We aren’t concerned with our own faults and sins, but we find plenty of transgressions in others. We fish them out and when we do so we make sure everyone hears about them. It’s become a bad habit now that, as soon as we hear something bad about somebody else, we go and spread it abroad. Our tongue burns and we hurry away to tell other people what we’ve heard and seen.
The issue of freedom is of great importance in the Orthodox view of humankind. According to this, people are made to be free. Freedom is the result of the fact that we’re made in the image of God and have the opportunity and potential to use our independent power to reach the state of being in the likeness of God. This isn’t an innate potential, but is effected through grace, through our encounter with God. Freedom in Orthodox theology isn’t a free decision made from among a variety of choices. Real freedom is the transcendence of choices, of necessity, of corruptibility and sin. We experience real freedom when we’re removed from the passions that bind and restrict us. Our ontological freedom ...
If your prayer isn’t fervent, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t pleasing to God. Sometimes such prayer may be thought of as sacrifice, if you humble and censure yourself before God.
Because of so much reading, people today have ended up as tape-recorders and their cassettes are full of superfluous things. But according to Abba Isaac, teaching without action is a ‘repository of shame’. You see, lots of people who are interested in sports read sports magazines or newspapers and just sit there like lemons, but they admire the athletes. ‘He’s amazing’, they say. ‘Well done’. But they don’t break a sweat themselves or shed a couple of pounds in weight. They read and read about sports and lie around. That’s not doing them any good. All they have is the pleasure of reading. Some secular-minded people read newspapers, others read a romance or an adventure, or go to the stadium to watch ...
Let’s take communion with humble thoughts. We should listen to and concentrate on the words of the Service of Holy Communion and we should say: ‘Christ, I’m such a sinner and no-one else is’.
The Apostle Paul, with this reading from his Epistle to the Galatians, seeks to educate those who still do not realize that the Mosaic Law has a temporary and not eternal value. To illustrate this, he uses the example of the two sons of Abraham. The first child born from Hagar the slave symbolizes the current city of Jerusalem, which is undermined by her and her children. The other child of Abraham, born from the free woman Sarah, according to the promise of God, symbolizes the heavenly Jerusalem. The heavenly Jerusalem is free, and is the mother of all of us Christians. Since she is free from the Mosaic Law, this means that her children also are free from the ...
Jesus taught in the synagogues on Saturdays. The reason behind His choice of day was that, for the Jews, Saturday was a day of rest and worship of God. Any work was completely forbidden. Even the distance one could walk was strictly defined. So on this day, everyone gathered in the synagogues to hear the word of God. One Saturday, in one of the synagogues, there was among the congregation a woman whose body was so bent that she couldn’t fully straighten herself up. Because of her infirmity, it had been eighteen years since she been able to look at other people from a natural position. A pitiable condition. Her life was one of continuous suffering. She had, however, hope ...
Through unflinching repentance, knowledge of the self leads to knowledge of God.
There’s no easy or definitive answer to this question, nor any anxiety over it if you trust in God’s plan. It is, however, a matter on which theologians have set out their opinions, though we’re not in a position to accept any particular one of these absolutely. However that may be, it’s certainly not necessary to approach the issue by involving nationalistic elements, anti-Semitic tendencies and the like. If we start at the beginning, as events are described in Genesis, God creates Adam, that is the human person. After the flood and other Biblical events, He chooses a people to whom He will give His Law and from whom will be born His Son. That this people is Israel is beyond ...
We must address the causes of what’s wrong with a candid mind, rather than dealing with the results with charity.
Rev. Father Nicolas along with the Parish Council of Saint Spyridon Church invite you to join them for the Feast of Saint Spyridon The Wonderworker Bishop of Tremithus, patron Saint of the St. Spyridon community of Washington Heights. Tuesday, December 11, 2018 7:00 pm Great Vespers celebrated by His Eminence, Archbishop Demetrios, Geron of America Immediately following Services, The Ladies Philoptochos will be offering refreshments at the St. Spyridon Church Banquet Hall. Wednesday, December 12, 2018 9:00 am Orthos – 10:15 am Divine Liturgy Hierarchal Divine Liturgy presided by His Grace, Bishop Apostolos of Medeia Immediately following services, The Ladies Philoptochos will be hosting a luncheon at the St. Spyridon Church Banquet Hall. 124 Wadsworth Avenue – New York, NY 10033 Donation $30.00 Please make your reservations by calling: Elizabeth Katechis 718-514-4853 Maria Konnari 212-928-0343 Complimentary Valet Parking ...
Some monks from the skete set out to visit Abba Anthony. So they got on a boat and there found another Elder who also wanted to go the same place. The brothers didn’t know him, though. Sitting amidships, they talked about the sayings of the Fathers, phrases from Scripture or, in between, discussed their handicrafts. The Elder remained completely silent. When they got to the mooring-stage, they noticed that the Elder was also making his way to Abba Anthony. When they arrived the latter said to the monks: ‘You found good company in this Elder’. To the Elder he said: ‘You had good brethren with you, Abba’. ‘Good they are, certainly’, he replied, ‘but their yard doesn’t have a gate. ...
If all we had were a body, we’d still do lots of things. But within this mortal body dwells an immortal soul. So we should take care of our soul, given that it’s immortal.
Two days following the Feast of St. Andrew the First-Called Apostle and the Patronal Feast of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, our Holy Metropolis is pleased to publish Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Abbess of Chrysopigi, and the Love of the Church. This interview is timely, as well, because today our Holy Church celebrates the memory of St. Porphyrios Kafsokalyvitis who had a unique and special bond with the Holy Patriarchal and Stavropegic Monastery of Chrysopigi in Chania of Crete. Mother Theoxeni is the Abbess of Chrysopigi. She first visited Canada and our Metropolis in March 2015 during Great Lent; with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Sotirios, she delivered a keynote spiritual address on the life of St. Porphyrios. Mother Abbess ...
Sometimes, people think they’re praying fervently, but, in their heart, their prayer doesn’t bear fruit, that is the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit. How is this? Because they’re praying without having genuinely repented of the sins they committed in the day that’s passed.
They say about blessed Anthony, that he never thought of doing anything that was of more benefit to himself than to others. This was because he believed that any gain for other people was the best thing he could do. And again, they said about Abba Agathon that he used to say: ‘I wanted to find a leper so that I could take his body and give him mine’. Do you see what perfect love that is? And if he had something useful he couldn’t rest until he’d passed it on to someone else. He once had a chisel for cutting into rocks. Another monk came to see him and, since he saw it and liked it, Abba Agathon wouldn’t let him ...
Conscious, calculated or artificial humility is a mix of numerous and varied stratagems through which human pride attempts to attire itself in the glory of humility in the eyes of the blind world, the world which clings to its own things, the world which fawns on faults when these are concealed behind the mask of virtue, the world that hates virtue when this appears before it in its divine simplicity and its unwavering submission to the Gospels.
The prophet Habakkuk , one of the twelve minor prophets of the Old Testament, lived in Palestine in the 7th century B.C., at a time before the southern kingdom was conquered by the Babylonians (587) and lost its religious centre, the Temple of Solomon. In his book, he paints a picture of social injustice as a result of religious decadence and moral turpitude. He gives the causes of the suffering of the people and attempts to rally them. He goes up into the watch-tower, where he sees God, and receives the commandment to record this theophany in the form of a hymn. He expresses his complaint to God that those who love Him and are righteous suffer hardships and are oppressed ...
When people fall ill, they go to the doctor to have tests done, to diagnose their illness and to be given the appropriate medication so that they’ll recover. But the greatest sickness is sin. And the remedy is confession and repentance. We have to attend church and live within the grace of God.
An excerpt from Put Bogopoznanja (The Path to Knowledge of God) Only the nous that has been cleansed of the passions and the darkness of sin and has been sanctified by the Grace of the Holy Spirit is in a position to sense and conceive of and love that which is holy, to live from it and for it. Only those who are pure can come to know the only Pure One. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’. First they’ll see Him in the face of His saints, because ‘God is at rest in the saints’. They will also see there every divine gift which has been placed within every one of God’s creations. The human conscience ...
