In English

During the nineteenth century the newly created Greek State attempted to become European, focused on its progress and modernization. Of course, this tactic had a catalytic influence on the direction of the Church and especially on monasticism. Our text focuses on some basic ideas, within the framework of a variety of observations, and does not make the claim of being complete. Furthermore, despite the plethora of studies of monasticism covering the post-revolutionary years, the absence in the bibliography of a comprehensive-systematic study of the developmental path of the monastic life, from the official declaration of Greek Autocephaly (1850) up to our era, was evident. Source: Agioritiki Photothiki The New Spirit and Climate             Already, from the end of the eighteenth century, a new ...

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 8, 41-56) is truly wonderful. It has to do with the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman with an issue of blood. According to the text, an important figure in the synagogue, Jairus, approached Jesus and asked Him to accompany him to his home to cure his only daughter, who was twelve years old and at death’s door. Christ set off for the house, but a woman who’d been suffering from hemorrhaging for twelve years and had found no cure from doctors approached Him and touched the hem of His garment. When she did so, the bleeding stopped. Christ realized that power had left Him and asked who it was who’d touched Him. ...

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

If it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven, then it should have been virtually impossible for the beautiful and glamorous Ana­stasia to enter the service of Christ. The attributes that make for living a life of ease in the grand style are obstacles to be surmounted if one prefers to lead a life of hard work in a simple manner for the glory of God. To her everlasting credit, Anastasia, who was born with every advantage, willingly surrendered the flower-strewn path of her noble birth to walk down the perilously rock-strewn path of Christianity. Anastasia was born into one of Rome's most celebrated ...

We find two Anastasias in the Lives of the saints, both of whom were of prominent and famous families and who confessed their faith. Both were daughters of mighty Rome. The first was married against her will by her parents, but never came together with her husband, nor even slept with him, pretending she was ill, though in reality because he was a pagan. She was thus able to preserve her virginity, because, a few days later, her husband died. She therefore lived  the whole of her life in asceticism, prudently and with all the virtues, giving all her property as alms to the poor. She visited the holy martyrs in their places of confinement, urged them to bear their torments ...

Upon hearing the Greek axioms “Molon Lave” (“Come and take them”) and “Oxi” (“No”), every proud Greek is awestruck. He is filled with pride. He admires. He praises his predecessors. He kneels and shows them the honour they deserve. Anyone who studies the two phrases of “Come and take them” and “No”, they see the boldness of these words. In both cases, the enemy outnumbered the Greeks. Logically, the Greek army should not have been victorious. And yet, they won in both situations. They were victorious, because they were smarter than their enemy. They were victorious, because they knew they were right. They won because they said, “We fight now for all the marbles.” We sacrifice everything, even if the only thing ...

What are attractive pleasures for other people are stumbling-blocks for the faithful. Christ alters our ‘tastes’. Those who are reborn have a different kind of joy. They’re not drawn to and don’t enjoy such things. And if sometimes they do get involved, it’s because they’ve been led astray, not for any satisfaction they find.

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 ...