come closer to Him by denying themselves some body worldly pleasures and passions. So in the orthodox religion, Christmas is preceded by a 40 day fast... The main purpose of fasting is to liberate oneself from dependence on the things of this world and strengthen the soul in order to win the sin and temptation and develop love for the Kingdom of God. But ...

In the text of the Old Testament, we read that, when Cain killed Abel, God asked him where his brother was. Still angry, he retorted: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”. This question, so full of hate and indifference, is answered by one of the most important parables of the Gospels, which we shall hear in tomorrow’s reading (Luke 10, 25-37). It’s the parable of the Good Samaritan, which is well known the world over and which answers Cain positively: Yes, people are their brother’s keepers and we ought to love our neighbours with all the power of our hearts.   The details of the parable are well enough known: a lawyer wanted to “goad” Jesus and asked Him how ...

Bonn, Germany, November 6-17, 2017 The 23rd session of the United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change provides occasion to recall with introspection and reflect with integrity on the state of our world, but also on where we have come and where we are headed as a global community, especially in light of the urgent call of the Paris Agreement. Last November, our message to COP-22 was that we “hold nations accountable to resolutions reached or for violations incurred, especially as we know the intimate connections of climate change to global poverty, migration and unrest.” This June, prior to the G-20 summit in Hamburg, we endorsed a letter inspired by Mission 2020 “calling on nations to highlight the importance of the ...

If we remembered the words of the holy Elders, if we studied them, it would be difficult for us to fall into sin, hard for us to neglect ourselves. Because if, precisely as they’ve advised us, we didn’t despise the little things, which we consider insignificant, then we wouldn’t get to the point of falling into sin over bigger and more serious things.

Punishment and reward. Both of these are in the hands of God. But just as life on earth is no more than a shadow of that in heaven, by the same token, punishment and reward  are merely a shadow of the real punishment and reward of eternity. The main persecutors of Saint John Chrysostom were Patriarch Theofilos of Alexandria and Empress Evdoxia. After Chrysostom’s death as a martyr, bitter punishment awaited both of them. Theofilos became possessed by demons, while Evdoxia quickly succumbed to an incurable disease – her body became covered in sores from which worms emerged. The stench given off by her body was so appalling that it was unbearable for people just passing the house where she was ...

While he was always charitable towards others, Father Arsenios was very hard on himself, and, out of his great love, made prostrations and fasted for others, who were unable to do so themselves. As a spiritual Father, he did not usually impose a canon on people, but would simply try to bring them to the point of awareness, so out of philotimo, they themselves would ask to do some ascetic act (of prayer, prostrations, fasting,) or charity work or what­ever kind of good deed they felt moved to perform. Whenever he saw a small child possessed or para­lysed and determined that the parents were the cause, he would give the parents a canon, once he had cured their child. On one occasion, ...

‘Just then a lawyer stood up to test Jesus’. This ‘lawyer’ approached Jesus Christ, supposedly to ask what he should do to inherit eternal life, but in fact out of a desire to provoke Him. The lawyer was an educated man of his time who studied and interpreted the Law and it was his aim to trap Jesus into a discussion. Instead he received a much-needed lesson. Jesus got him to understand that it’s one thing to be well-educated and play at being clever and quite another to be a good and useful human being. Wisdom isn’t a matter of knowing who your neighbour is, but knowing what you should do for that person. Everybody knows and says lots ...

Antipathy, hatred and envy should be unknown to any Christian. We shouldn’t even know their names. How can Christians have antipathy within them? You see love everywhere, you breathe in its aroma. God is the God of love.

John was born on the island of Cyprus. His father was the eparch, a man of renown, called Epifanios. John was brought up from childhood as a real Christian and, against his will, but because his parents insisted, he married and had children. By God’s providence, his wife and children all departed this life early. John quickly became well-known for his great compassion, with the result that, in the reign of Irakleios, he was elected Patriarch of Alexandria (610). He governed the Church of Alexandria soundly for a decade, as a true shepherd, protecting it from dangers on the part of pagans and heretics. Once, when he was speaking to his flock, Saint John said: “If you wish to be ...