In English

Mallards ducklings with mother “Let there be banished hence dejection born of passions, and thoughts that rise like tempests. In this wise shall the springtime of faith sprout up and blossom forth.” (Matins Aposticha, Thursday of Thomas week) Here we are in the springtime. Everything is blooming--the time of budding has already past. And yet we can miss it: not merely the season of the year, but the season of the Church. Thoughts besiege us. Dejection is always near. The passions don’t go away. But where we put our focus makes all the difference. I can sit here all day looking at the glowing screen before me and never walk outside to smell the blossoms and see the new life pushing out ...

We’re very odd creatures and often wonder about all the mysteries that surround us. We know a few things about the world, but in reality, not very much at all. We’re a mystery even to ourselves. ‘Who are we and what are we?’ we ask ourselves. The time span of our lives is very short but even in this brief period we’re given lots of opportunities to become perfect in good things and to turn to the absolute Good.

Saint Justin Popović, (14 June) The holy and God-bearing Father Justin the New, from the Monastery of Ćelije (the Holy Archangels), was born on 25 March 1894, on the morning of the Annunciation, in the town of Vranje in Southern Serbia. His father was a priest called Spyridon and his mother was Anastasia. At baptism he was given the name Blagoje . His father came from a long line of clerics which had given the Orthodox Church at least seven priests, as can be seen from his surname ‘Popović’, meaning ‘son of a priest’. Even as a child he often went with his parents to visit the nearby Monastery of Saint Prohor at Pčinja, where, in 1929, he witnessed the cure ...

We’ve come to associate the great Elders almost exclusively with monasteries, and particularly with the Holy Mountain, even though great figures among the clergy, preachers or even ordinary parish priests are often men of virtue, a real light for their flock. I shall attempt here to sketch an outline of the figure of one such, and will refer to some of his teachings. I should first explain that the priest in question came to our area to serve, although he was originally from somewhere else. He told me that he’d first been a preacher at a very popular place of pilgrimage, which was visited by many people and, naturally, there was the prospect that he’d gradually be promoted to the priesthood. ...

Struggle, prayer, faith. Let us have humility, modesty, honorability. The power of God is very great. Prayer always does good. Whatever we do, let’s do it for God and not out of vanity. God accepts even a little fasting, provided it’s undertaken humbly.

In the ‘studium generale’ of Paris, professors of the Old and New Testament also taught homiletics to monks and the order of ‘regolari’ . Peter the Chanter distinguishes three ways of approaching Scripture: lectio, disputatio, praedicatio (reading, disputation, preaching) . The audience consisted of bishops, clerics, monks and students. The most important teachers were Peter Abelard and Peter the Lombard. They developed an allegorical interpretation and branched off into more general subjects. They cultivated the Scholastic philosophy in their preaching, which was in the style of the sermo modernus , or theme-based, in contrast to the homilia antiqua . It was based on a ‘theme’, which was brief, complete and clear. It had recourse to the Scriptures or ...

Those who strive well spiritually, who have begun the struggle in the arena of devotion, will have to withstand bravely the blows of their opponents, always retaining the hope of the glory that will be given with the heavenly crowns.

11 June 1900: a day of Diocletian-like persecution against the numerous Christians of the vast land of China. A day of anger and fire and upheaval. The Boxer rebels vented their fury in particular against the Orthodox, who all together numbered no more than seven hundred, and struck at Christ’s “little flock” in a mad rage… It may be that they held many grievances against the foreigners and their various “missionaries”, who were not always innocent of worldly ambitions and self-serving considerations. But the small Orthodox Church of China, the holy offspring of the Russian missionary zeal of older times, had shown and proved from early on that its concern and task was exclusively preaching and spreading the Kingdom of God, and ...

People have to learn to listen properly if they’re going to communicate properly. It’s important that you should build any relationship on humility, which means that you have to emerge from yourself and give yourself to the other person completely. In this way, you learn the art of living properly with other people, without absorbing them or being absorbed yourself.

It’s always pleasant to follow a thought in another language that you know because it’ll be expressed differently from the way your native language puts it. Hearing it an a language you don’t know at all is surprising in a different way- something that’s partially secret and unfamiliar. the Gospel is read in whatever languages those present can manage: Greek first, of course, then Slavonic, perhaps Turkish, Armenian, Albanian, sometimes in Arabic or Latin and so on. I have a little book, which was published in 1870 in Constantinople, containing the Divine Liturgy of Great Saturday and the Gospel in various languages for Vespers on Easter Sunday. Naturally, the first version is in Greek. This is followed by the ...

“Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2Co 12:10). His All-Holiness delivering the homily during the Synodal Divine Liturgy (Holy and Great Council) for the Sunday of All Saints 2016 at the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul in Chania, Crete. On June 11th the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Apostle Bartholomew. One of the Twelve Great Apostles, he preached Christ and the good news of salvation throughout Asia, including India, and finally in Armenia. It was there, in Albanopolis of Armenia – the first country to officially declare Christianity the state religion – where Bartholomew was crucified, and where many miracles ...

We live on earth and don’t see God; we can’t see Him. But if the Holy Spirit enters your soul, then you’ll see God, as Saint Stephen did. The soul and the mind, through the Holy Spirit, immediately recognize that He is the Lord. In the same way, through the Holy Spirit, Saint Symeon recognized the infant in the temple as the Lord. Just as Saint John the Baptist did. Also through the Holy Spirit, Saint John recognized the Lord and presented Him to the people as such. In heaven and on earth, God is known only through the Holy Spirit, not through human knowledge. Young people who haven’t studied much at all still know the Lord through the Holy ...

Fairly or not, the times in which we live have been criticized for many reasons. And yet, difficult though they certainly are, they’ve concealed treasures, engendered small and great saints. Apart from those officially recognized, there have also been hidden saints throughout the twentieth century. Blessed Methodia, from Kimolos (+1908); Saint John, from Kronstadt, (+1908); Bishop Efthymios of Zela (+1921); Bishop Prokopios of Iconium (+1922); Bishop Grigorios of Cydoniae (+1922); Bishop Amvrosios of Moschonisia  (+1922); Bishop Chrystostomos of Smyrna (+1922); blessed Anatoly the Younger, the wonderful starets of the Monastery of Optina (+1922);  and a host of blessed and new martyrs in Russia, Georgia, Estonia, Poland and other parts of Europe, Asia and America. Also in the twentieth century we have saints: ...

Just as bread is the food of the body, so prayer nourishes the mind. Don’t wish for what you think is good for you, but what is pleasing to God. Then you’ll be untroubled and joyful in your prayer.

…who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again. And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented– of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of ...

Woe betide Christians who say: ‘This or that political party expresses the way I feel’. They’re a long way from being conscientious Christians. No party expresses the way Christians feel. And you can see that, in some things, all the parties, from the extreme right to the extreme left, are in agreement.

At the Ecumenical Synod at Chalcedon (451), a considerable number of Christians went their own way. They were a group of Churches (the Coptic in Egypt, the Armenian, the Ethiopian, the Syro-Jacobite, the Malankara Syrian Church in India and the Eritrean) which severed relations with the rest of the body of the Church (which constituted what we now call the ancient Patriarchates and the Church of Rome). This break occurred as a result of the Christological discord of the time, regarding the hypostatic union of the two natures (divine and human) in the person of Christ. It appears, however, that this lamentable development was due more to political, cultural and other factors, rather than to theological and ecclesiastical. Saint John the ...

Now try to become as close to God as you can through prayer and a strict life. Keep the rule your spiritual guide has given you and try to feel God.