Ξένες γλώσσες

The April 2 edition of Newsweek Magazine featured a piece (just in time for Western Easter) by journalist Andrew Sullivan.  It is a heartfelt piece, urging its readers to ignore (i.e. reject) all forms of contemporary Christianity and to embrace Jesus instead.  Reading this thoughtful essay, I could not shake the feeling that Mr. Sullivan was intending his piece to be edgy and radical.  But for those whose reading is not confined to Newsweek Magazine, it was painfully apparent that Mr. Sullivan was in fact re-issuing The Same Old Thing.  Far from being new and radical in his proposal, he was trudging down a well-trodden road in the wake of many people before him.  The road even has a name, ...

Avoid unsavoury company and your soul will always be very peaceful.

The problem of power and the innate tendency towards its arbitrary use has exercised the human mind since at least the time that political philosophy has existed as a discipline. ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’*. Princes and governments are by far the most dangerous elements in any society. Excessive power is inherently dangerous and produces negative results. It leads to grossly mistaken judgments and decisions, disregard of danger, egocentricity and a lack of compassion towards others. Domination and force are two necessary components of the exercise of power. In the end, power can make its appearance in all human relations and the critical mind should examine the ways in which it is exercised and the repercussions ...

Therefore, the prophets were advocating repentance and a return to the Lord’s path. When all is said and done, everything is futile; both our well being and our wealth, even the accomplishment of our country’s liberation  (translator’s note: from Turkish occupation) is a secular event.  The Lord wishes people firstly to be liberated in themselves and then to live in a liberated country. He wishes to see us being free from sin, passions, apostasy and the darkness which descends on us when He is absent from our lives. Only then will truly liberated people manage to acquire a liberated country.  If your country is free, yet you are slave to sin and your passions, then you will cause your country’s ...

The Firefly ship Serenity             For a preacher who loves to mine contemporary culture (that ephemeral thing) for theological nuggets, the late TV series “Firefly” represents a rare gift.  Each of the all-too-brief fifteen episodes and the movie “Serenity” based upon it offer a number of lines in which the perceptive theologian can find Christian truth.  (You just need to have your ears wide open, and your brown coat on.)  Here I would like to recall two of them, both of them much needed Firefly insights for believers who strive to remain faithful to Jesus Christ in the midst of an increasingly secular world.             The first comes from a conversation (make that “interrogation”), in which Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of ...

Give your heart to the Lord and He’ll provide you with all the vitamins and energy you need to prevent you from collapsing.

Arius was influenced by Jewish monotheism and the philosophical concept of transcendence and by the absolute property of God, the cosmological dyalistic perceptions and especially by the teaching of Philo about the «created» Logos, through whom God created the world Generally, using Greek terms, Arianism denied that the Son is of one essence, nature, or substance with God; He is not consubstantial -homoousios- with the Father, and therefore not like Him, or equal in dignity, or co-eternal, or within the real sphere of Deity. The Logos which St. John exalts is an attribute, Reason, belonging to the Divine nature, not a person distinct from another, and therefore is a Son merely in figure of speech. These consequences follow upon the ...

Books by people who see religion as a profound misunderstanding or dangerous delusion have proliferated recently. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins has been on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks. Sam Harris’s The End of Faith sold well, prompting the author to write a sequel of sorts, Letter to a Christian Nation. Most of these attacks on religion have a common focus: religion is generally lumped with fundamentalism (nonfundamentalist believers are seen as timid, not really willing to go where their more benighted brethren do); and, like fundamentalists, the attackers seem to know exactly what they mean by God. An equally fundamentalist belief in scientism replaces religious belief, insisting that there is only one kind of knowledge that ...

On Thursday 14th September 2017 Australians witnessed a new level of bullying from the Yes side at Sydney University. Most of us heard or read about this. However what many failed to discuss was the manner in which the No side witnessed to the truth about marriage. Amongst the No side students was one Greek Orthodox student, whose witness was truly inspiring. If all the clergy and faithful witnessed for Christian marriage with such calmness and inspiration today’s public debate would have been in a better place. This is what happened. Some young people who attend the University of Sydney witnessed how a clash occurred shortly after midday last Thursday near a free BBQ stall which was advertising “It’s OK to say ...

When people are in a state of grace, the soul is calm and serene. No-one can provoke them to anger. And then, it’s expected that such people will make a conscious decision to reject evil. They have to defeat all the enemies of their soul while they’re still in this life. Our enemies aren’t made of flesh and blood. If they were we could hide or flee from them. But our spiritual enemies are everywhere.

Indeed we are presently facing some tough times which affect everyone. It seems that we are all aboard a ship- the ship is our small country- sailing in rough seas without knowing where we are or where we are heading to. Whenever certain hardships afflict a country, a family, a society they are real and painful. One does not offer consolation, however, by saying that nothing is happening. The correct way is to recognize that we are facing certain hardships and to look for ways to deal with them. When a country or a person faces hardship and is troubled and suffers, is worried and faces dire consequences, this does not mean that everything was caused by God, because God does ...

Romanian Monastery "You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden." —Matthew 5:14  One of the paradoxes of Orthodox missiology is that in order to reach the world with God's message, the saints have often been sent into the wilderness. From there, their lives radiate the power and grace of God in such a way that the world flocks to them, and "the wilderness blossoms like a rose." For the fullness of the Christian gospel that has been preached by Orthodox Fathers and Mothers through the centuries does not consist simply in intellectual propositions, but in the power of lives transfigured, "deified," through communion with God. "That . . . which we ...

It’s a great thing for there to be concord and love in life. Then again, it’s a bad thing to have discord and enmity. Through harmony and love we build our life; with discord and hatred we ruin it. Because our life’s like a structure and we’re the craftsmen building it. Either building it or ruining it, depending on the way we treat people and behave towards them. This treatment and behaviour which builds and constructs us is what the Master Builder of our life and salvation, Jesus Christ, talks to us about today. Photo by Dimitris Iliopoulos ‘As you wish others to do to you, do so to them. If you love those who love you, what credit is that ...

Spiritual people know everything, because their mind is the mind of Christ. Concerning the things here on earth, they know that they’re fleeting and the things above are permanent and immortal. They know that they themselves will find salvation in the future, whereas those who don’t believe will be sent to hell.

International conference commemorating the 1700th Anniversary of the Edict Milan, 31/5/2013- 2/6/2013, Nis of Serbia Emperor Constantine and the theology of Christianity from his autocracy to the second Ecumenical Council ABSTRACT Since his autocracy to his death, Constantine the Great helped the Christianity to be the main religion to all over the empire. This period of time many heresies appeared. They put the unity of Christianity and its teaching in a great danger. Educated people as Arius, Apollinarius, Marcellus, Eunomius and Macedonius tried to explained the nature of God, His actions and His names according to human relationships, their thoughts and their beliefs. The result was a catastrophe, because new heresies were introduced to the Empire. Orthodox Fathers, as Athanasius the Great and Cappadocians ...

Consequently, all the functions within the life of the Church pertinent to expressing the faith, determining the truth, and authoritatively interpreting and preserving it, are related to the eucharistic identity of the Church, and for thiat reason they are all the responsibility of the eucharistic community as a whole. Even synodality, the ultimate criterion of the truth, is mutually inter-related with the Eucharist. In 1848 the Patriarchs of the Orthodox East turned down Pope Pius’ IX invitation to participate in Vatican I by saying: “after all, in our tradition neither patriarchs nor synods have ever been able to introduce new elements, because what safeguards our faith is the very body of the Church, i.e. the people themselves”. Thus, consciously or ...

We have to learn the value and meaning of life as an arena where we strive, before our departure for the heavens. We should remember what was wisely said: ‘Pain was my teacher and I learned a great deal’.

1 COR. xi. 23. I received from the Lord that which also I handed on to you, how that the Lord Jesus, on the night in which He was betrayed, took bread, etc. 1.  The teaching of the Blessed Paul is in itself sufficient to give you full assurance concerning those Divine Mysteries, having been deemed worthy of which you become of the same body and blood as Christ. For you have just heard him say distinctly, that, on the night when He was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread, and when He had given thanks, broke it, and gave it to His disciples, saying: “Take, eat, this is My Body”; and having taken the cup and given thanks, He said: ...

Father Sofian Boghiu (7 October  1912 – 14 September 2002) Blessed are the blameless in the way who walk in the law of the Lord (Psalm 118:1). Father Sofian Bogiu was chosen by God from an early age to serve His Church with a triple blessing of gifts: the gift of singing, the gift of icon painting, and the gift of speaking. Using his talents with humility during his luminous ninety-year sojourn on earth, he fulfilled the sacramental words of the Divine Liturgy, “Let us commend ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God.” Born in Bessarabia and entering the monastic life as a child, Serghie (his baptismal name) eagerly learned church singing at the Dobruşa Monastery’s school. Later ...

Passions are contagious in our spiritual organism. Wickedness, for example. Even if it’s not expressed with words or deeds but is concealed in the heart and can barely be discerned- perhaps only in the face or the eye- it’s transmitted to the soul against whom we harbour it.