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We know very little concerning the martyr Nestor, other than that he was a close spiritual brother of Saint Dimitrios. He may have volunteered to fight the giant Vandal, Lyaeus, in order to prevent other Christians being drafted in to do so against their will. According to Saint Nikolaï Velimirović in the Ochrid Prologue, the emperor, Galerius, entertained the people with such spectacles and had a platform built on which Lyaeus wrestled with his opponents, and having overcome them, tossed them over the side onto a forest of spears. Before the contest, Nestor went to the prison where Saint Dimitrios was being held. The latter blessed him and told him that he would be victorious but would then be martyred. On entering ...

Elder Joseph the Hesychast (1898-1959) was a charismatic personality of 20th century’s Orthodox spirituality. He became a monk in Mt Athos at a young age and finally he was a top teacher of Jesus’ prayer. Like many gifted monks, he had many out-of-body experiences and visions, and he as well felt his end coming. From his monastic group (“Synodeia”) came many famous abbots and spiritual fathers. His epistles’ corpus was collected and edited in Greek and after in English, in an excellent paperback, under the title: "Monastic Wisdom; The Letters of Elder Joseph the Hesychast". The edition is from Saint Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery (USA), by Ephraim Poonen. Recipients vary, as holy father addressed clergy, monasteries, laity, both in Greece and ...

Impiety is a sin of the mind against God. It’s ignorance of God and ends with the death of the soul. It’s caused by our lack of awareness of God. In itself it’s perverse and gets us nowhere. It’s the mother of evils.

The Dimitria, the festival of Saint Dimitrios, the patron saint of Thessaloniki, was an exceptional feast for the whole of the Western world. The work ‘Timarion’, which was written in the 12th century, declares that the city attracted ‘not only locals or those of one race, but people from all over Greece and of every ethnicity- Greeks from all over, various tribes of Bulgars from among those who lived between the Danube and Southern Russia, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Celts who live beyond the Alps’. The citizens of Thessaloniki prepared very early for the autumnal Easter, their own Easter, the feast of the saviour of their city. From the middle of September, which coincided with the feast of the Elevation of ...

Purity means a desirable home for Christ on earth and an earthly heaven of the heart, supernatural renunciation of human nature.

(Previous publication: http://bit.ly/2zFm6yQ) The Holy Spirit is very zealous in these End Times to bring out of His manifold divine stores His manifold redemptive gift to every part of earth. He divided the earth for the apostles and sent them to it so that every land would bear its own fruit as God has appointed for those who dwell in it so that they would establish His Kingdom in it -on earth as it is heaven. He is the One who works in the saints from generation to generation, transforming them into the same image (2Corinthians 3: 18), the image of Christ, so that the manifold grace of God (1Peter 4: 10) may be seen in them. In the End Times, His ...

It’s shameful for us to waste our time today and then later to keep revisiting the past, when such regrets are no longer of any use to us.

The author of the epistle had in mind the legal regulations regarding clean and unclean animals in Judaism, which we encounter in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. It’s obvious that, for the compilation of his own list, which is shorter, he used both these sources, as is clear not only from the particular species mentioned, but also from the order in which they’re mentioned. The cases of the kite, the raven and the hare are the most typical. In certain instances, he doesn’t follow the same terminology, but also refers to the criteria which make certain forms of biodiversity unclean and therefore forbidden at the table of devout Jews. It should be noted that, of the eleven species in the Epistle ...

The Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Toronto (Canada) announces with deep sorrow that our beloved Protopresbyter Charalambos Elles fell asleep in the Lord today, October 24th. Fr. Charalambos was born in Cyprus on August 23, 1936, and was ordained a presbyter on May 30, 1979 at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto. He served our Metropolis in a number of communities in the most exemplary way. He also offered his valuable services as Administrative Assistant to the Metropolitan and as a professor of ecclesiastical music at our Toronto Orthodox Theological Academy from its foundation until today. Our blessed father leaves behind his presbytera Kalliope, four children and eight grandchildren. We pray that our Lord will grant rest to his soul and rank ...

Bind your soul to the rock of faith. Never mind what waves come at you, they’ll break on the rock of faith and all obstacles will be overcome.

(Previous publication: http://bit.ly/2zFm6yQ) It is written that wine makes glad the heart of man (Psalm 104: 15) and that the joy of the Lord is our strength (Nehemiah 8: 10). The Holy Spirit pours the divine wine in man's good wineskin, in the one who has kept himself unspotted from the world (James 1: 27) and its corruption which reigns through sin unto death. O’ Mother, you are the intercessor of the souls who run out of wine, their wineskin bursts, and their souls withers to the point of death; you intervened in the right time at the wedding of Canna of Galilee. After the Son completed the economy of Redemption, you, O' Mother, began to minister to the bridal souls teaching them ...

We should also note that we priests often lose the wonderful entry into the presence of God at the Holy Sacrament of the Anaphora, because we weren’t in God’s presence enough before we came to the Divine Liturgy. The same is true for all of us when we come to the Divine Liturgy. If we haven’t enjoyed the stillness of God’s presence, if we haven’t stayed in quietude to the extent that we’re able to, then we lose the power of Holy Communion, which is a communion of Christ’s grace, a communion of the gifts of all the saints.

On the 6th Sunday of Luke, the great Redeemer of the human race, while He was in the land of the Gadarenes, opposite Galilee, relieves, redeems and liberates a man from a terrible threat. The ‘sick’ servant in today’s Gospel is suffering from a spiritual illness. He’s possessed, that is profoundly under the influence of the unclean spirit of the cunning devil. Indeed, according to the reading, he was so enslaved to the demons that he no longer dwelt in a house, but lived among the graves. It would appear that the tormented man, being spiritually dead, found no comfort except among the dead. The possessed man is a terrible case which everyone finds appalling. This was not a psychiatric illness ...

Like everything else, marriage between Christians should involve decorum, and decorum is modesty.

‘A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan’ (Psalm 68: 15). Mount Athos in Greece is the mountain of the good wine and the divine olive oil. This is the divine redemptive gift of this land. SAMSUNG CSC The store house of oil and wine is in Mount Athos because my Mother, the Virgin, made it her garden. God gave it to her because she is the only faithful one who trades well; there is no place for any kind of loss in whatever she is entrusted on. She knew how to make this mountain a garden of wine and oil, which the natural land of Greece is abundant with. O’ Mother, you attracted your children to your garden. You were ...

God wants everyone to be saved and we should be thinking about the salvation of everyone and should pray for them all. But neither revelation nor experience provide us with a basis for claiming that everyone will, in fact, be saved. Freedom is a great gift, but a terrible one.

A Hierarchical Great Vespers was held on Tuesday, October 17, 2017, at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto for the feast of St. Luke the Evangelist, presided by His Eminence Metropolitan Sotirios and assisted by 17 priests. His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew honoured 10 Greek-Canadian Orthodox Christians across Canada with the title of Archon. At the conclusion of Great Vespers, the Investiture Ceremony for the Archons was held. Three new Archons were invested: Nicholas Aroutzidis, Archon Kastrinsios; Frank Topos, Archon Maestor; and, Dimitri Soudas, Archon Depoutatos. The remaining Archons will be invested later in the year during similar Great Vespers and dinners in Montreal and Vancouver, respectively. After the Archon Investiture Ceremony, a dinner was held at the Metropolitan Centre next ...

Through patience, we arrive at humility and thereafter we enjoy God’s grace. Boldness towards God is acquired through a clear conscience and works of virtue.

When people of merit avoid political power, then it’s left to the undeserving to assume it. Naturally, Christians would prefer the implementation of civil power to be in the hands of people of the faith. In the early centuries, however, Christians didn’t seek secular office because they considered this to be inconsistent with their primary goal. The nature of a good Christian doesn’t necessarily mean success in the exercise of political power. The aim of civil authority is to regulate this present life, not that of the future. Saint Paul states that obedience to state authority has its limits. It’s understood as submission to the demands of the common weal. Everyone should submit to the higher authorities which exist, because these ...

The source of all wickedness is vainglory and love of pleasure. If you don’t hate those passions, you won’t be able to root out any of the other ones.