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The greatest benefit which God has granted our fallen nature is none other than repentance. Without it no man would ever secure his salvation no matter how perfect God’s plan to save the world is. Because man’s “every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood”( Genesis 9:21). Given that our inclination towards sin is therefore natural, no one is able to remain without sin, “even if his life is only one day”. Repentance is dual in essence and both of its forms are beneficial to our lives. Its initial stage takes the form of regret for our past sins, followed by the rectification of the wrong deed which brought about the sin.             According to the spiritual judgement of our ...

Today, 30 January, we celebrate the three hierarchs. There are lots of hierarch saints whom we honour throughout the year in the Church, but this is a feast of three together, although they also each have their own day on which we commemorate them. They’re Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. All three were important Fathers of the Church who strove to clarify and crystallize Dogma, for the unity of the faith and the needs of philosophy and letters. From about 1100, it’s been the custom to hold a common feast for them. This came about because of friction between Christians regarding the importance of each of them separately. The common service was written by Ioannis Mavropous, ...

Don’t sit during the Divine Liturgy. Don’t let your mind wander. While you’re in church take the decision to devote all your time to prayer.

Today’s Gospel is about a Canaanite woman. You heard how she called out to the Lord, followed Him, and was ignored by Him. His disciples were at a loss to understand why He didn’t either help her or tell her to go away, instead of leaving her to plead. He explained His silence: ‘I came only for Israel, not for foreigners, for the Gentiles, such as this Canaanite’. But the woman persisted, approached Him and asked for His assistance. The Lord’s answer was a lesson to her, to His disciples and to all of us ever since then. He said harshly: ‘It’s not right to take the food out of the mouth of your children and to give it to ...

In the 11th Century, at the time of Emperor Alexios Komninos, the common feast of the three great Fathers of the Church, Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople and Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia was established to honour their supreme contribution to education, their unshakeable and zealous faith in God and their incomparable pastoral and  charitable activities. The Holy Three Hierarchs, athonite manuscript, 12th Century Since then, it has been customary for the feast of the Three Hierarchs to be associated with education and Greek letters, even through the time of the Turkish occupation, when it assumed a national character. It appeared to the Turks to be a religious feast and a ...

An Elder who enjoys spiritual riches, gives them to his disciple and the disciple receives this divine legacy with the fear of God, in order to preserve it and pass it on in turn to those who are following.

When the semester begins, I can tell that my students have trouble going for a few hours without checking their phones to see who’s texted them or posted on their Facebook status.  In fact, I now put on my syllabus that they cannot text while class is in session. One would think this to be common sense, but in fact, if I don’t state this up front, they will try to text. Some of them have become so skilled, they can text from the inside depths of their pockets. Their desperate attempt at feeding their addictions of texting and checking Facebook status is a symptom of a much larger problem in our society. Never before in the history of civilization, have ...

It would be a mistake to believe that such a wide-ranging subject could be exhausted in an address of only a few lines. It’s a theme on which many of the sources of our Holy Tradition have taken a position, which, indeed, often illumine it from a variety of angles. It’s an issue which, historically, has occupied a prominent position in the dialogue between religion and politics. In various European societies and for different reasons, the question has often been posed in the 20th and 21st ¬centuries: why should the Church have property? The next question which readily springs to mind might be formulated as: does the Church have the right, morally and theologically, to own and manage financial wealth ...

If a humanist claims to be doing good works, independently of Christ, we can be sure that the works are rotten to the core, either from vainglory or concealed egotism.

For thousands of years we have known that exercise is a key to a healthy body, but only recently, and until now anecdotally, have scientists considered that exercise enhances existing mental acuity.  This question spawned a new study at the University of South Carolina during which scientists compared mice who ran for an hour each day with mice who remained sedentary.  The results have important implications for neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. While earlier studies demonstrate that exercise prompts neurogenesis, creation of new brain cells, nothing to date has considered the effect of exercise on existing neural networks.  The scientists at South Carolina wanted to see if exercise will actually make an existing brain better and more healthy. Exercise’s ability ...

Bishop Ignatius was a prominent Orthodox spiritual writer of nineteenth century Russia. Born of a noble family, he completed an education in engineering in St. Petersburg under the patronage of Emperor Nicholas I and was destined for a brilliant worldly career. Later, as an officer, he chose instead to follow the spiritual yearning of his soul and receive the monastic tonsure, as a disciple of the famous Elder Lev of Optina Hermitage. Well grounded in the ascetic writings of the Holy Fathers, Bishop Ignatius captured the spirit of the ancient patristic and monastic traditions of the Orthodox Church in his own works, written in the most eloquent language of the time. His best known work, The Arena (An Offering to ...

A friend of mine met Helen La Kelly Hunt at a conference and was impressed with some of her ideas. He asked me to read and comment on her book, Faith and Feminism: A Holy Alliance, Five Spirited and Spiritual Women Throughout History. For what it is worth, here are my thoughts… As much as I appreciate what Helen is trying to do in Faith and Feminism, the book presents some serious problems for me.  On the one hand, in a secular context, any acknowledgement of faith, no matter how vaguely presented, is a good thing.  And I particularly found her examples of St. Teresa of Avila, Sojourner Truth and Dorothy Day inspiring.  What Helen seems to miss, however, is that these ...

Why is it that when it comes to drinking nectar, bees make it sweeter than butterflies or hummingbirds?  It has to do with whether the insect dips a tongue into the nector or sucks the liquid up. Sweet nectar is naturally thicker and apparently the bees’ dainty approach is the best for harvesting the most viscous of nectars, is also the most efficient according to American mathematicians who published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. It’s a speed thing that bees have developed over the 150 million years that they have been harvesting nectar and making honey. According to Dr. Wonjung Kim, the lead author of the report, “Nectar feeders, such as ...

Beneficiaries should remember the good deeds done to them, but benefactors should forget them.

PROLOGUE “And God said: Let us make man in our image and in our likeness”. (Gen1,26) Man has been looking for the truth and for the path which leads to it ever since the ancient times.. The ancient, eminent Greek Philosopher, Plato, stresses in his writings that man has to become similar to God: “That is why we should make all haste to take flight from this world to the other, and that means becoming like the divine so far as we can, and that again is to become righteous or just with the help of wisdom”.(Plato, Theaetetus (Θεαίτητος) 176a—e (ca. 395 BCE)(transl. after F.M. Cornford).             However, this happened through the advent of the Lord Word ( Logos) on earth, since He “The ...

Jesus, Son of God, have mercy upon me. Be my consolation in my sorrows.

It seems as if every other year there is a new manifesto about how to be a better parent: tiger mothers, helicopter fathers and Facebook parents have all hit the shelves.  There is a constant race to do more with less. Enter the New Caledonian crow. When it comes to tool use, the crows inventiveness, complexity and sophistication stands well above the other tool using animals such as the bottle nose dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants and even the many armed octopi.  Using more than sticks, stones and shells, crows seem to have no issue with compound tools with laboratory videos displaying birds doing things which initially appear artificial.  The most famous example is a bird named Betty at Oxford University who selects a ...

Your attitude lights a fire within me. It’s as if you’re heaping coals on what’s within me.

One of the most wonderful stories in the Lavsaïko describes the life of a monk who abandoned his monastery and went to the port of Alexandria to work as a dock labourer. Given the fact that it was a port, there was no shortage of prostitutes. The ‘monk’ worked all day, and in the evening he spent all he’d earned, buying the company of a harlot for the whole night. He was the shame of all the Christians in the city and a scandal for the whole Church. Years passed and despite appeals and advice, he continued with his sinful way of life. Then death came, as it does to all of us, and released him, as if it were ...

The great teachers of the Church and of the Greek nation, Makarios Notaras, Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain and Athanasios of Paros, who lived and worked in the 18th and early 19th centuries, form a new trinity of shining lights of the Church, like the three Fathers of the Church in the past, relatively speaking of course and bearing in mind the historical circumstances they lived through with their similarities and differences. To these three must be added Neophytos of Kafsokalyvia, who started the movement, although he was not as important or active as the other three would later become, thus earning their place in the Communion of Saints. They were nicknamed Kollyvades by their opponents on the Holy Mountain ...