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Contemporary man… should be more receptive to the basic positions of Byzantine thought, which may then acquire an astonishingly contemporary relevance. Fr. John Meyendorff   Many ideas and positions propounded and maintained in the works of Father John Meyendorff are taken now by us as evident and well-known, as commonplaces. We must, however, make an effort to see them in the right way: before Meyendorff, they did not belong to commonplaces, and they have become universally recognized due to him. In cultural process the fate of commonplaces is unenviable. Although they are exploited permanently, they are never appreciated and are treated with no respect; and when one looks for something new and original, one chooses often the easy way of denying and ...

The Apostle Paul, after being freed from his first imprisonment in Rome, went to Crete with his valued companion, Titus.   After a short period of apostolic activity, The Apostle Paul made Titus the Bishop of Crete to continue the work of evangelizing the people, and the Apostle himself once again continued his tour through Asia Minor and Greece.   He found his way to Nikopolis (N.W. Greece), where he intended to spend the winter of 66-67 AD.  It was here that he sent his Letter to Titus, where he invited Titus to meet him in Nikopolis.   We heard the last part of this Letter today. As we know from his other 13 Epistles, the Apostle Paul was particularly concerned ...

The path of life is all pain and tears, all thorns and nails. Crosses spring up everywhere, there’s stress and sorrow all around. Every step’s a Gethsemane, every hill’s a Golgotha, every moment a spear. If we could squeeze the earth like a sponge, it would drip blood and tears. » Elder Ephraim of Arizona

You have to know and always remember that you’re a fallen person. And since you fell through your reason and your free will, you have to rise from your fall through the same weapons, illumined by the light of the Word of God and strengthened with the Grace of the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus. » Saint John of Kronstadt

People who are humble are cognizant of their inner state and however bad it is, don’t lose their personality. They know they’re sinners and they mourn over it, but they don’t despair, they don’t exhaust themselves. Those who have holy humility don’t talk at all, in other words they don’t react. They allow others to rebuke them, to reproach them without getting angry and finding excuses. » Venerable Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia

For head of the Orthodox Church is neither a man, nor an angel, not even any other creature of God, but the very God-Man, the historical Christ, the Son of the Virgin, Perfect God and perfect Man, Son of God and Son of man. Now, all the meaning, the beauty, the divine-likeness and the kallos of the created world are realized in the person of the Virgin Mary, the daughter of Israel, the Mother of God. That is why the Church is in a certain way realized through the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary and through the Holy Spirit. Through the Most Holy Virgin Mary, the created is rendered indeed from Church in potency Church in actuality, that is Body ...

Christians exchange their distorted intellect for that of Christ, their distorted heart for the heart and tenderness of Christ, their distorted ethos for that of Christ. » Blessed Georgios Kapsanis, Proegumen of Gregoriou Monastery

The remembrance of God in a person reveals communion with God and is therefore like a prayer. The effort of constantly calling upon of the holy name of Christ using the prayer ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, sinner that I am’, continually renews the remembrance of God and communion with God. It’s because of this, that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: ‘Pray unceasingly’. With the remembrance of God and prayer, people reveal the true nobility of their nature, which is the border between the visible and invisible world and ‘deification in Christ’. They overcome physical necessity, and extend their existence to God, feeling free from anything which holds them captive on earth. However, for prayer to be real, ...

It’s so distressing to see that, at feasts and festivals of the Lord, the enemy also has a portion, that is, a tax from Christians. And this tax is exceptionally high. The greater the feast, the higher the tax that Christians pay to the enemy.

The initial gift of deification, offered by the Living God to His cosmos and His beings, is so powerful that, at the end, created cosmos gave birth to Panaghia, the Mother of God, through Whom the Living, Uncreated Hypostatic God the Word was incarnated and became perfect man. Namely, He became the truly Messiah and the truly Savior of the world, visible and invisible. Thus, through Christ, created cosmos, the church in potency, becomes, indeed, Church in actuality. But, in order for something to be a church, it must primarily be Orthodox. That is, it must have a proper account (doxa) and theory (theōria) about God. Without proper account and knowledge of God we lie not only about God but also ...

The most important issue is that of judging others. We should be very wary of that. In other words, the greatest toll-house we have to get through will be that of passing judgement on others.

In the course of His earthly travels and in the context of teaching about the coming of the Kingdom of God, Jesus performed many miracles. In the Gospel reading for the third Sunday of Luke, we see how a miracle performed by Our Lord Jesus Christ actually unfolded. During his ministry, Jesus travelled to towns and villages, where he taught and worked wonders. The Lord had no sooner approached the gates of the city of Nain, together with the crowd of people who accompanied Him, than He was met by a procession leaving the town, accompanying a dead young man. The small town was deeply sad. A stricken mother was walking behind her precious, only son towards his last resting-place. ...

When you want to know God’s will, set your own aside, together with any other thought or plan and, with great humility ask to become aware of it in your prayers. Then, whatever is formed or bears weight in your heart will be from God. Those who have greater boldness and practice in praying for this hear the instruction more clearly within themselves and become more careful in their lives, doing nothing without divine instruction.

In today’s passage, from the Apostle Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, a very unique experience is revealed. This was something that had never happened to anyone before! What was this experience? It was this: The Apostle Paul ascended to the third heaven, over all creation, and reached the spiritual realm in Paradise. He heard so much adoration in Heaven, but he could describe none of it to the people! The Apostle of Christ was in no hurry to announce this to the world. He kept it secret for fourteen years! Perhaps he never would have spoken of it, if his love for the Christians in Corinth had not compelled him to support them in the faith. What had happened? We ...

The following text which will be published  in three parts, is Georgios P. Pavlos’s talk at the 8th International Conference of Orthodox Theology, Under the Auspices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate “The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church: Orthodox in the 21st century”.   All Christians are watching today in agony and prayer the blessed struggle of the Patriarchate of Constantinople for the unity of all Christians and the transmission of Christ to all Nations and all people. Therefore, I dedicate this talk to the martyric Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in New Rome and to the martyric person of the Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew, who silently and in simplicity expresses this agony for the unity of the entire Christian world, no least ...

Avarice makes many people unjust, in the hope of acquiring wealth, and it becomes the cause of much evil among people. It’s a passion of the soul that causes a thirst for gold, and that eats away at it no matter how much gold is amassed. Avarice is a master at poverty, because it enriches itself but not those who have it. They are left lacking and, essentially, impoverished.

Instead of starting with ourselves, we always want to change others first and ourselves last. If only we would all start with ourselves, there’d be peace all around. Saint John Chrysostom says that no-one can hurt people who don’t hurt themselves- not even the devil himself. Do you see, we’re the architects, the sole architects, of our future.

With Christ’s blood, everything was pacified, on earth and in heaven. The heavens were sanctified, the devil expelled. Now he’s where the people are whom he deceived. ‘Your will be done’ means; ‘May peace come to earth as it exists in heaven’.

3. The anthropological unlocking as the universal paradigm of man’s constitution Our analysis of hesychast experience demonstrates its epistemological transparency. Now we come to the test of its anthropological full-bloodedness: is it possible to extend or generalize the principles found in hesychast anthropology to other domains of anthropological experience and eventually to the totality of the latter? First of all, hesychast anthropology opens the way to general anthropology of spiritual practices (its basics are presented in my works). The set of these ancient practices created by world religions is not big, but they are of considerable importance for understanding the phenomenon of man because they can be seen as schools of pure anthropological experience. The reconstruction of their anthropology is difficult since ...

Believe that it’s just as or even more easy to understand God’s spiritual gifts as it is to breathe the air that gives you life or to eat and drink. Prayer is the breath of the soul, it’s its spiritual nourishment.