Ξένες γλώσσες

We should feel that Christ’s our friend, because He is. He says so Himself when He says: ‘You are my friends…’. We should look upon Him and approach Him as a friend. Do we fall? Do we sin? With familiarity, love and trust we should run to Him. Not fearing that He’s going to punish us, but with boldness that will make us feel we’re his friends. We should say: ‘Lord I’ve done this or that, I’ve fallen. Forgive me’. And at the same time, we should feel that He loves us, that He’ll receive us tenderly and will forgive us. Sin shouldn’t separate us from Christ. When we believe that He loves us and we love Him, we don’t ...

In recognition of the state of the culture, those in authority within the Church have the awesome responsibility to unceasingly teach the doctrines of the Faith especially in the crucial area of morality. Sadly, many have chosen to remain silent. In a few cases doubtless, this silence was occasioned by culture-related attitudes manifested especially among those whose background is reflective of foreign birth and nurture far from the American concepts of freedom of speech and dissent. Then there is the silence of the naive, those who believe as did one elderly bishop that "Orthodox people don’t do such things." But the silence of the vast majority who should have spoken but have chosen to remain mute is the result of ...

We have started registration for the 9th edition, 4-8 July 2016 This year’s edition will combine the holiday atmosphere of a festival via evening concerts, services and interactive meetings with that of a workshop, through various practical courses (Large Ensemble, Women’s Ensemble, courses of intonation and interval theory, canto and instrument technique). The academic level of the event will be increased, like every year, by lectures on liturgical, historical or palaeography topics, meant to complete the training that a Byzantine music chanter will receive during five days. Main Topic We shall focus our attention, via training courses in psaltic art interpretation, on the Relation between ornaments, intervals and stresses in the musical execution of theses. From a musical-liturgical perspective, this year, discussions ...

Veria, 6 June, 2016. Most people, even Christians, are frustrated, discouraged and wearied by the sorrows of life, which are unavoidable: ‘We must suffer many tribulations to enter the kingdom of God’ . We shouldn’t see the sorrows of this life through the prism of transitory reasoning, but through that of eternity. This is when life acquires meaning and the meaning of sorrow in our lives is revealed to us: in the end they form the way of the Cross which we must follow in order to reach salvation and sanctification. Saint Luke, Archbishop of the Crimea and a doctor, is one of the saints who really did experience the way of the Cross and, with this experience and the gift of ...

People who chase the ‘prayer’ as if it were gold, and who put ever ‘cent’ to good use, can overcome everything, accept and bear anything. Then God and His Mother protect them.

It was also in the ’20s that the “correction” facilities were set up, the forced labour camps known as gulags. Within a few years they had spread throughout the vast country. It all began with a monastery, the Solovetstky, which was built in the 14th century on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. It was a large monastic centre, a central monastery with lots of sketes throughout the islands. It was bitterly cold in the winter, which lasted 8-9 months. Since it was impossible to escape from, the Solovetsky monastery was an ideal location for a prison camp. The inmates worked16 hours a day, and if their productivity was not up to scratch they were executed as saboteurs. If they ...

In his work Outline, on the subject of the toleration of other religions, he poses the question of religious freedom from his own point of view, which is different from that of Voltaire. According to Voulgaris, freedom of thought can exist only in humanistic arts and sciences: ‘In the divine and mysterious dogmas of the faith, freedom of thought is insolence, because for anyone to seek reason in what is beyond reason is dementia’. When the soul tries ‘to see with another light’ what is taught by Holy Scripture and the Church, it is blinded and deceived. It is not permissible for people to seek freedom such as this for themselves or for others. And devout rulers should take steps ...

If you ever find yourself on the Holy Mountain or in other old churches, you will notice that many of them are painted red. If you ask the monks, they will tell you that the colour symbolizes the blood of Christ and His saints. It wants to remind us that, whereas the various religions or ideologies spread via propaganda, violence or oppression, the Church of Christ won people’s hearts through weakness, the blood of Christ and the saints, martyrdom and witness. There is not a single Orthodox Church that has not experienced its own martyrdom. And nor is there a saint that has not passed through his or her furnace of sorrows, temptations or martyrdom.  In the 20th century, the Russian ...

People who are stubborn, quarrelsome and cantankerous are vain and empty. They strive against other people until they’re exhausted, but, no matter how tired they are, they won’t give in. They take no thought for themselves and behave as if they’re possessed by insanity. What’s important to them isn’t truth, but the imposition of their will on others. This blocks out their reason and they try to win by shouting.

The Sunday which follows the Ascension, the sixth Sunday after Easter, is called the Sunday of the Holy Fathers. We commemorate then the bishops who met at the Synod of Nicaea, the earliest of the seven ecumenical Synods in terms of date. Regardless of each synod viewed separately, the synods as a whole and the very concept of a synod are of great importance for the Orthodox Church. The Synod of Nicaea, however, occupies a special position in the history of Christian doctrine, since it affirmed the divinity of Christ and thus laid the foundation for all subsequent definitions. Since the sixteenth century, the great temptation for ‘modern’ theology has been, if not exactly a return to Arianism then at least ...

Not knowledge you learn, but knowledge you suffer. That’s Orthodox spirituality

The novice who is studying the Jesus Prayer will advance greatly by observing a daily rule comprising a certain number of full prostrations and bows from the waist, depending upon the strength of each individual. These are all to be performed without any hurry, with a repentant feeling in the soul and with the Jesus Prayer on the lips during each prostration. An example of such prayer may be seen in the "Homily on Faith" by St. Symeon the New Theologian. Describing the daily evening prayers of the blessed youth George, St. Symeon says: "He imagined that he was standing before the Lord Himself and prostrating himself before His holy feet, and he tearfully implored the Lord to have mercy ...

The world’s in a state of inertia, it’s in a deep sleep of sin. Fast asleep. God wakes us up with wars, deadly epidemics, fires, catastrophic storms, earthquakes, floods and poor harvests.