Life on earth is very short, unimaginably so. But much has been given to us in the short span of time so that we can turn to God from the depths of our heart. He it is Who can transfigure and resurrect our soul. We Christians are really extremely fortunate that we have Our Most Pure Lady, the Mother of God to pray for us before the throne of God.
People should train themselves to recognize immediately, through the feeling in their heart, whether good or evil is coming towards them, in the same way as we identify savory and unsalted things, or sweet and bitter with the tongue.
Palm Sunday is a Christian moveable feast that falls on the Sunday before Easter. The feast commemorates Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, an event mentioned in all four canonical Gospels. (Mark 11:1–11, Matthew 21:1–11, Luke 19:28–44, and John 12:12–19). In many Christian churches, Palm Sunday is marked by the distribution of palm leaves (often tied into crosses) to the assembled worshipers. The difficulty of procuring palms for that day's ceremonies in unfavorable climates for palms led to the substitution of boughs of box, yew, willow, or other native trees. The Sunday was often designated by the names of these trees, as Yew Sunday, or by the general term Branch Sunday. In the accounts of the four canonical Gospels, Jesus' triumphal entry into ...
Holy Week is the heart of the Christian Orthodox Faith and the centre of the yearly cycle of Christian Feasts. Every year our churches are packed at Holy Week and, come the last three days, they are bursting at the seams with both people who attend church every Sunday and people who attend only on special occasions. Holy Week brings the pious and the not so pious together in a way that the most ambitious missionaries can only dream of. I am not going to try to answer the reasons for this. I am going to try to explain not so much what makes Holy Week unique and different from every other time of the religious year, but rather why ...
Beloved brothers, sisters and children in the Lord, The typical feature of the Greek people was and is the preservation of ancestral tradition. Modern times are characterized, if not by the abandonment and rejection of the ancestral customs and morals of the nation, then at least by a disregard, which, in the long term, unless we stand up against it, will result in the creation of a generation without memory, without roots in tradition. And we all know that a tree without roots has no sap, nor has it life. It quickly withers and ‘is cast into the fire’ as the Gospel puts it. So, as the Archbishop of Constantinople and shepherd of the flock in this city, a flock which your ...
The wrath of God is an excruciating feeling for those who are being instructed by God. And it becomes an excruciating feeling when unwanted pains come along. Through these God often guides an intellect which has become puffed up over its virtue and knowledge and brings it to restraint and humility. In this way, He grants us knowledge of ourselves and an awareness of our sickness. And when that happens we cast out vain conceit. The wrath of God is the cessation of the flow of God's gifts and happens to every intellect that soars aloft and boasts about the things given to it by God as if they were its own.
The Kelli of Saint George the Manifested at Pantokratoran Kapsala Born Nikolaos Triandafyllou, he was from the village of Kalyvia in Northern Evia. He emigrated to America and was a married man with a child. After the death of his child, he returned to Greece and abandoned worldly things, after suffering other unpleasant experiences in his life. At first he went to the Monastery of Koutloumousiou, where a virtuous compatriot of his, Ioasaf († 1928) was living the monastic life. He fell ill there and was visited by Elder Evloyios, from the Kelli of the Manifested, who, as a practical doctor, looked after him. They thus became acquainted and formed a friendship, so Nikolaos went with him to the Kelli ...
If each of us did whatever good we could, there wouldn't be unhappy people in the world.
Strictly speaking, Lent ends on the Friday which follows the fifth Sunday of Lent: the period of forty days is then over. The time of the Passion lasts from the end of Lent until the Resurrection, anticipated on Holy Saturday. It therefore comprises the Saturday which follows the fifth Sunday of Lent, called ‘Lazarus Saturday’, and the first six days of Holy Week. Lazarus Saturday has a very special place in the liturgical calendar. It is not included in the forty days of Lenten penitence; it is not included in the harrowing days of Holy Week – which are counted from the Monday to the Friday. Together with Palm Sunday, it forms a short and joyous prelude to the days of ...
Love of pleasure opens the door of our soul to the enemy. If you fight this with firm resolve, then it will be very difficult for any passion to overcome you.
I can remember jumping off the front porch steps in excitement as I hurried into the car to get to the church as quickly as possible to find out which group I was in. Every year the Jr. Choir of Archangel Michael Church in Campbell, Ohio would split into groups and go to all the Orthodox homes in town to sing the kalanta or carols. We did this three times a year, Christmas, St. Basil’s and Lazarus Saturday. I can remember the smiles on the faces of the people we sang for and the lingering aroma of the freshly baked cookies many of the yiayias baked and stuffed into our pockets. We’d collect money for the church in our neatly ...
St Joasaph was the son of the pious ruler of Epirus and Thessaly Symeon Sinisi, who was descended from the royal house of Nemanja and was proclaimed “tsar of the Greeks, the Serbs and the Albanians” under the name of “Symeon Uros Palaeologus”. His mother, Thomaïs, was the sister of the last Despot of Epirus, Nicephorus II. He was born around 1350 and christened Ioannes. Having been brought up in a devout family, Ioannes showed from an early age particular zeal for the spiritual life and an aversion for the things of this world. He paid frequent visits to churches and monasteries, and particularly the monasteries of the Holy Mountain and Meteora, constantly attending the Divine Liturgy and other services. When ...
In order to consider the question properly, it is necessary to review the doctrines of the Church on abortion and then define, as far as possible within this short study, the concept of oikonomia. The definitive work on the subject of abortion is a small book by Archpriest John Kowalczyk entitled "An Orthodox View of Abortion"1. Fr. Kowalczyk points out that, during the first two centuries of Christianity, the teachings on abortion along with other moral issues were set down primarily in two works, the Didache (Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) and the Epistle of Barnabas. In the second chapter of the former we find the following proscriptions:2 Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not corrupt boys; do not fornicate; ...
Insults cleanse our soul of the passions. In Greek there's an expression for this: if somebody insults another person, they can say: 'I gave him or her a good washing down'. And so they did.
We often forget that we're merely visitors passing through this life and should therefore live in ceaseless prayer, because prayer is the breath of our soul. Prayer attracts energy from the source of life, the Lord, Who guards, preserves and nourishes all living things.
My dear friends, Thus spake, in a little book entitled A Collection of Thoughts, Kiki Dimoula, an outstanding poet to whom the Department of Theology at the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki had the pleasure and honour last year to award an honorary degree. Exquisite words, threatening our certainty, which is linked to our everyday routine and everything that surrounds and shapes that, while ignoring the fact that this everyday life is not always connected to the mystery of our immediacy. In other words, with that reality which recognizes that ‘one thing is needful’. And, in the Orthodox tradition, that thing is none other than an encounter with the person of the incarnate Word, Christ. This is a statement which demonstrates from afar ...
We, Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece, have met on the Greek island of Lesvos to demonstrate our profound concern for the tragic situation of the numerous refugees, migrants and asylum seekers who have come to Europe fleeing from situations of conflict and, in many cases, daily threats to their survival. World opinion cannot ignore the colossal humanitarian crisis created by the spread of violence and armed conflict, the persecution and displacement of religious and ethnic minorities, and the uprooting of families from their homes, in violation of their human dignity and their fundamental human rights and freedoms. The tragedy of forced migration and displacement affects millions, and is fundamentally a crisis of humanity, ...
Where people’s confidence in themselves ends is where help from God begins. "Dimitrios Panagopoulos, preacher" Read more “Words of Life” at www.pemptousia.com
Where people's confidence in themselves ends is where help from God begins.
In education, it's exceptionally dangerous to pay attention only to the development of the intellect and knowledge, ignoring the heart. We should look to the heart above all else, because the heart is life, but life which sin has corrupted. Society is corrupt precisely because we don't have Christian education.
