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Pastoral Message for the Nativity of our Lord of H.E. Metropolitan Silouan of Byblos, Botris and dependencies While we celebrate the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, I feel ashamed for not being able to find in me an answer to the question: “Where the Christ was to be born?” (Matthew 2: 4), however, I found it and I find it in your love and in your apostolic service, a service carried out with dedication, self-denial and sacrifice. I found it and I find it in the faces bathed by the tears of abandonment, of loneliness, of need, especially in a distant land, but who stand firm in goodness, in truth and in prayer. I found it and I also find it ...

The Sunday before Christmas is full of names. Both in the Epistle, but particularly in the Gospel reading, there are long lists presented of people who preceded the Lord Jesus, and who, despite the variety in their ways of life, are all characterized by the common denominator of the anticipation of the Saviour, Redeemer and Benefactor of humankind. And this expectation, which of all of them shared, had common ground on which it grew: faith. This is why today’s Epistle reading begins with the words ‘By faith’, proclaiming that which should dominate our progress towards Christmas. This is because you can’t meet Christ, can’t celebrate Christmas, without faith. At every feast of the Church, the war is cunningly fought, with subtle ...

The Gospel reading today is the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew and, of course, of the whole New Testament. At first sight, the first page of this Holy Book seems to be the most tedious and perhaps the most off-putting page in world literature, consisting as it does of a tiresome list of Hebrew names. But a more careful examination reveals that it contains the glad fore-tidings of our salvation since it’s the family tree of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. It records Christ’s ancestors by name, beginning with Abraham and ending with the righteous Joseph, the apparent ‘husband of Mary’, but whose mission (duty) it was, in reality, to protect the Ever-Virgin. ‘Glory to your condescension’ We have ...

When we sit and collect our thoughts and see that we’re nothing; when, in humility, we put ourselves to shame, then our tears in God begin to flow, sweetening the heart and igniting divine fire.

Before us once again is the central Feast in the calendar, Christmas, and all of us who believe in Christ as our Saviour, Redeemer and Benefactor celebrate with joy and gladness, knowing by experience the theological depth and fundamental importance of this Feast. Christ came into the world and affectionately called us to Himself. He came and became a human person in order to give us the opportunity to be ‘gods by grace’. He came and became as we are in order to give us hope we can become as He is. He came and gave us His love in order to teach us to love. He came and brought us His peace on earth in order to teach us to ...

In today’s Apostolic Reading, we heard with how much faith Abraham and his descendants obeyed the voice of God and with great certainty and patience they waited for the promise He had given them to be fulfilled. Abraham is called by God to leave relatives and his home country, everything, in order to move and relocate to an unknown land. God does not reveal to him which land he has destined him for. Instead, He simply tells him to “leave” and “I will show you the place where you shall be settled.” Abraham does not question God about this land he will be dwelling in, but shows complete trust in Him like a child holding tightly the hand of his father. ...

There’d be no need for words, if our life shone. There’d be no need for teachers, it we had works to show. Nobody would be an unbeliever, if we were true Christians.

Our modern civilization prides itself and boasts about the fact that it’s managed to improved the everyday lot of humankind. From our primitive ancestors, who strove to dominate the rest of creation in order to survive, we moved on to the great scientific and philosophical advances of antiquity (in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome and so on). A good deal later, we saw the transition to industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries and the advent of machines in our daily life. And now, in our own day, we’ve reached the so-called ‘scientific revolution’, where we’re trying, through computers, IT and robots, to study and configure things that, only a generation ago, would have been considered unthinkable or the stuff of ...

The Doxastiko at Lauds on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ in plagal tone four (Των νομικών διδαγμάτων ) by the late Thrasyvoulos Stanitsas, Archon Protopsaltis of the Great Church of Christ, performed by himself and his choir at the lectern. Recorded at St. Dimitri’s, Ambelokipi, on 21-12-1969. Text and video edited by Andreas Margetis

You gain two graces when your strive on the side of God. One is the comfort of the Holy Spirit, which fills the soul with joy, peace, delight and so forth. The other grace is what we call the experience of temptations. This grace of experience is indelible in the soul, in other words it never leaves us, because it’s united to the heart which was subjected to the experience of the temptations. The first grace, that of the Holy Spirit, sometimes comes and sometimes goes. At times of temptation, the second grace, that of experience, is more useful because it illumines the soul as to how to get through the temptations, since it has experience of them and so ...

Watch Fr Jonah’s from Taiwan sermon on the parable of the Great Dinner (Luke 14, 16-24).

We must assuredly pray for our enemies. If we don’t, it’s like throwing petrol onto a fire, making the flames more intense… Always thank Christ and Our Lady for everything, even your sorrows.

The way to deal with disability Elder, can a disability create an inferiority complex? That’s just nonsense. But this sometimes happens with the disabled. It happens because they have the wrong take on things. When they realize that a disability’s a blessing from God, they view it properly and are released from their sense of being disadvantaged. If a child’s disabled and hasn’t been helped to rejoice in its disability, then there’s some excuse for feeling disadvantaged. But if it grows up and the sense of inferiority remains, this means that it hasn’t grasped the deeper meaning of life. There was a little girl, nine years old, who got a tumour in her eye and the doctors removed the eye. The other children mocked her ...

The teaching of Holy Scripture is always useful, but especially so in cases when we lose loved ones.

Fasting in the Old Testament But let’s tie our words to history, examining the antiquity of the fast. It was passed down as a paternal bequest and thus preserved, from one generation to the next, until it came down to us, as our own possession. There was no wine in paradise, no animal sacrifices, no eating of meat. Wine came after the flood. After the flood ‘as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything’ (Gen. 9, 3). When perfection was rejected, enjoyment was allowed. An example of this lack of acquaintance with wine is Noah, who was unfamiliar with its use. It still hadn’t come into our life and our social interactions. Since he’d never seen its ...

When you love Christ, despite all the difficulties and the feelings you have concerning them, you also have the certainty that you’ve overcome death, because you’re in the communion of the love of Christ.

‘Having cast off the old self with its practices, and clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in the awareness of Him Who created it’ (Epistle reading, Col. 3, 4-11). On the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, the Church prepares us for the great feast of Christmas, which is approaching. It prepares us, not simply by referring to the commemoration of the Lord’s Holy Forefathers, nor only with the Gospel reading of the great banquet, but also with the Epistle reading. We hear Saint Paul calling upon us to put aside our former self and to put on a new one. It may be that some people wonder what this might mean and what connection it has with the ...

The distinction between the theology of the Orthodox East and the Latin/Protestant West is one of the major issues in theological studies. Careful examination of the path followed by the West after the schism of 1054 reveals a clear, constant deviation from the Gospel, Apostolic and Patristic view of the fundamental issues of faith and salvation. Here we shall be concerned with the matter of soteriology. As regards our salvation, there’s a clear antithesis between Orthodox and Western theology. The two views on this basic issue differ as regards the way in which the human person is seen: either as dynamic, endowed with freedom and co-responsible for its sanctification as an entity (Orthodox East); or a victim of fate which arises ...

Through fasting we return to paradise 4. Because we didn’t fast, we left paradise. Let us fast, then, so that we can return to it. Look at Lazarus, who entered paradise through fasting (Luke 16, 20-31). Don’t imitate Eve’s disobedience, don’t accept the serpent again as a symbol, urging us to eat and take care of the body. If people are ill, we don’t prescribe a variety of foods, but fasting and diet. And don’t make the excuse that you’re ill or weak. Because you aren’t telling me your justifications, but Him Who knows. Tell me, you can’t fast? You can, though, stuff yourself your whole life long and wear away your body with the weight of food. Yet I know that ...

Death’s right at our back. But we imagine it’s behind the mountains and don’t even think about it.