In English

A priest in Thessaloniki received a tormented young man whom he didn’t know, for confession. He listened carefully to what he had to say, saw the problems that were troubling him, sympathized, and gave him directions as to how he might free himself from his passions and problems. At the end, he gave him absolution. Afterwards, the priest felt the need to speak to the young man in a more graphic way. As a mother takes a child and shows it what’s going on in the world around, he took the young man into the church and cast his eyes around looking for an appropriate scene. He stopped at the icon of Christ saving Peter from the waves, the one ...

If we recall the words of the great Elders, if we study them, it’ll be hard for us to fall into sin, difficult for us to neglect ourselves. Because, if we act precisely as they advise us, and don’t ignore the little things and what we might think of as insignificant, then we won’t fall into great and grievous sins.

1. Some Pages of History Cultural consciousness of our times formed up by the age of Enlightenment considers relations of different religions and faiths as marked predominantly by discords, conflicts and wars. But inter-religious relations have always been one of the most important factors in civilization dynamics, and the need of their peaceful character has always been strong. Therefore attempts of contact and dialogue as well as the search for some strategy or model of harmonious relations between spiritual traditions and religions, in fact, have never ceased. Their systematic and more or less uninterrupted history begins approximately in the middle of the XIX century. In the earlier periods, in various cultural spaces we find scattered events that could be regarded as ...

By God’s Grace, a fortnight has passed since the end of the 2nd International Conference on Digital Media and Orthodox Pastoral Care, which was held at the congenial conference centre of the Orthodox Academy of Crete, at Kolymbari, Hania, with the blessing of His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew II. The conference was hosted by Metropolitan Amphilochios of Kiasimos and Selinos. The centre and spiritual heart of the Conference was the Holy Altar of the venerable basilica of the Stavropegic Monastery of Our Lady the Guide, Gonia, where, every day, the head of the conference celebrated the Divine Eucharist, a sacrament of the Church and the centre of the spiritual existence of its shepherds. The guiding force behind this five-day spiritual ...

When God sees that you attribute to Him whatever you’re managed to achieve through your own efforts, He then, in turn, gives you what is properly His: divine, spiritual things.

What are the devil’s arrows? They’re wicked desires, unclean thoughts, devastating passions, rage, jealousy, envy, anger, hatred, love of money and every other form of indolence. All of these can be demolished by the sword of the Spirit, that is the word of God.

A sign of the first kind of fear is to hate sin and to become angry with it, as if you’ve been wounded by a wild animal. A sign of perfect fear is to love virtue and to fear alteration. Because none of us is immutable. In every matter of this life we should fear the fall.

There’s no other factor that’s so effective as various sorrows, self-inflicted or otherwise, in bringing the mind to a humble outlook. The impossibility of its redemption teaches it in practical terms just how insignificant and inconsequential it is. Then the Lord’s words ‘You can do nothing without me’ (Jn. 15, 5) become perfectly clear and, with the assistance of Grace, the mind ascends to the real world of the kingdom above.

The 3rd Ecumenical Synod dealt with the heresy of Nestorios, the Patriarch of Constantinople. It condemned him and defined the faith as regards the theanthropic Christ and Our Most Holy Lady the Mother of God. This was after an agreement, known as the Formula for Reunion, was reached in 433 between Saint Cyril of Alexandria and John of Antioch. After the demise of these two Patriarchs, however, their fanatical disciples re-opened the issue, in the belief that both of them had retreated from their previously-held positions, and this caused a number of problems for the Church. One of the protagonists was Eftykhis (Eutyches) who taught that our Lord Jesus Christ did, indeed, have two natures, before they were unified, but recognized only ...

When you give yourself completely to the power and love of God, you’ll realize that everything happens because God wants it to, or that He allows it.

What is the greatest glory of Saint Paul the Apostle? What was the greatest of God’s gifts to him? Why should we call him blessed and envy him? Saint John Chrysostom answers: ‘I call Paul blessed not so much because he was caught up into Paradise as because he was imprisoned for Christ. I don’t call him blessed so much because he heard ineffable words as because he suffered in chains for Christ. Paul himself confirms this when he writes to the Ephesians. He doesn’t say: “I urge you as a person who has heard ineffable words”, but “I beg you as a prisoner in Christ”’. ‘The hands of Saint Paul weren’t so worthy when he cured the cripple in Lystra as they ...

It’s shameful to waste our time today and then to think back nostalgically on the past, when such sadness does us no good at all.

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.

The root of every evil is vainglory and pleasure. If you don’t hate those passions, you won’t be able to get rid of any passion at all.

Listen to me, listen to me all you harsh judges of other people’s sins. If it’s true- and it really is- that ‘as you judge, so will you be judged’ (Matth. 7, 2), then you can be certain that, as many sins as we’ve condemned our neighbour for- be they physical or spiritual- we will also fall into them. It’s impossible for things to be otherwise.

We haven’t reached the bottom yet, we’ve still got some way to go, but, when we do, things will start to sort themselves out.

In its efforts to restrict the practice of self-mutilation, the Church adopted strict canons. According to the Apostolic Canons, a eunuch who had performed self-mutilation would be debarred from holy orders; for he is a self-murderer and an enemy of God’s creation (Canon 22). In the event that an active cleric were to castrate himself, he was to be defrocked, because he was considered a murderer of himself: ‘If anyone who is a clergyman should mutilate himself, let him be defrocked; for he is a murderer of himself’ (Canon 23). Finally, any Christian at all who commits this act was to be excommunicated for a period of three years: ‘A layman who mutilates himself shall be excommunicated for three years: ...

The Lord’s uncreated Grace supports us like a mother and not only saves us from every calamity, but also comforts our spirit with the sweetness of its presence inspiring us with courage for new defences and attacks. In sufferings and trials in general, our sprit grows and our spiritual knowledge expands. ‘In my sorrow you have saved me, giving respite to my soul’. (Ps.4, 1).

1. At the turn of the 19th century, German poet and mystical philosopher Novalis wrote his famous essay Christendom or Europe. Already the title of it was stating clearly the identity of the two historical phenomena; and though Novalis described the process through which Europe was gradually losing “the beautiful chief characteristics of these truly Christian times,” he was convinced that the original identity could not be lost. Europe and the Western World, could be Christianity, better or worse, but they could not be anything else at their core, since there is not (and there cannot be) another ultimate meaning of their historical existence. “Ultimate meaning cannot be annihilated, it can be just clouded, weakened, superseded by other meanings.” And we ...

‘They Brought a Paralytic to Him’ Today, our Lord performs a sign and a miracle in the Gospel reading. The miracle is that He forgave the sins of the paralytic and the sign is that He also cured him in the body. The miracle has to do with the soul, the sign with the body. Together they form the complete cure of the paralytic. The person of the paralytic The paralytic wasn’t some neurotic person who’d sinned deeply and was consumed by guilt to the point of paralysis, as a psychiatrist might tell us. The man wasn’t neurotic, but certainly a sinner and his illness was, indeed, the result and consequence of a particular sin. Efthymios Zigavinos says that many illnesses are the ...