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16 April 1989 In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We keep today the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt in the gradual progression from glory to glory which Lent is, and which must lead us step by step to facing the supreme glory of the Divine Love crucified, the sacrificial love of the Holy Trinity. Saint Mary of Egypt was a sinner, someone whose sin was known to everyone and not to God alone; perhaps she was the only one who was least of all aware of it because sin was her life. And yet, one day, she wanted to go and venerate an icon of the Mother of God in a church. The supreme beauty of ...

When people begin to be steadfastly united with God in prayer, they never want to be separated from Him. Because the sweetness they taste through the Divine Presence is so great they never want to taste anything else. » Saint Theophan the Recluse

People who won’t accept a word of advice, even from people who love them, are, in the end, like warped pieces of wood and render themselves useless spiritually. Just as planks that you can’t plane to make furniture end up as scaffolding or a staircase where they’re trodden on and muddied and eventually end up in the fire, these people are also destroyed, in the end. » Venerable Païsios the Athonite

This period of Great Lent through which we’re passing, and also the worrying social phenomena we see on a global scale, challenge and invite us as people to reflect on and weigh up why it is that almost the whole of mankind is in turmoil. Tension between ourselves and between nations, loathing and intolerance within states and between different people are part and parcel of daily life. The result is conflicts, sometimes of considerable proportions, with people as the victims. Even worse, these victims often belong to the most vulnerable groups who have no responsibility for or relation to the criminal behaviour of those at whose bidding the disasters were created. What’s the cause of all the turmoil and confusion, which ...

The intellect is the organ of wisdom, whereas the reason is that of knowledge. The natural, internal certainty of the intellect and of the reason is the organ of faith, which is a product of wisdom and knowledge. Natural charity is the organ of the gift of healing. Because every divine gift has the apposite and appropriate receptor of the organ as a force or attraction or inclination. For example, people who cleanse their intellect of every fantasy, receive wisdom. People who have set reason in control of their innate passions, I mean longing and desire, receive knowledge. People who have unshakable certainty, with their intellect and reason, as regards divine matters, receive faith that is capable of anything. And those who have performed ...

Watch Fr. Joanh’s from Taiwan sermon on the parable of the possessed young man (Mark 9, 17-31).

A very active priest had a dream once, which he described to us as follows: ‘I was sitting in an armchair, drained and exhausted from all my work. My whole body ached from weariness. A lot of people in my parish were seeking the ‘Pearl of great price’. And many had found Him. The parish was doing well from every point of view, and my soul was overflowing with joy, hope and courage. My sermons made a great impression. Lots of people were coming to confession. My church was always packed with people. I’d managed to galvanize the whole parish. I was so pleased with all this that I worked every day until I was exhausted. While I was thinking about all this, ...

If somebody accuses you of committing a sin that you didn’t do, humble yourself and you’ll inherit the crown of incorruption. You’ll be wise when, through your silence rather than anger, you stop the mouths of others, who speak evil. Don’t become angry or enraged except with yourself. Anger and stubbornness are uncontrollable forces of the soul. » Elder Arsenie Boca (of Romania)

Every power of the enemy and the devil is destroyed by patience. Cut off your will and don’t seek any other path to salvation. You should know that those who don’t subject themselves to one (their Elder or Confessor), subject themselves to many, and in the end are subject to no-one. Every time you cut off your will, you’re counted as a martyr before God. >Blessed Joseph the Hesychast

The blind monk There was a blind monk in Cyprus who, when he heard that the saint had the grace of healing those with impaired vision, came to him and begged him for a cure. He promised: ‘If you have mercy on me, saint of God, and give me my sight, I’ll stay here and serve your holy church till the end of my days’. Having promised this and entreated the saint with a heart full of pain, he was cure by a visitation of the saint and saw very clearly. He remained with the saint for a certain length of time, but, because of demonic action, he fell into the sin of sloth. He forgot his promises, left the place ...

People who are proud of the gifts they’ve received and boast as if they hadn’t received them from God (I Cor. 4, 7) rightly call down upon themselves the wrath of God, Who allows the devil to wage mental warfare against them, to disturb them in the manner of practicing the virtues and to muddy their transparent knowledge in contemplation. In this way, they’ll learn about their sickness and recognize the only force within us that fights against the passions. And when they’ve repented and been humbled and have cast off their boastful conceit, God will have mercy on them and they will avoid the wrath which descends upon the unrepentant and which takes away the Grace which guards the soul and ...

The Church of Christ is Catholic in the sense that it contains the full complement of truth and Grace for the enlightenment and redemption of the world. It is also Catholic in the sense that its potential strength is not to conquer, but to hallow the world. The head of the Church is Christ and we are members, linked by common faith in an ‘association of love’. The history of the Church is one of struggle for the sanctification of the faithful. » Elder Ephraim of Arizona

Those who believe that they’ve achieved the limit of virtue will no longer seek the ultimate Cause Who provides all good things, because they have restricted the force of their desire to themselves alone and they lose the necessary requirement for their salvation. I mean God. But those who are aware of their natural poverty don’t stop running in haste to Him Who can make up for our shortcomings. Those who have understood that virtue is boundless never cease to run towards it, first so as not to miss the beginning and the end of virtue, that is God, by restricting the movement of their desire to themselves, and secondly in case, without realizing it, they believe that they’ve reached perfection and ...

An interpretational approach to the doxastiko at Lauds on the 4th Sunday of Lent ‘Come, let us work in the mystical vineyard, producing the fruits of repentance therein. Let us not labour only for food and drink, but let us also achieve the virtues through prayer and fasting. These are pleasing to the Lord of the task and He will give us the denarius through which souls are redeemed and the debt of sin is paid, for He alone is full of mercy’. If we read the parable carefully (Matth. 20, 1-16), we’ll see that the greater danger is for the workers who began their labours earlier. He warns them that, often, ‘the first shall be last’ (v. 16), precisely because they ...

In today’s reading from the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, we are urged to be firm in our belief that God’s promises will not be broken. People often promise things and then fail to do them. Sometimes, a person simply forgets to do it. Another reason may be that a serious problem or issue has arisen, rendering the fulfillment of the promise impossible. Finally, a person may have vowed to do something that they later realize goes against their own interests, with the result being that they do everything possible to break the promise. With God, it is very different. He is not hindered by human weaknesses. God never forgets or fails to do anything He says, because He is Almighty. ...

For the secular people of today, focusing on an ascetic saint represents a problem. How can the ascetic figure of Saint John, the author of the Ladder, speak to us, when he acquired and preserved the Grace of God through tears, prayers, and spiritual asceticism? In Orthodox teaching, the ascetic life is nothing other than the transcendence of selfishness, the attempt, in Grace, to apply God’s commandments, to live the life of Jesus Christ. The Orthodox ethos is ascetic. The objection made by people today- that an ascetic cannot speak to us- is not true for two fundamental reasons. In the first place, because in Orthodox Patristic teaching, there’s no difference between the monastic and secular way of life, nor between ...

God always helps, He always arrives, but it needs patience. When we cry out, He always hears immediately, but not in the way we think. >Blessed Joseph the Hesychast

An interpretational approach to the doxastiko at Lauds on the 4th Sunday of Lent ‘Come, let us work in the mystical vineyard, producing the fruits of repentance therein. Let us not labour only for food and drink, but let us also achieve the virtues through prayer and fasting. These are pleasing to the Lord of the task and He will give us the denarius through which souls are redeemed and the debt of sin is paid, for He alone is full of mercy’. The first word of the doxastiko at Lauds on the 4th Sunday of Lent is an exhortation: ‘Come’! Can it be that the hymnographer knows that, especially in our own day and age, our powers of endurance aren’t great and that ...

Many of our saints changed dejection into joy through their love for Christ. In other words, they took this spiritual force which the devil wished to destroy and gave it to God, transforming it into joy and exultation. Prayer and the worship of God gradually transforms dejection and turns it into joy. » Venerable Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia

Great Lent is the most holy and the most conservative time in the liturgical year. Among the ancient ritual customs during this period is the particular arrangement of the readings of extracts from books of the Old Testament. In the 7th century, such readings formed the structural basis for the first part of the Divine Liturgy, or the Liturgy of the Word as that part of the service was commonly known. Three extracts were read then, one from the Old Testament and two from the New, that is an Epistle and Gospel. From the 8th century, the Old Testament reading was moved to the Vespers service, because of monastic influence. The use of the Old Testament in modern Church worship is ...