The nature of water is soft, while that of rock is hard. Yet if you suspend a pitcher over a rock and it drips onto it, it’ll slowly make a hole. In the same way, the word of God is soft and our hearts are hard. But if we hear the word of God often, our hearts will open to the fear of Him.
Above the entrance leading from the exonarthex to the narthex, in a semi-circular shallow lunette, is the scene of the Deisis (Fig. 184). Christ is shown in the middle, sitting on a backless throne and resting His feet on a richly decorated footstool. With His right hand He gives His blessing and with His left He holds an open Gospel book, which is resting on His knee. The pages of the Gospel have the words: “I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD THE TRUTH THE LIFE THE RESURRECTION THE WAY THE SHEPHERD THE DOOR THROUGH ME IF ONE ENTERS IN HE WILL BE SAVED”. The text of this inscription, which is a compilation of phrases from the Gospel according to John (Jn. ...
If we see that some saints enjoy greater glory than others, this is due to the fact they have even a little bit more of Christ’s humility within them, nothing else. There are saints who have astonishing ascetic achievements to their name, but have less glory than others who performed fewer ascetic feats and this is due to the amount of the blessed divine raiment. Forgive me, but the more I write about the blessed raiment of the divinity, which the Mother of God had in its entirety, I’m overcome with fear, because my unworthiness causes my hand to falter and it’s perfectly possible- indeed, this is the most likely circumstance- that it’s my own pride that’s motivated me to ...
We should all tread the middle path: more philosophically than those who are completely uninvolved and more humanely than those who philosophize the whole time. If it’s difficult for you to turn to wickedness, you won’t suspect evil.
Typical of the ancient temples in this category (see part 1) is the case of the most important monument of Classical antiquity, the Parthenon. Its conversion into a Christian church possibly should be placed at the end of the 5th century or more likely to the period of Justinian. The ancient temple was converted into a three-naved basilica with the alterations necessary for Christian worship: to the west, the entry of the opisthonaos (rear inner porch) was the main entrance to the Christian church and the opisthonaos itself became the narthex; on the eastern side, the apse of the sanctuary was added to the pronaos (front inner porch) while the two-storey Doric colonnade of the sekos (interior) were used to ...
Faith, the ability to believe, doesn’t depend in the first place on the degree of our education. In fact, in our own times, when there’s widespread education, we see that faith is dwindling, whereas, in essence you’d expect the opposite to be true. In other words, the more we learn, the greater the opportunities are to recognize the deep wisdom of the Creator of the world.
Nowadays when science and technology are flying, when cultures converge and there is a crisis in values, even the word ‘death’ is avoided and anything reminiscent of it is ignored and discarded. Modern man views death as something negative and as a loss; we usually say for the departed: ‘We’ve lost him’. Whoever does not have the proper knowledge about this issue of death, he is trying to ignore it. Thus he lives an essentially neurotic life, drained of its true meaning. The arrest of cardiac function and or the death of the brain -namely the biological, clinical death- is not a natural state for man and it is not a condition which is in accordance with God’s pleasure. “God made ...
Every time we celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God, it’s as if we’re having Easter – the Easter of the summer. Our Lady the Mother of God prepares Easter for us. A glorious crossing “from death to life”. A second Easter, holy spotless, life-giving for the human race, because today “the laws of nature are overcome”. “How the source of life goes towards life, passing through death”, says Saint John the Damascan. The death of the life-giving Mother of the Lord transcends the concept of death, so that it’s not even called death, but “dormition” and “divine transition” and an emigration and immigration towards the Lord. And even if it’s called death, it’s a life-bringing death, since it transports ...
One of the features of our society is a sense of lawlessness. It’s a belief common to all that certain people get treated in a preferential way, that, while laws exists, they aren’t applied- or at least not equally- to everybody. At the same time it’s seen as ‘reasonable’, only to be expected in practice, for us to exploit whatever ‘opportunities’ we’re presented with in order to gain some benefit by any means available, even if it’s illegal or immoral. Meanwhile, people talk about morality all the time, in a condemnatory way, purely and simply to put the blame on other people and to avoid criticism or the consequences of their own actions. The most common excused offered is: ‘Well, ...
It’s tremendously important that somebody in the family should pray. Prayer attracts God’s Grace, which is felt by all the members, even those with a cold heart. Always pray.
Nowadays when science and technology are flying, when cultures converge and there is a crisis in values, even the word ‘death’ is avoided and anything reminiscent of it is ignored and discarded. Modern man views death as something negative and as a loss; we usually say for the departed: ‘We’ve lost him’. Whoever does not have the proper knowledge about this issue of death, he is trying to ignore it. Thus he lives an essentially neurotic life, drained of its true meaning. The arrest of cardiac function and or the death of the brain -namely the biological, clinical death- is not a natural state for man and it is not a condition which is in accordance with God’s pleasure. “God made ...
So humility which comes as a natural result after we sin, especially when these are mortal sins, is one thing, and the humility of Christ is another. For sinful people, humility’s absolutely necessary for them to stay alive, so that they won’t be swallowed up by the devil. The humility of Christ, on the other hand, is a divine garment, it’s magnificence, it’s power. And Our Lady had this divine raiment in its entirety, which is why the whole of creation bows down before her, even the heavenly powers. According to Saint Matthew the Evangelist, when the Lord went to the Jordan to be baptized by the Honourable Forerunner, the most formidable of our saints, after Our Lady, John would ...
The devil has lots of traps he sets to catch people. So love, concord and peace are absent from the world, and, in their place pride, anger envy viciousness and prodigality dominate, with people having become lecherous. They tear each other to pieces, kill each other tell lies, and exploit others. And all this because enlightened teachers haven’t been found to teach them that it’s worth the effort to walk in the path of the Lord and thus become an example for others to follow in life.
. So if you have something to say, if you’re a good speaker, if you know how to present things and so on, then use this for the benefit and instruction of others, in all humility. And if you have the power of prayer, because you’ve got a pure heart, then, with lots of tears, put this at the disposal of those who are weaker than you. For the assistance of everybody. This is what Saint John tells us in his analysis of the Lord’s Beatitude, where He says ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy’. What Saint John is saying is that the merciful (charitable) aren’t only those who give material goods, but also those who offer words of salvation, with ...
When, in the fifth century, the space in Hadrian’s Library in Athens was divided equally between pagans and Christians, the relations between what appeared to be the two flourishing communities in the city were defined both in practice and symbolically. The renovated wings were given to the pagan Sophists and the courtyard to the Christians to build an important church, the well-known Christian tetraconch (fig.1). The church was probably the first metropolitan church in Athens, later called “The Great Panayía (Mother of God). An act certainly of political diplomacy, directed and funded either by the eparch of Illyricum, Herculius (408-12), or by the native Athenian empress Evdokia, doubtless led to everyday co-existence and symbiosis for the two groups on a ...
Our minds are clouded by three passions: avarice, vainglory and sensual pleasure. In order to counter these passions, we have the commandment not to love the world and the things in it. It’s not, of course, that we should unthinkingly hate things created by God, but rather that we should cut off opportunities to succumb to these three passions.
