In English

One of the world’s oldest churches was purchased by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the ecclesiastical center of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. The Byzantine Basmelekler Church (also known as the Taksiyarhon Church) was purchased on September 10. The Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported that the Başmelekler Church was built in 789 by Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos. The church, which is located in Trilye, a seaside village near Istanbul in Turkey, was put up for sale by owner Teksen Construction for $400,000 back in 2007. According to Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis who facilitated the details of the purchase, the Istanbul-based Patriarchate completed the purchase of the church, now the Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and that it is no longer derelict. "There ...

We shouldn’t regard with surprise and meanness of spirit the various sins, weaknesses and passions of other people. All of these are old enticements, they’re weaknesses of the whole human race. We can’t rid ourselves of them by ourselves. What we need is a savior, not an intercessor, not an angel, but the Incarnate Lord Himself.

There has been some debate, even at local school-board levels, about the theory of evolution vs. creationism and the more recently offered idea of “intelligent design.” Now Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn has weighed in with an op-ed piece in the New York Times (July 7), claiming that Christians cannot believe that life’s origins can be found in natural selection’s chancy, random stabs at development. Some kind of intelligent design must lie behind it, and reason can lead to a rational belief in an intelligent designer. This has been seized on as a retreat from John Paul II’s endorsement of the theory of evolution as real science, a sign that the new papacy will retreat from serious science into the intelligent design ...

Beyond the checking of prevailing theories, which is inherent in the research process, and the required investigation of all alternative proposals, which will provide the answers sought for, it’s difficult to avoid the observation that one point which encourages the need for a recourse to forms which by-pass the established cosmological model of the Big Bang, has to do precisely with its close relationship with the religious version of the creation of the world. Indeed, acceptance of the beginning of the universe from a particular time is more in tune with the Biblical (if not other) narratives concerning the beginning of the world through divine will and intervention. This is where things take a different turn. On the one hand, there’s ...

Regret nothing other than your time. If you spend money, you can always make more. But if you waste your time, you won’t get it back. Because we’ve been granted very little time in this present life.

Reality at all levels and in every dimension is a mystery. I will not suggest that the world which we experience with our own senses is not reality; nevertheless, what we perceive is the surface of reality, which is penetrated only with great spiritual effort over time. The more deeply we penetrate into this perceived reality, the greater the mystery becomes. Creation icon       It is my proposal to demonstrate that almost all the apparent conflicts between science and faith arise from models of reality and not from reality itself. The resolution to such conflict may arise from a re-examination of the models of reality we hold which are based on obsolete information. The Church fathers should perhaps be given credit ...

In traditional societies, the father figure was always dominant. In Christian theology, the person of the Father is the very principle of the Godhead, the Begetter of the Son outside of time, and of the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from Him, also outside of time. The Father pours out the fulness of divinity onto the Son. Only the Son knows the essence of the Father and makes Him known to us through His incarnate dispensation. Human paternity is an image of divine Fatherhood. Christ Himself makes this point when He says: ‘What father among you, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish would give him a snake instead of ...

Those people are good who have achieved perfection in virtue. They always want what is good, they render good for evil. They always try to do well, stressing good hope, and bear with fortitude whatever God sends them. God supports those who are good and shelters them all the days of their life.

Above all pray without ceasing and thank God for everything that happens to you (Rule of Anthony the Great)  Anthony the Great is a realist. His rules or canons aren’t some formula he’s found and thrown to us. Each of them has something unique concerning the life of the monk and, if one is broken, everything comes crashing down. He says we have to pray without ceasing but at the same time thank God for everything that happens to us. He uses a coordinating conjunction because these two  things can’t be separated, they go together. We thank God for pleasant things, but even more for something else: in life, matters don’t always turn out as we would want them to. We pray, ...

Time flies, the years roll by and we come ever closer to eternity. We see it, but we’re lost in a trance, until- and I’ll be the first- we end up in hell. God, Who redeemed the human race from enslavement to the enemy, release us from our future condemnation, when You come to judge the world, rendering to each according to his or her works.

Proskynetaria is the name given to manuscripts containing descriptions of the monuments of Palestine, especially the Christian ones. They have many points of similarity with modern travel books or tourist guides to archaeological sites. The name derives from the word Proskynetarion with which the majority of them begin, and is, of course, connected both with the content of the books and with their readers, who were usually vis­iting this exceptional part of the world as pilgrims. Many Greek manuscripts of this type are preserved in libraries and collections both in Greece and abroad-an indication of their great popularity, particularly in the period following the rail of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. They date, in fact, from the 16th, 17th ...

Mallards ducklings with mother “Let there be banished hence dejection born of passions, and thoughts that rise like tempests. In this wise shall the springtime of faith sprout up and blossom forth.” (Matins Aposticha, Thursday of Thomas week) Here we are in the springtime. Everything is blooming--the time of budding has already past. And yet we can miss it: not merely the season of the year, but the season of the Church. Thoughts besiege us. Dejection is always near. The passions don’t go away. But where we put our focus makes all the difference. I can sit here all day looking at the glowing screen before me and never walk outside to smell the blossoms and see the new life pushing out ...

We’re very odd creatures and often wonder about all the mysteries that surround us. We know a few things about the world, but in reality, not very much at all. We’re a mystery even to ourselves. ‘Who are we and what are we?’ we ask ourselves. The time span of our lives is very short but even in this brief period we’re given lots of opportunities to become perfect in good things and to turn to the absolute Good.

Saint Justin Popović, (14 June) The holy and God-bearing Father Justin the New, from the Monastery of Ćelije (the Holy Archangels), was born on 25 March 1894, on the morning of the Annunciation, in the town of Vranje in Southern Serbia. His father was a priest called Spyridon and his mother was Anastasia. At baptism he was given the name Blagoje . His father came from a long line of clerics which had given the Orthodox Church at least seven priests, as can be seen from his surname ‘Popović’, meaning ‘son of a priest’. Even as a child he often went with his parents to visit the nearby Monastery of Saint Prohor at Pčinja, where, in 1929, he witnessed the cure ...

We’ve come to associate the great Elders almost exclusively with monasteries, and particularly with the Holy Mountain, even though great figures among the clergy, preachers or even ordinary parish priests are often men of virtue, a real light for their flock. I shall attempt here to sketch an outline of the figure of one such, and will refer to some of his teachings. I should first explain that the priest in question came to our area to serve, although he was originally from somewhere else. He told me that he’d first been a preacher at a very popular place of pilgrimage, which was visited by many people and, naturally, there was the prospect that he’d gradually be promoted to the priesthood. ...

Struggle, prayer, faith. Let us have humility, modesty, honorability. The power of God is very great. Prayer always does good. Whatever we do, let’s do it for God and not out of vanity. God accepts even a little fasting, provided it’s undertaken humbly.

In the ‘studium generale’ of Paris, professors of the Old and New Testament also taught homiletics to monks and the order of ‘regolari’ . Peter the Chanter distinguishes three ways of approaching Scripture: lectio, disputatio, praedicatio (reading, disputation, preaching) . The audience consisted of bishops, clerics, monks and students. The most important teachers were Peter Abelard and Peter the Lombard. They developed an allegorical interpretation and branched off into more general subjects. They cultivated the Scholastic philosophy in their preaching, which was in the style of the sermo modernus , or theme-based, in contrast to the homilia antiqua . It was based on a ‘theme’, which was brief, complete and clear. It had recourse to the Scriptures or ...