The Lord has taken ninety-nine of the steps needed for your salvation. Are you not prepared to take the last remaining step in order to be saved, especially when ‘… in this way an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you (2 Peter, 1, 11).
The site near the sea where the Russian monastery lies isn’t among the most beautiful locations on the Holy Mountain. The areas surrounding many other monasteries are much more picturesque and attractive. The spacious monastery (all white, with green cupolas and roofs) was built without a plan- here and there, up and down, not all at the same time- and seems charming, thanks to this irregularity, but its architectural value is considerably less than that of various Greek monasteries, and especially than the wonderful Bulgarian monastery of Zograf. Before the monastery lies the sea, which is often very monotonous and is limited on the horizon by the blue line of the peninsula of Sithonia. Behind the monastery, almost touching the windows ...
The life of the beloved Eldress Theosemni is a Synaxarion account of perfection in self-emptying and martyric asceticism in silence and humility. Her personage and her venerable example cannot be appreciated through the description and listing of her virtues, for it is impossible to explain, through words, the balance and grace of a person who spoke through her silence. By the Nun Theoxeni, Abbess of the Holy Monastery of Chrysopigi, Hania, Crete The Eldress Theosemni, Anastasia-Aristea Dimtsa in the world, was born in Larissa in the year 1938, the third child of pious parents. When she was just four years old, she lost her father and the care of the family fell to its newly widowed mother, who was from Eastern Romylia ...
If you want to combat callousness in the soul, it helps to read the divine Scriptures and the words of compunction written by the God-bearing Fathers, to recall God’s judgement and the exit of the soul from the body, and the encounter with the dread powers which combine to work evil in this brief and miserable life. And we should remember that moment in the future, at the terrible and impartial judgment-seat of Christ, when we shall have to give an account before God and the holy angels and the whole of creation in general, not only for our actions, but also for our words and thoughts. You should always remember the verdict of the terrible and just judge on ...
Icon of the Resurrection It has become commonplace to hear or read that 'the Orthodox Church is in a state of crisis'. Of course this is untrue, indeed it is ontologically impossible, for the gates of Hell shall not prevail. What people mean is rather that the outward, fallen human organization of the Church is in crisis. In one local church a Patriarch resigns and many of its bishops admit to having lied about a bloodthirsty regime. In another church the Patriarch is seriously ill, married Metropolitans vie for his place. Bishops declare themselves hostile to monasticism, though they themselves are supposed to be monks. Other bishops openly proclaim their sympathies with Freemasonry. A slavish and shameful attitude to the ...
We should consider those people blessed, literally, who live in communion with God, even if they live in a furnace, as did the three holy children in Babylon, or if they’re locked in with lions, or even if they’re in the belly of a whale. We should envy them, in the good sense, and consider them truly happy and joyful. Because they don’t mourn over the present good things of this earth, but rejoice in the hope which is begotten from that which is to come and which is eternal.
Car Packed to Move An Elder said: Just as a tree cannot bear fruit if it is often transplanted, so neither can a monk bear fruit if he frequently changes his abode. In an age when people change addresses as often as those in past generations changed their socks, stability of place is almost unheard of. When I was a young man I moved from city to city quite often. One year alone I lived in New York City, Berkeley, California and Portland, Oregon. If I hated a job, I'd move. If my social life was on the rocks, I'd move. Reinventing myself in a new location became the norm. In my attempt to discover my place in this world, I ...
There are three enemies which war against us and bring us temptations until the day we die: the devil, the pleasures of the world and the body. These three enemies fight against us with every kind of temptation and there are very few Christians who, with Christ’s help manage to emerge victorious in the struggle against the temptations and pleasures of this world.
2. Preaching in the first Christian centuries We have very little information regarding preaching in the first two centuries. We don’t know how preaching developed with the Gentiles as its audience, the content of preaching as regards the catechumens, nor the way these two forms of preaching meshed with the words of comfort and support expressed in the sermon at the Divine Liturgy. In Justin the Philosopher’s Apology (1, 67, 1-6), the oldest evidence we have for the celebration of the Divine Liturgy on a Sunday, Biblical readings are mentioned, as well as words of comfort and support. The content of the sermon, however, hasn’t survived . At the beginning of the 2nd century, the second Epistle attributed to Clement II ...
Faith is a child-like concept in a simple heart. Knowledge examines and discusses whether something is true. Knowledge preserves the laws of nature and is followed by fear, whereas faith is followed by hope. The knowledge we have as people is poor and deficient, but Heaven and Earth are not great enough to contain the treasures of faith. Those who depend on knowledge do not walk on the waters or on hot coals. But with the power of faith, many people have walked upon waters and hot coals without suffering any harm. Faith has inexhaustible treasures and fills the hearts of the faithful with pleasure. Knowledge is needed merely as a stairway so that we can attain to faith. Those ...
Bishop Pankraty of Troitsa with Metropolitan Jonah If one is the type that is easily discouraged, one can find today much that is discouraging—secularism is making inroads, even in the Orthodox Church, men of power scorn and minimize the insights proffered by Christians, the Church makes up a small fraction of society, and our bishops are sometimes not up to meeting the multitude of challenges faced by the Church. The temptation for those easily discouraged is to look back fondly and nostalgically to an imagined Golden Age for the Church. There are a number of contenders for this Golden Age. One of the most enticing contenders is the fourth century. After all, this century saw two ecumenical councils (Nicea in ...
People labour and struggle to acquire knowledge which is of only little importance and is applicable for only a limited period of time. This is knowledge which contributes to meeting the needs, comforts and peculiarities of earthly life. We entirely neglect the essential, necessary knowledge and work, which are the only reason we’ve been granted earthly existence. That is, the knowledge of God and our good relationship with Him, through Christ our Redeemer.
For approximately 2,000 years, the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ has continued uninterruptedly in the world according to His promise. If He should return today, would He recognize His Bride, the Church? If the faith and the traditions of His Church have remained constant, He would certainly be able to recognize the Church which He established. Have those traditions and the faith remained strong in America? A number of holy people of our Church, including Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios of Constantinople and Patriarch Elias of the Patriarchate of Antioch, both of blessed memory, did not think so when they visited the United States a few years ago. They immediately perceived that the spirit of materialism and secularism had infiltrated the lives ...
The benevolent will of God is not merely that each of us should be saved, but that we should enter into the perfection of knowledge, that is deification, which is the absolute will of God, for which He came to earth.
The Ravens of Farne: A Tale of Saint Cuthbert by Donna Farley published by Conciliar Press ISBN: 978-0-9822770-5-8 Softcover, 32 pages, $14.95 Two years before this story about the ravens of Farne was released, my family went on a pilgrimage to Europe. One of the stops along the way was the small tidal island of Lindisfarne, a stony piece of land in Northern England. We had to venture out of our way to visit there, traveling first by train, then taxi, and timing our adventure just right so that the tide was low when we crossed from mainland to island. It was undoubtedly worth all the effort. Even hundreds of years later there remains an aura of holiness, a lasting beauty that is not just ...
Ascension of the Lord The time between the Ascension of Christ and the Day of Pentecost marked something of an “in-between” period for Christ’s disciples. They had been instructed at the time of the Ascension to remain in Jerusalem and wait “for the promise.” Ten days later the promise was fulfilled and the Holy Spirit filled the fledgling Church with the Holy Spirit. It has been a fairly common treatment by preachers of the gospel to compare our own times to those of the Church-in-waiting. It is pointed out that we live “in-between” Christ’s first and second coming, and therefore live in an in-between period. The conclusion of such sermons is to speak about various strategies of waiting. The conclusion ...
‘Whoever observes the whole of the law, but errs in one thing, is guilty of everything’ (Jas. 2, 10). And the damage is unimaginable! You lose eternity, that is, everything. This is what happened to the young man in the Gospel, and is the case with so many others in life. The devil binds people with so many ropes. But whether we’re bound by one rope or another, the fact remains that we’re bound to the devil. Say that the devil’s bound us with a hundred ropes and, through our struggles, we manage to free ourselves of ninety-nine. We’re still not free. We’re still bound, even if it’s only by one rope. To be free of our bonds, we have ...
We all need to wake up and become spiritually vigilant. Spiritual vigilance is an important thing. We have an immortal soul. We have to go forwards, we have to find Christ. Saint Porfyrios used to say that Christ is everything, Christ is love, He’s the Father, He’s our friend, He’s the essence of our life.
