In English

The person of Christ has been subject to a great many misconceptions, from the time He came to earth until today. Many people altered or distorted the purpose of His presence among us even as early as the time when He was alive. If we are to understand these attempts at fabrication, we need to look at Judaism as it was at the time of Christ: a mixture of many different traditions. These traditions were widespread, powerful, with many fanatical adherents, who supported them passionately. The Jews were longing for the Messiah, but it’s not clear exactly what this meant for them. In order to understand the transformation of the meaning of the word, we have to make a brief review ...

The strong faith of the human heart demands prayer and, at the same time, produces it, and a life of prayer over many years produces love. The aim of our life is nothing other than the purification of the heart to the point where it's able to sing for joy. Consequently, prayer of the heart leads to joy of the heart. Nothing's difficult for joyful people, because they've got love.

Mother’s Day today, and all over the world children take the opportunity to remember and honour their mother. Yet there are also those who question the whole commercialization of the business of the adoption of the day as a ‘feast’, while others think that the state of motherhood is so sacred that every day of the year should be dedicated to it, rather than a single day. For its part, the Church presents the person of the Mother of God as the most outstanding of mothers and discreetly suggests the feast of the Reception of the Lord (2 February) as a day that could be set apart for us to honour mothers. Within our tradition, we also encounter the Church itself as ...

People who reject repentance are showing terrible cruelty towards themselves. Dreadful dislike and hatred of themselves, if they disregard repentance. People who are cruel to themselves can't help but be cruel to other people as well. People who are kind to themselves through the acceptance of repentance, are, at the same time, kinds to others, too.

The Dionysian corpus dates to the turn of the fifth and sixth centuries and it comprises of the following four works: the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, the Celestial Hierarchy, the Divine Names and the Mystical Theology. The identity of the author remains an enigma and all we have is his pseudonym. He became known as Pseudo-Dionysius or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. philofbeing.com Hierarchy constitutes a prominent place in the whole work of Dionysius. He mentions it several times and gives the following meaning: “Hierarchy is a sacred order, knowledge and activity, which is being assimilated to likeness with God as much as possible…” And that is the purpose of his hierarchy; the assimilation and union with God. Hierarchy is supposed to enable beings to be ...

The Resurrection is forgotten in this day and age. Even the immortality of the soul is ignored. It’s typical that scientists who concern themselves with the human soul don’t usually treat it as an ontological feature of a person, but more as a biological function. People today live and die without any particular prospect beyond their biological existence and their biographical activity. Within this context, it’s not difficult to understand the widespread pessimism, no matter how much we want and try to abandon the hope that will be the last to die. Death is the greatest and most permanent threat to humankind. And this threat doesn’t merely affect us, directly, when it comes, but also indirectly. It affects us in every ...

Evil has no natural existence and no-one is evil by nature. Because God did not make anything evil. If people desire evil, then what's not actually there is called into existence, because that's what they want. So, by the remembrance of God, we have to disregard the habit of evil. Because the nature of good is more powerful than the habit of evil. That's because good exists, whereas evil doesn't, except when we do it.

In one of its hymns, our Church calls the unbelief of Thomas "good". Understandably one would wonder - is there good and bad unbelief? There seems to be, because humans are not purely good or evil. In one who has a clean conscience, good heart and humble thought, everything is clear. In one infected with the virus of unbelief, all is dark and troubled. If only we had the good unbelief of the Apostle Thomas! We would say that doubt, hesitation and little faith, it is normal to a man who seeks God with the mind. The Apostles of Christ begged Him to add faith to their existing faith. Unbelief, however, is a serious spiritual illness. Faith is beyond reason and unbelief ...

The Holy Metropolis of Germany held a Church service at the Nazi Concentration Camp in the Bavarian town of Hersbruck It is well known that, at the Nazi Concentration Camp at the town of Hersbruck, near Nürnberg, some of the prisoners were Greeks, who underwent torture and, in many cases, breathed their last there. The Mayor, Herr Ilk, the Vice-President of the Bavarian Parliament, Herr Meier, Fr. Apostolos, the Prefect, Herr Kronter, the General Consul, Mr. Konstantinopoulos, the Curator fo the Bavarian Remembrance Museum, Herr Fröller,, the Member of the Bavarian Parliament, Herr Dinkel, Archimandrite Titos Yannoulis, the President of the Greek Community of Nürnberg, Mr. Konstantatos and the Chairman of the Victim’s Association, Herr Vrens. The Holy Metropolis of Germany held ...

Misguided zeal is the turbulence of a malicious soul and reveals itself as jealousy, envy and hatred towards anybody who has something special. It's motivated by loathing and wickedness and puts a blight on anything good. People who have misguided zeal want to sully everything that's bright in people and envies those who have it. It hates people who are happy and desires their unhappiness, it rejoices if they fall and is pleased if disasters come upon them.

The Very Reverend John M. Reeves graduated from the University of Texas, Austin in 1971 with a B.A. in comparative studies. He graduated from the School of Theology, the University of the South, Sewanee, TN, with an M.Div. in 1975 and was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in January of 1976. In the fall of that same year, the Episcopal Church voted to ordain women to the priesthood. He subsequently converted to Orthodoxy under Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas in 1977. Father John was ordained to the priesthood of the Orthodox Church in 1981 and has served his entire priestly ministry as founder and pastor of St. George-the-Great-Martyr Orthodox Church, Pharr-McAllen, TX. He serves his own Diocese of the South as director of its ...

A sign of the soul that's indifferent is that it doesn't listen gladly to Holy Scripture, whereas the soul that's watchful accepts the divine words in the same way as thirsty land welcomes rain.

Today, it’s more necessary than ever to remind people that the final source of evil is in the spiritual life. Spirituality isn’t simply purity and moral stature. In the most hidden-away region of the spirit, there are always two sides: one light and one dark, as the Russian theologian Vassili Zenkovski so clearly set out (The Problems of Education in the Light of Christian Anthropology, Paris 1934, p. 110). This dualism in the essence of the spirit isn’t immediately obvious to those who aren’t completely familiar with the spiritual life, to those who are still concerned with the external, superficial life. But the more you progress in the spiritual life, liberated from submission to the external life, the more the ...

Some people erroneously think that the memento mori, the remembrance of death, poisons life. It doesn't. Quite the opposite. It teaches us to be attentive and to distance ourselves from everything that actually does poison our life, our real life.

The question of evil has not been examined much in the Orthodox Church. In comparison to other Christian dogmas, its solution remains as expressed in a form which reveals the truth, of course, but one clouded in the making. Evil has its origin and its support in the free will of created spirits, be these spirits part of the angels or human beings. This is the Christian position. But there’s a long way to go if we’re to understand it. The Church was once, at the time of the Gnostics, under considerable pressure to develop a theory concerning the source of evil. All schools of Gnostic thought were tormented by the problem of the question of the origin of evil. And ...