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Saint Demetrius, byzantine mosaic from his church in Thessaloniki, 8th Century Another point of interest is that the church of Saint Dimitrios, for 60 years (1430-1490) remained as part of the local Church, when almost all the other churches in Thessaloniki had been turned into mosques after the fall of the city to the Turks in 1430. This was because the governor of the city, Loukas Spandounis, paid a great deal of money to the conquerors to prevent the church becoming a mosque. In order to honour this great benefactor, after he departed this life, the church allowed a Renaissance-style sarcophagus containing the body of this benefactor of the Church and nation to be placed in the N.W. wall of ...

A young man who comes here to become a monk does so because he’s been stricken with the fire, the fervor of Christ. And when he comes, he doesn’t reject humanity. A monk who leaves and comes into the desert, does so because he rejects the unwholesome spirit of the world, but not the human person.

Saint Dimitrios is the protector and patron saint of Thessaloniki, a saint from whose relics myrrh flows and also a Great Martyr. There are actually conflicting accounts in the sources, but the overwhelming view is that he was born and bred in Thessaloniki. As a young man, he rose through the ranks of the Roman army because he was a very talented soldier. How he came to be introduced into the Christian faith we do not know, though it was not as usual as one might think for a high official. There were Christians even in the Roman imperial family: Theodora, the wife of Galerius, for example, who was beheaded in Thessaloniki on the orders of Emperor Licinius (ca. 315). Saint ...

Patiently bearing sorrows and not blaming other people for our own disasters is a sign of true knowledge. Sorrows come upon us either to teach us something, to expunge previous sins, to correct any negligence there might be or to prevent future sins.

For spiritual people struggling to acquire and retain the knowledge of God, understood as entry into the energy of divine eternity, intellectual scientific learning is insufficient, no matter how empirical and apparently irrefutable a character it may have. Human science provides the means to express the experience of existential knowledge, but is incapable of transmitting this knowledge in an authentic manner without the co-action of grace. Were this not so, then our ‘ascents’ into the spheres of the Divine existence- of real Truth- would depend on secular education and intellectual capacity, which is not the case. At this point it becomes clear that Elder Sophrony is operating within the current of Orthodox Patristic thought, which rejected the possibility that the ...

Being a monk means ‘a mind contemplating God’.

Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Finally, a third brand of philosophy against which divine revelation should put us on guard is, I submit, the nominalism that appeared in the eleventh century, at exactly the time when the Eastern and Western churches became divided. The villain in this case is John Roscelinus. Since Roman Catholics, after his condemnation at the Council of Soissons in 1092, had the good sense to burn most of his writings, we are obliged mainly to rely on secondary sources to study Roscelinus, which is often enough the case in the history of philosophy. And surely it is significant that the sharpest contemporary critic of Roscelinus was that most real of Realist philosophers, St. Anselm of Canterbury, himself ...

It has been claimed by some that Christianity is not merely no help to the family, but that it actually contributes to its breakdown. In other words, it has damaged the prestige of paternal authority within the context of the small family. This reasoning has been put forward with references to certain excerpts from Christ’s words, but these have been rather superficially interpreted, taken our of context and made to stand on their own. The texts which have been mobilized in this way come from the Evangelists Matthew and Luke . Let’s look at the most typical: ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. ...

If you want to teach the love of God, don’t use speech. Try to be polite, always, and to be loveable yourself.

Saint James was the son of Joseph the Betrothed from his (first) marriage. He was blessed by God while he was still in his mother’s womb and was so righteous in his life that all the Jews called him the “Just”. Even from a very early age, James lived a very ascetic life. He did not partake of wine or other strong drinks. In imitation of Saint John the Baptist, he never ate anything that had had the breath of life within it.  He never shaved his head, as the Law ordains for those who devote themselves to God (Num. 6, 5). He never washed his hair nor was he anointed with oil, since he cared more for the state ...

In the synaxarion for Saint James (October 23), we’re told that, like Saint John the Baptist, “he never ate anything that had had the breath of life within it”. Yet we’re also told that John ate locusts. Even if he was, as some believe, as Nazirite, he could have eaten locusts, since they are the only insect sanctioned for human consumption in the Jewish dietary laws (Leviticus 11,12). And locusts do, indeed, flourish in and around Israel. On March 21, 2013, the BBC reported that Israel was “in the grip of a locust invasion”, and that Israelis were making the most of this by deep-frying the insects or covering them in chocolate. The problem is that this was an “invasion”. ...

Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Now, on the basis of the foregoing reflections about man’s knowledge of the true God, are there any directions indicated about what sorts of philosophy we should avoid? We do not have to respond to this question in full detail. Just a brief mention of certain schools of philosophy, with even the faintest recognition of what they hold, is sufficient grounds for discerning their incompatibility with the truth we know in Christ. For example, I submit that Christians should spontaneously reject postmodernism’s radical divorce of narrative from truth. And, apart from seminary professors, most Christians normally do. Similarly, we would promptly repudiate Darwinian evolutionism, Marxist dialectical materialism, the naturalism of Bertrand Russell, the New Age anthropology of ...

Separate memorial services are not held for monks on the Holy Mountain. Together with the kollyva for the Saint, a small saucer of kollyva is prepared for the departed. Abbots over the last 100 years are commemorated, as are priest and monks over the last thirty. Kollyva is made every time an icon is put on display in the church to be venerated. Every Saturday, however, there is always a service for the departed, with kollyva, unless it coincides with the handing back of a feast of the Lord. The kollyva here is a little boiled wheat on a tin plate, which is placed under the icon of Christ. The kollyva for a feast requires genuine patisserie skills. On the surface, ...

On 21th October 2016 Bulgarian Orthodox Church received relics from saint Luke (Luka Voyno Yasenetsky), Archbishop of Crimea and Sympheropol, confessor and wonderworker (1877-1961). Shortly after glorification of saint Seraphim of Sofia and receiving relics from saint Seraphim of Sarof, Bulgarian believers have the honour to receive also part from the blessing, serving and healing hands of Saint Luke whom they know well and piously venerate for years. Reliquary is brought to Sofia by Russian Bogorodsky bishop Anthony who visits Bulgaria for the first time. In his greetings to Bulgarian faithful, he said that this precious gift - piece from the relics of 20th century saint is strengthening once again the traditional close relations between Russian and Bulgarian Orthodox local churches. Church services from ...

It’s entirely obvious that wickedness and evil are the result of our disposition. Evil isn’t a component part of our nature, but the result of our free will. The devil is called the preeminent evil one, because of his excessive wickedness and because, despite the fact that we’ve done nothing to harm him, he wages an implacable war against us. This is why the Lord didn’t say: ‘Deliver us from evil ones’, but ‘from the evil one’.  He thus teaches and instructs us not to reject our fellow human beings at all, over whatever harm they do us, but to direct our enmity away from them and towards him, since he’s the root cause of all evils.

A bad word makes even good people bad, but a good word turns even bad people into good. +Saint Macarius the Elder Our words have so much power, yet it’s so easy to say them without thinking. Have you ever chosen to say something nice when you didn’t feel like it? What happened? Like an oasis in the desert, a kind word can bring forth beauty. Choose to say something good today and see what comes of it! Lord, help me to choose good words that help others and reflect Your loving heart. Source: www.familylifeministry.atlanta.goarch.org