In English

And so, thus it was that those blessed and hallowed monastics of Celtic lands modeled forth certain principles that we can still see, study, understand, and imitate today. The Celts were masters of Christian simplicity. Nowadays there is a movement in our culture to recover some simple basics, but the model is often that of the Quakers or the Shakers or the Amish. Perhaps that's because those groups are easier and more attractive to imitate; I don't know. For the Celts, however, simplicity wasn't so much a question of externals-like furniture, architecture, and so forth. It was something internal, and it was founded upon the Lord's Prayer-in particular the phrase, "Thy will be done", as we find in the later commentaries ...

The soul of a Christian should be purer than the rays of the sun.

Head Nebula The recent reports of Mother Teresa’s long dark night made more news than they should have, I thought. Then I had second thoughts: this might lead to a serious discussion of faith and certainty, which are not at all the same thing. There were a few thoughtful letters to the editor, and Christopher Hitchens’s tin-eared Newsweek review, and not much more. But certain themes kept cropping up, and they matter in the debate between serious believers and serious nonbelievers. I stress the word “serious” here because the more public debates about belief (the ones involving the religious beliefs of politicians, creationism vs. evolution, etc.) are not serious at all. But the debate about faith and certainty does matter, ...

In Praise of those who have Love in their Hearts Let us therefore follow one and the same path, Christ's commandments, which elevate us to heaven and to God. Even though the word shows us many paths and many ways for people to reach the kingdom of heaven, these paths are not, in fact, many, but one, though they’re divided into many, according to each person’s ability and disposition. While we may begin from many and varied works and actions, just as travellers depart from different places and many cities, the destination we are attempting to reach is the same: the kingdom of heaven. The actions and ways of godly men must be understood as spiritual virtues. Those who begin to walk ...

Certainly, the Gospel of Christ was not received of man and is not after man. He Himself assures us that ‘without Him’ no good work is able to be completed. This is why He says imperatively to Nicodemus that he must be ‘born again’ from above, in order to understand His mysteries, to enact His commandments and thus to become ‘fit for the Kingdom of God’. In our given situation we know that nothing is able to help us to fulfil our great purpose, which is to become children of paradise, neither the vanity of the world that surrounds us, nor the corruptible achievements of its created intelligence. Neither do we have enough light in our mind and strength in our ...

On October 14, 1066, at Hastings in southern England, the last Orthodox king of England, Harold II, died in battle against Duke William of Normandy. William had been blessed to invade England by the Roman Pope Alexander in order to bring the English Church into full communion with the “reformed Papacy”; for since 1052 the English archbishop had been... banned and denounced as schismatic by Rome. The result of the Norman Conquest was that the English Church and people were integrated into the heretical “Church” of Western, Papist Christendom, which had just, in 1054, fallen away from communion with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, represented by the Eastern Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Thus ended the ...

Since it’s impossible for us humans to straighten things out, God will intervene. His intervention will be obvious as well. Then people will want to learn about God, Good times will come. Then you’ll see democracy and equality.

One afternoon, when he was on his way to the Holy Monastery of Stavronikita, he was enraptured by the image of a rusty cross on a rock, which was being washed by the waves. Hill, who was with him and had known him for about twenty years, saw him staring at the cross, stunned. After a while, Chatwin said: “There must be a God”. “He didn’t talk about it but I knew by his whole bearing it had affected him. I think it hit him like a bomb”, Hill recalls. (His biographer, Nicholas Shakespeare later wanted to visit the Holy Mountain to see what it was about this cross that had moved Chatwin so much. On the eve of his ...

"Other monks and nuns lived out their days alone....in small wood-and-mud huts; they kept a cow or two, and accepted gladly the gifts of an occasional loaf or basket of vegetables from local farmers. The desire for a solitary life and time to spend simply yearning for God...must have drifted through the hearts of even the busiest abbot in the most bustling monastery." (Bitel, op.cit.) Monastic life was seen as an absolutely essential part of Christian life-the norm for all Christian life, not the exception-, and monks and nuns, hermits and hermitesses were the great heroes of the common people, who saw them, as St. Guthlac put it, as "tried warriors who serve a king who never withholds the reward from those ...

Avarice The passion for the acquisition of wealth, said the Fathers, is not part of human nature and is due to a lack of faith and people’s sick way of thinking. This is why it requires no small effort to combat this passion, if, with the necessary vigilance over ourselves, we wish to achieve real salvation and the fear of God in our lives. If this passion takes root in us it becomes the most tyrannical of all. And if we become subject to its encouragement and habits, then we’ve lost everything, because Saint Paul says “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (I Tim. 6, 10), that is of anger, sorrow and everything else. Indeed, the Fathers ...

St. John the Evangelist St. John, in the prologue of his gospel, says the following: And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14). In his first Epistle he says the following: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life — the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us — that which we have seen ...

Souls that are slothful avoid any effort and don’t seek to be completely, not only partially, sanctified in this life, have no hope of communion with the Holy Spirit and of being freed from the passions of evil. They may have been granted Divine Grace, but because they’ve been deceived by evil, they abandon every spiritual care because they’ve received a little spiritual sweetness. So it’s easy for these souls to fall into pride, because they don’t try to reach perfect freedom from the passions. Since they’re satisfied with a little dose of Grace, and make progress not in humility but pride, at some stage they’re denuded even of the gift they’ve got. Because if a soul loves God, no ...

Icon of the Crucifixion One early morning not long ago I woke with a strange physical sense of myself as the product of eons, rather than my usual tired twenty-first-century self. In the period between dream and waking I had the sense of being the son of a son of a son.... And you can go on way back, to a period where our ancestors slept in dens around fires in winter breathing bone dust—even to a period before language. That particular morning I knew that I was here now because of millennia during which human beings were formed by cooperation and cannibalism, compassion and violence. It is into this flesh that the Lord became incarnate, with all its mercies and ...

The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son and rightly ‘straightway,’ in a natural way. The Holy Spirit, similarly, proceeds from the Father, rests in the Son and glorifies Him, heralding the content of the life of the Son and guiding the disciples of Christ ‘into all truth’, which is to say into all the fullness of divine love. Christ is He Who manifested the substance of His Divine Person in reference to His Heavenly Father, keeping obedient to His commandment and in a perfect way ‘dwelling in Him in love’. In reference to man, He showed also perfect love: ‘Having loved his own that were in the world he loved them until the end.’ In order that ...

Above all else, don’t forget the poor, but support them to the extent of your power. Give to the orphan, protect the widow, and don’t let the mighty destroy another person. Don’t take the life of the just or the unjust, nor order such a deed. Destroy no Christian soul even if they’re subject to death. When you speak either good or evil, don’t swear by the name of God, nor cross yourselves, because it’s unnecessary. Whenever you kiss the Cross to confirm an oath made to your brethren or to any other man, first test your heart as to whether you can abide by your word, then kiss the Cross, and after once having given your oath, abide by it, ...

On the occasion of the presentation of his book 'The Ladder of the Beatitudes' in Greece on 10 October, the author and theologian Jim Forest has given an exclusive interview to Pemptousia, which we're delighted to be able to air today. Pemptousia: One of your books is about love to the enemy. Do you think this is Orthodoxy's characteristic, it belongs to Christianity in general or it refers to any man who feels a deep sense of charity in him? Jim Forest: If love of enemies is understood in a Christian sense, it refers to a non-sentimental attitude in which one sees in the other, even an enemy, the possibility of a changed relationship. It is not easy, for the Christian anymore ...

I’d like to assure you that the Holy Mountain calls those people who themselves desire, themselves wish to follow Christ. They come because in their heart they’ve received Christ’s call: ‘Follow me’. Christ said ‘Follow me’ to the twelve disciples, but He continues to offer it to this day to those who genuinely desire Him and love Him.