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Once again, the divine drama has come to an end and the Lord’s Resurrection has become the start of a new life, the unending and eternal life in Paradise, the life for which we were created. The Lord ascended the Cross and spread His arms to embrace the whole of humanity, in order to give us the opportunity and prospect of entering Paradise. Our Risen Lord now calls upon His siblings, friends and companions. He promises that He will always, eternally, be with us. The Risen Lord’s usual forms of greeting are ‘Peace to you’ and ‘Rejoice’, two expressions which are very much to the point these days and very necessary. When our daily life is inundated with stress and turmoil ...

People can be saved if they have a humble outlook. But without this, their ticket won’t allow them to get into paradise, which is full of humble people. Humility should be the background to your life, as it should be for everyone who lives the life in Christ.

The whole series can be read here: The Theology of Gender Canon 9 of St. Basil ascribes the practice of the Church not to allow the woman to separate from her husband if he commits adultery to the established social custom (συνήθεια). This word is also used by him in other canons in contrast to the word “ἀκρίβεια” (accuracy). Both words are used in several canons, and St. Nikodemos gives their exact meaning in his commentaries on canon 12 of the First Ecumenical Council and 102 of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. According to his interpretation, «By the word custom is meant the term of years and various penalties…By accuracy, on the other hand, is meant the eventuality whereby sinners add to these ...

Doubting Thomas Doubt gets a bad rap in the New Testament.  James says that one who doubts is a double-minded person who is unstable in everything he or she does, and the writer of Hebrews warns, “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” I’d like to suggest, however, that there are different kinds of doubt.  Or to put it more clearly, a lot of different sorts of inner experiences may be labeled as doubt or unbelief. One experience that can be called doubt is what James and the writer of Hebrews talk about.  This is a questioning in one’s mind that causes one to draw back from God, to draw ...

Morning is such a miracle. I take it for granted on most days. There is no guarantee that I will rise. Or that you will for that matter.  It is God’s mercy that allows my bones to creak and groan and rise, like a crumpled, crooked marionette , pulled to life and standing by those invisible strings.  My mind—forgettaboutit.  It takes 2 ½ cups of strong coffee and 45 minutes to fully come to life. Morning, like breath, is so important, yet so underappreciated.  You take it for granted until you stop breathing or you can’t rise from the bed.  So much of what we believe comes from our own energy is really borrowed energy. It is a wonder that the ...

Everything’s changing all the time. Nothing remains static. We perfect ourselves, either in what’s good or what’s bad. We have to learn to live the life of the heavens. And that’s not easy, since today we’ve made a life of opposition and rebellion. We haven’t learned to subject ourselves to the will of God. Instead we want our own will to be done, so there’s no place in paradise for us.

Doubting Thomas In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit! This Sunday, dear brothers and sisters, is called Antipascha or Thomas Sunday. There is something very profound in the fact that on this Sunday following Bright Week, a time when we have simply rejoiced and sought respite from our Lenten labors, the Church again sternly reminds us – I emphasize, sternly – reminds us of the need for the struggle of faith. We also remember the Holy Apostle Thomas. Unfortunately, the memory of this Holy Apostle, which has been preserved through the centuries by the Church, has not always conveyed to us the Church’s understanding of the meaning of his confession of faith in ...

The Doubt of St. Thomas John 20:24-25 But Thomas, (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe’. 1. Just as a casual and random belief is the result of an unduly relaxed frame of mind, so excessive curiosity and fastidiousness is the mark of a plodding brain. This is where Thomas was at fault. He didn’t believe the other Apostles when they said, ‘We have seen the Lord’; not so ...

Forgiveness is the effort and exercise of a love that is, in the end, transformed into joy and leads to salvation, as Saint Païsios the Athonite notes: ‘There’s no greater joy than that which you feel when you’re hard done by. I wish everybody would treat me unfairly. I can honestly tell you that the sweetest spiritual joy I’ve ever felt was through being badly treated’. We often hear people say: ‘It’s not possible, I can’t forget the harm that so-and-so’s done me’. Many people think that ‘I forgive’, means that ‘I justify what’s been done to me’. Or even more, they equate forgiveness with a lack of self-respect on the part of the injured party. But forgiveness has nothing to ...

How we react Every time we have any feast in our Church, we celebrate the mystery of our salvation. The purpose of the feast is to glorify God for His boundless mercy, His goodness and His interest in us. We see this love of His from a different point of view at every feast. But all the feasts are aimed at opening our minds and hearts so that we can understand the great mystery of veneration and of our salvation. Today the event which we’re celebrating and observing is something that makes us people really angry and annoyed. Why? Because usually we don’t feel like showing understanding (not to say care, goodness and kindness, but not even understanding) when we hear people objecting to ...

But it’s obvious that for a marriage to be manifestation and a revelation of the marriage between Christ and the Church, the couple must continually overcome the sinful person they have hidden within themselves, must crucify their egotism and passions and achieve the holy virtue of humility in all its profundity. From this point of view, marriage is participation in the death and resurrection of Christ.

Irony is probably too much to ask of youth. If I can remember myself in my college years, the most I could muster was sarcasm. Irony required more insight. There is a deep need for the appreciation of irony to sustain a Christian life. Our world is filled with contradiction. Hypocrisy is ever present even within our own heart. The failures of Church and those who are most closely associated with it can easily crush the hearts of the young and break the hearts of those who are older. I can think of at least two times in my life that the failures of Church, or its hierarchy, drove me from the ranks of the Church, or what passed for Church at ...

Let’s buy righteousness- through which we become familiar with God- with devotion, and let’s prefer virtue over wickedness and not open the door of our soul to the devil. And let’s give the body as much ‘food and clothing’ as it needs to live, while nourishing the soul with prayers and tears and study of the sacred scriptures and books.

Brethren and Fathers, Easter is now here, the festive day that brings us joy and gladness, the day of Christ’s Resurrection, which comes round once a year, or, to put it better, occurs daily and perpetually in those who know its mystery, filling our hearts with joy and inexpressible elation. At the same time, it marks the end of the efforts of the holy fast, or, better, has perfected our souls and has, at the same time, comforted them. So, as you see, it has summoned all the faithful to rest and thanksgiving. Let us therefore give thanks to the Lord, Who has helped us chart the sea of the fast and has brought us, full of joy, to the haven ...

The whole series can be read here: The Theology of Gender St. Basil’s canons on the issue of divorce and remarriage seem at first sight to treat man and woman differently, making it difficult for modern women to accept them. Nevertheless, careful examination of his general approach reveals his profound appreciation of both genders and his respect for the role of women. Wikimedia Commons St. Basil’s 9th canon states the following: “The decision of the Lord with respect to the order of the sense applies equally to men and women so far as concerns the prohibition of divorce except on ground of fornication. Custom, however, will not have it thus, but in regard to women it insists upon exactitude and stringency, seeing that ...

On the afternoon of Great Wednesday, a great missionary figure of our time, Archimandrite Gavrilo Vučković, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Lepavina, in Croatia, rendered his soul to the Lord, at the age of 73. The funeral service was conducted on Monday of Bright Week, April 17, the main clergymen in attendance being His Eminence Porfirije, Metropolitan of Zagreb and Bishop Jovan of Pakrac. A large crowd of believers accompanied their departed spiritual guide to the cemetery in Lepaniva, to the north of the monastery, singing ‘Christ has risen’, the hymn of joy and of the victory over death. The late archimandrite was widely known for his profound spirituality and also for his missionary activity, which, apart from anything else, he ...

Ignorance is really terrible and is the cause of much of the evil among us.

It’s hardly surprising that the message of the Resurrection of Christ has raised a whole host of doubts and questions. Objections were registered immediately after the occurrence of the supernatural event on which the whole structure of the Christian Church is founded. For the Jews of Biblical Jerusalem, it was a blasphemy of the apostate Christians to claim that a crucified criminal could ever be the Messiah. For the cultured Greeks, who already believed in the immortality of the soul, the very thought of a resurrected body was repulsive. Even for the Gnostic Christians of the 2nd century, the preferred view was that Christ was an immortal spirit who shuffled off his mortal coil. It’s true that Jesus’ Resurrection is a ...

Jesus again sets the Law of the Old Testament in its true interpretational framework and at the same time urges us to emerge from the shadow of the Law into the Light of the Grace of God, which is love. By transcending the law of retaliation, Christianity promotes the principle of love towards one’s neighbour, of pardon, of returning good for evil, of forgiveness. As Saint Mark the Ascetic says: ‘those who believe in Christ, Who speaks of responding, suffer all injustice willingly, depending on their faith’. And let’s not forget what Alexander Pope wrote in the 18th century: ‘To err is human, to forgive divine’. Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness and love isn’t merely some moral theory, but is realized and ...