Ξένες γλώσσες

(On the feast day of Saint Paul of Thebes and John Kalyvitis)           Our Church honours the two great saints, Paul of Thebes and John Kalyvitis. Their life stories are a little strange but quite fitting for us, monks. The former was among the first people to become monks, since he had truly forsaken the world and went to the desert all alone. Both lived alone with the Lord, something which was unheard of those days and rare. In a sense they were the pioneers of this way of life. The latter, (John Kalyvitis) lived later than Paul. He was a young child when he left home to become a monk, burning with zeal. A few years later, he left his ...

The first step towards pride is vainglory, that is the feeling that I’m something. The second is self-importance, that is the feeling than not only am I something, but something important before God and other people. From vainglory and self-importance arise a whole host of proud thoughts, which are an abomination to God. Self-awareness and the experience of our insignificance can help us here. We should often recall errors we’ve made in the past and rebuke ourselves for them.

The response to our 40 Day Challenge has been excellent … and encouraging. We are heartened that this initiative has been received so well -- Glory be to God! Last week, the focus was on Fasting and Almsgiving. For Week 2 of our Challenge, we are drawing the attention of the faithful to the Church and Icons. Today, the First Sunday of Lent, all Orthodox Christians -- from Canada to Korea, Belgium to Burundi -- commemorated the Triumph of our Holy Faith. This is the faith of the Apostles. This is the faith of the Fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith on which the world is established (Synodikon of the Seventh Ecumenical Council). As we celebrate the Sunday ...

The devil tries in every possible way to harm priests, because thousands can benefit and be saved by one holy priest, just as thousands can be harmed and destroyed by one who doesn’t struggle.

Why can't priests and deacons marry after ordination? Why shouldn't widowed priests be permitted to remarry? What happens if a priest gets divorced? Why doesn't the Church "restore" a married episcopate? Such questions have been asked repeatedly the last century. Though they do not appear on the present agenda of the long-anticipated Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, they often have been cited as the kinds of questions that such a council could consider. Even if lesser authorities – autocephalous churches, diocesan bishops – cannot do so, surely a Great and Holy Council could legislate "reform" in this and other areas of church discipline if only it should choose to do so. Or so many people claim. And many people ...

Unless the truth is Christ, I don’t need it. It’s pure hell. So is justice, love, the beautiful and good, happiness, even God Himself. They’re all hell if they’re not Christ. I don’t want love without Christ; I don’t want truth without Christ; I don’t want justice without Christ; and I don’t want God without Christ.

And today, the heretics are telling us precisely the same thing. They have the nerve to call our icons idols and us idolaters. They have cheek for anything. Let me tell you about an incident that happened recently in a town in Siberia. During the liturgy, two Baptists walked into the church and started shouting that the Orthodox are idolaters and the icons idols. What nonsense! How dare they open their unclean mouths and utters such words, that drip poison, calling us idolaters and the icons idols? This demonstrates that they haven’t properly understood the second commandment of the Mosaic Law: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that ...

It has become a truism for many in the West that faith and science belong to two conflicting world views. An atheist will say that science is rational, based on empirical observation and self-correcting as new theories eventually modify or replace old out-dated ones. Faith, on the other hand, is held to be irrational, defined by static religious texts and immoveable religious authorities, which can be neither challenged nor revised.There is another view that regards this conflict as a needless clash of two Titans of similar breed: fundamentalism in religion and triumphalism in science.  Rather than a genuine standoff between two antagonists we have instead a phoney war based on a cartoon version of both disciplines and, therefore, a misunderstanding ...

Don’t be shocked when you hear what they say against the faith, because those who are doing the talking don’t understand what it really is. You just remember always the basic principle that the early Christians knew very well. They considered people sad if they knew all the sciences but didn’t know God. Equally, they thought those people were blessed who knew God but knew absolutely nothing at all about human affairs. Preserve this truth in your heart as the greatest treasure and continue on your way, looking neither right or left. Let’s not lose our way because of what other people say about religion.

          After the fall man has come under the yoke not only of sin (dispersed throughout his body) but also of the ‘spiritual changes’ and the many twists which co-exist with us as nasty neighbours. All these incite, delude and entice us so that we are unable to safeguard that which we most desire.           According to our Holy Fathers, it is not possible for man to remain without sin even if he lives for only one day. Therefore, we ought to be most preoccupied with our repentance.  Our Fathers say that the Lord is not upset -so to speak- because man had not been successful and fell. The Lord will not judge him for this.  What upsets divine Grace is ...

On the first Sunday of Great Lent, our Holy Church celebrates the triumph of Orthodoxy, the right belief, which trampled down all the heresies and has since become established for ever. This is why this Sunday is known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Heresies made their appearance from the very beginning of Christianity. Christ’s Apostles themselves warned their contemporaries- and us with them- about the dangers from false teachers. The Holy Apostle Peter, in his 2nd universal epistle writes the following: “But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their ...

Depending on children’s own experiences as they grow up, they form and adapt their own individual concept of death, until they arrive at a more realistic way of dealing with it at a later stage. The notion of death can be understood through five basic elements: its universality; its finality; the failure of the vital organs; its causality; and life after death. According to research, the age of a child can roughly determine the stage of development they’ve reached and how far they’re mature enough to understand the phenomenon of death in its entirety. To be more precise, until the age of two, children can’t understand death, though they are aware of absence, usually only that of people close to or ...

26. God’s Judgement certainly gives rise to fear in us, and what we’re told about how it will happen terrifies us. Even though the Kingdom of Heaven is the declared aim of our lives, the eternal fire of hell has also been prepared. It’s only natural that people will ask: ‘How can we avoid the fire of hell? And how will we enter the Kingdom?’. Christ said: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food’ (Matth. 25, 35). Learn the way, then. There’s no need for you to resort to any kind of allegory here. ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you ...

We’re all sinners. Just walking on earth, clad in the flesh, every step’s a sin. The world and its people are wallowing in sin and don’t realize it.

The Service of the Akathistos Hymn is sung at Mattins on the Saturday of the fifth week of Lent or in the evening of Friday of that week, attached to the service of Small Compline. It is sung in full on these days, but in parts on the four Fridays of Lent before then, “as a pre-festal and post-festal” feature. This is because there are elements of the Feast of the Annunciation which are not celebrated because of the “mourning” and compunction of Great Lent. If we examine the Service of the Akathistos Hymn for its content, we see that the individual parts of which it consists (the canon of the Mother of God and the 24 verses of the Salutations ...

The antithesis and consequent collision of faith and science is a problem for Western (Franco-Latin) thought and a pseudo-problem for the Orthodox patristic tradition. This is based on the historical data of the East and the West.   Plato and Aristotle Problem or Pseudo-Problem?      The (supposed) dilemma of faith versus science appears in Western Europe in the seventeenth century with the simultaneous development of the positive sciences. At about this same time, the first Orthodox positions on this issue appear. It is important that these developments in the West were happening without the presence of Orthodoxy. In recent centuries, a spiritual estrangement and differentiation between the (rational) West and the Orthodox East has developed. This fact is outlined by the de-orthodoxiation and ...

Nikolobarbara Our greek orthodox people have connected the weather change of winter time with the orthodox church’s almanac, as they do with every season of the year. So, according to the folk tradition, winter officially begins with the so- called “Nikolobarbara”. (4-6th December). In modern greek history, Saint Barbara’s and Saint Nikolaos’ celebrations are connected to the Greek Army, since these are correspondently the celebration dates of the Greek Artillery and the Navy. Meanwhile, the dates of 4th, 5th and 6th December create a “triangle”, which corresponds to the celebrations of Saint Barbara, Saint Savvas and Saint Nikolaos. This triangle was named “Nikolobarbara” by the people. In the Peloponnese, many people associate this “triangle” with death, because of the bad weather ...

God doesn’t always answer our prayers in a way human reason might expect, but in accordance with His will that we be saved. As long as we’re consistent in our supplications and our hope, God will determine the time of His intervention for our salvation.

25 Let’s be aware of the crucial nature of this event, my beloved, and take the utmost care to ensure that God doesn’t reproach and condemn us. He has no need to carry out any form of investigation or check to know us and our deeds. Don’t say that it was night time when you engaged in fornication, or that there was no-one else about when you practiced magic or whatever else. Your own conscience, your own thoughts judge you. As Saint Paul said, when God judges our hidden deeds, our thoughts and conscience will act as witnesses either for the prosecution or the defence (cf. Rom. 2, 15-16). You’ll be forced to tell the truth to the Face of ...