When God gives, envy has no power, and, when He doesn’t give, effort has none.
‘No matter how bad pain is, it has no meaning other than the cleansing of the soul which longs for salvation’ (Valeriu Gafencu). The prison in the town of Târgu-Ocna was an oasis in the desert of pain. Not that there was no pain there. On the contrary. Pain, sickness in all its hideousness, and death all had their home there. Even though it was a sanatorium with slightly better living conditions and arrangements, it was still a prison. But I believe that God’s mercy overflowed there onto the pain. The Cross was considered the gate to heaven. Into this atmosphere something greater than a community was born. There was a thirst for culture and, in particular, a thirst for Christ, which ...
It is here that we must defend some aspects of the Scholastic movement. Our criticism of it is limited to the theological and spiritual problems that it caused, not to its overall gift of a systematic way of thinking and exploring, nor of its opening up of the knowledge and method that could lead to authentic science — something that simply did not develop in the Byzantine East. After the 600s is it likely that there could have been little advance toward modern science and medicine in the East. The remaining centuries of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire were filled with an all consuming struggle for survival. The vital and energetic intellectual movement in the West resulted ...
Over the centuries preachers and hymnographers have declared that the shedding of a single drop of Christ's blood – una stilla, wrote St. Thomas Aquinas – would have sufficed for our Redemption. It is important, I believe, to bear in mind the metaphorical and poetic quality of this image. Though it serves to emphasize the excellence of the Lord's precious blood, the image should not suggest something quantitative about the price of our Redemption. Nor should this image suggest that God could have redeemed us in some way other than the way He did, in fact, redeem us. Concerning our Redemption, sound Theology limits itself to what God has revealed. Hypothesis is no proper path to Theology. Nor does it suffice to speak, as one ...
Our treasure, our hope, what is it? The Church, which isn’t there just to give us material things, though it does that as well. It’s true that, in the difficult trial which the Greek people is undergoing, the Church has proved to be our mother and people have no hesitation in seeking the help of the clergy. This is why the parishes are always the refuge of the poor, the refuge of those in need. But it’s not just that. The Church of Christ also gives the treasure of the Grace of God.
It has become a commonplace to hear someone say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Most people have a general understanding of what is meant. I usually assume that the person holds to a number of ideas that are considered “spiritual” in our culture, but that they are not particularly interested in “organized religion.” I understand this, because organized religion can often be the bane of spiritual existence. I am an Orthodox Christian – which is not the same thing as saying that I have an interest in “organized religion.” There is much about organized religion that I dislike in the extreme, and I occasionally see its shadow seep into my experience within Orthodoxy. But I repeat unashamedly that I am an Orthodox ...
Agathangelos Theokharoudis, as he was known before becoming a monk, was born in 1876 to his parents, Dimitrios and Anastasia, in Gomati, Halkidiki. In 1892, he arrived at the ancient and beautiful Vatopedan Kelli of the Great Martyr Prokopios, whose hand was kept there as a treasured relic. Agathangelos was given his monastic tonsure in 1899 by the Elder Neofytos the First. He was ordained deacon in 1907 and then priest in 1909. He was an excellent and well-known spiritual father of great discernment. He was regularly invited to Halkidiki to confess the faithful. Indeed, no other spiritual father had so many people coming to him for confession. Elder Gavriïl of Dionisiou wrote the following regarding him: “The well-disposed and devout ...
Don’t believe you have any virtue if it hasn’t caused you pain to acquire it. That’s a false virtue, since it was born out of comfort.
A miracle performed by Saint David on Evia and Elder Iakovos Tsalikis (Attested by Fr. Ioannis Niryianakis) At the hospital where I was working, a student was admitted with a high temperature. This student was called Stylianos Steryianos, was the son of Christos and Evangelia, and lived in Patisia. His parents were my spiritual children, very devout people and their son was a fine young man. Well, Stelios had a very high temperature for a very long period of time and nothing would lower it past 39.5 (103). He was undiagnosed and in the end the consultant, Professor Militadis Samartzis, together with his assistants, came to the conclusion that Stelios’ illness was, in all likelihood, some form of ‘macrocytic anaemia’. They used ...
The Scholastic Paradox The dualistic conception of reality as consisting of abstract, disembodied ideas existing in a domain separate from and superior to that of sensible objects and movements became the most characteristic feature of Western philosophical and by a curious confluence of events, the last vestiges of Orthodox Christianity were snuffed out in Western Europe at a time when the only alternative sources of intellectual influence there were nascent in Spain: the Moslem schools of philosophy which would arise in the Iberia of the Saracens. The great Aristotelian scholars of Islam — such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the royal librarian of Bokhara, and his Iberian born disciple Ibn Roshd (Averroës) — were still in the future, but the foundations for ...
Always remember that even the Son of God and all His friends entered His kingdom through thorns and crosses.
The inspiration for this brief study was a question about the sign of the cross in the signatures of bishops ‘as a symbol of episcopal authority’. The results of our research were unexpected. We found that, for many centuries, the cross was used not only in the signatures of hierarchs, emperors and officials, but also in those of all ordinary Christians, even in the cases of the illiterate, who, instead of a signature, made a ‘mark’, the cross, and someone else filled in the name. It’s clear from this that the cross in hieratic signatures has nothing to do with the authority of bishops, nor with any other human authority, but was simply part of the general usage of the cross in ...
Father Ilarion Felea (March 21, 1903 – September 18, 1961) How I love Your law, O Lord; It is my meditation all day long. (Psalm 118:97) The son of a priest from Hunedoara, Father Ilarion Felea was a profound theologian and a practitioner of incessant prayer. Through a life of hardship, he climbed the road to Tabor, where he found the bright and uncreated light of Christ. Father Ilarion held undergraduate degrees in theology from the University of Sibiu and in literature and philosophy from Cluj, and a Ph.D. in theology from Bucharest. He diligently put his talents to use as a teacher of dogmatics and apologetics, as a rector of the Theological Academy of Arad, and as a father confessor at the ...
Nikolaos Koulouris, Professor of the Law Department of the European University of Cyprus describes the following event. In 2012, Stelios Kreouzos, who’s a journalist with the Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation and a student of mine at the Law Department of the European University of Cyprus, was diagnosed as having fluid in his lungs and heart. He suffered for a year and a half, undergoing treatment in hospital for long periods. In the end, his doctor recommended that he undergo an operation to drain the fluid and put an end to his difficulties. The surgeon told the patient that there were considerable dangers involved in the operation. The day before the planned operation, the man went into hospital. He was understandably anxious about ...
The burden of sorrows that we suffer for the Lord is nothing other than the amount of glory which awaits us.
Blasphemy! A disgusting and terrible word. A word in which horror dwells and which expresses a revolt against God. It really is an expression of hatred towards God. It’s the excrescence of a vicious heart, full of evil, an indication of a character that has a wicked soul.
Life without effort isn’t effort, it’s something monstrous. It’s the duty of all of us to strive relentlessly, without ceasing, against the inertia of the flesh. May God preserve every Christian from this weakness.
But let’s leave all those under the old law and go on to Christ Himself, for Whom and through Whom all things were made and Who said just before the crucifixion that those who don’t take up their cross and follow Him aren’t worthy of Him. He also said that those who wished to follow Him should deny themselves and take up their cross. The commandment ordains that we have to deny the body and take up our cross. People who live close to God still have their body, but they aren’t particularly attached to it; they use it as a collaborator in necessary things, but when the time comes, they’re prepared to give it up, as they would possessions and ...
Criticize yourself and you’ll get rid of the tendency to criticize others.
The Cross of Christ was forecast and mystically predicted from of old and no-one has ever become reconciled to God without the power of the Cross. After the transgression of our forefathers in God’s paradise, through the tree, on the one hand sin spread and, on the other we died, having suffered the death of the soul- separation from God- before that of the body. God is spirit and goodness and virtue and our spirit is the image and likeness of His. If we’re to be renewed and reconciled to God in spirit, sin must be eradicated. This is Christ’s Cross. Many friends of God were in evidence before God and the law, even prior to the appearance of the Cross. David ...
