Ξένες γλώσσες

This week’s icon has a very special distinction compared to most of the icons we have previously spotlighted: this icon was not written (that is, made) by human hands. Tradition tells us that when the Apostles Peter and John were preaching in the city of Lydda, near Jerusalem, they built a church in honor of the Theotokos. When they returned to Jerusalem and asked the Most Holy Mother to come sanctify the church, she told them to go before her, and that she would be there with them. Theotokos of Lydda, or “The Roman” When the Apostles returned to the church in Lydda they were amazed to see that an icon of Mary with the Christ Child was imprinted onto the wall ...

Saint Nektarios (9 November) Saint Nektarios was born on 1 October 1846, in Silyvria, Thrace, to poor and devout parents. At his baptism he was given the name Anastasios. He learned his first letters, as well as the Christian teachings, from his mother. In Silyvria he finished Primary and Middle School, before going on to Constantinople to continue his studies, working, in the beginning, at a tobacconist’s in order to help with his family’s finances. He began to study and collect the sayings and axioms of the Holy Fathers and classical philosophers which formed the two-volume book ‘A treasury of holy and philosophical scholars’, which he published in 1895. Before he was even 20 years old, he was appointed to the ...

The more you live within your means, the happier you’ll be. Because you don’t have too much to care about: servants, farm-workers and getting more animals. Because once we become attached to those things and have experienced the miseries which follow, we start to blame God. Death is fostered by this arbitrary desire for riches on our part and so, deluded, we remain in the darkness of our sinful life and are unable to recognize ourselves.

St. Luke “You fool, this night your soul will be required of you” (Luke 12:20). Of the four Gospel writers, Luke seems to present the parables of Jesus in the harshest light. For example, Luke’s telling of the parable of the talents includes this grizzly note: the king has slain in his presence those who did not want him to rule over them.  Only Luke’s Gospel includes the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, in which we see the Rich Man tormented in flames. And only Luke has the parable of the Unjust Steward, in which Jesus praises a servant who cheats his master.  Similarly, only Luke includes the parable of the Prodigal Son.  When people speak of this ...

Pray with faith. Admonish them, but as far as you can, with love and in a good way. Don’t be too strict.

In the ninth century a man's concern for a biographical record of the saints of the Church up to his day led to a monumental work of scholar­ship and research to the degree that he himself was rewarded with sainthood. This most literate luminary of his time was St. Simeon the translator, so named for his in depth study of the Church and its saints, a prodigious labor of love which entailed a great deal more than a mere translation. Endowed with a tremendous intellect, St. Simeon rose to prominence as chief magistrate and advisor to Emperor Leo the Wise, who was indeed wise enough to heed the counsel of his magistrate. The talents of Simeon included those of tact and ...

The floors have just been shined, and the little white church dedicated to Archangel Michael in Tarpon Springs is about to get a new front door. Archangel Michael's Church in Tarpon Springs, FL. As preparations are being made for hundreds of visitors, Stavroula Pololos of Montreal is sitting in one of the pews, flipping through a scrapbook of newspaper clippings and handwritten accounts detailing miracles that have happened here. “My prayer is that I don't want to get sick again, I pray that he heals me and I don't get sick again,” she said, looking up at the icon of Archangel Michael. Pololos first learned of the shrine in September, after completing 18 rounds of chemotherapy to treat ovarian cancer that came back ...

A time to read and a time to embody: John’s creative use of Scripture in The Ladder of Divine Ascent According to Bishop Kallistos, “with the exception of the Bible and the service books, there is no work in Eastern Christianity that has been studied, copied and translated more often than The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus”. However, the number of published monographs on The Ladder, at least outside the Greek language, is relatively small. John’s fundamental source is Holy Scripture. A first reading of The Ladder of Divine Ascent reveals the omnipresence of the Word, as well as John’s original use of it. Surprisingly, even fewer studies have been dedicated to that specific topic. John Chryssavgis, in his recent ...

Yet in Exodus 23:20-23, God tells the people of Israel that He is sending His angel ahead of them to guide and protect them, and says that His Name is in Him: “Behold, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and ...

And when I sometimes see people going to make a disaster of their lives, there’s nothing I can do. I show them a little, but they don’t understand. It’s not right for me to intervene too much. It’s not a simple matter.

This certainty of the vision of God was a constant in the tradition of the Church; all the spiritual struggles of the great ascetics and saints were directed towards making them able, from now, to see the light of divine glory, as the righteous will do in the last times. There was always an awareness that the light of the Transfiguration and that which shines upon the saints is the same as that which will dawn upon the righteous at the last judgement. And so  the spiritual life is not a suspended expectation, with no guarantees, of purely future and promised benefits, but the enjoyment of these good things in the here and now. This explains the strength and endurance ...

Manoah at first believed that the Angel of the Lord was just a man, perhaps an angel or a prophet of God, but after the Angel ascends into the flame, he and his wife fall to the ground in fear and awe, and Manoah exclaims, “We have seen God!”, and like Jacob, associates seeing God with death. This is reminiscent of God’s words to Moses in Exodus. “You cannot see my face, for no one can see me and live… you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.” (33:20, 23). The accounts of the Angel’s appearance to Moses on Sinai suggest that the difference between Moses’ encounter with God and that of others who see the ...

People who don’t know God are stupid and the light of knowledge hasn’t yet enlightened them They’re the most unhappy of people. They live unhappily and approach death without hope. The grave is a constant source of terror for them.

True Beauty What words can describe the magnitude of the damage done by the failure of the effort to know God? What more can your intellect conceive of? How can you manifest and describe the ineffable in words, and that which is beyond conception by the intellect? But if the eye of your intellect is so well cleansed that you can somehow see what Christ promises in the Beatitudes, you’ll scorn all human discourse, because it’s unable to express what you think. But if you’re still bound to the bodily passions and have the eyes of your soul closed, as though from illness, because of your impassioned condition, then the whole power of rhetoric is of no avail, for that very ...

The God Of The New Testament In The Old Testament “As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. When the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realised that it was the angel of the Lord. “We are doomed to die!” he said to his wife. “We have seen God!” (Judges 13:20-22) In my previous article, The Burning Bush, we examined the manifestation of the “Angel of the Lord” or the “Angel of Great Counsel” in the Burning Bush on Mount Sinai. As we saw, when this particular ‘angel’ appears, ...

Goodness is the Lord Himself, whatever originates from Him and all that surrounds Him. Goodness was also found in the human nature before the fall and afterwards in the reform of sanctification. Goodness is also the essence of what is right and what is rational and is found in the relationship between them. It is the complete absence of irrationality, wickedness and perversion. On the other hand, evil is the perversion and the absence of whatever we have described as goodness. Whatever originates from evil comprises the elements and parts of death, the very same “body of death”, whose father and supporter is the devil and his numerous servants. On the one hand, goodness has an existence and essence, because it is ...

On 4 November, our Church honours the memory of an outstanding personality of the Middle Ages in Greece, the emperor Ioannis Vatatzis. Ioannis came from a well-known Byzantine family which had given many exceptional members to the political and military life of the Empire. He himself was born in Adrianoupolis. His parents died when he was still young, leaving him the master of great possessions. He chose, however, to them away to the poor and to churches, and to go to Nicaea, in Bithynia, which was, at that time, the seat of the Empire, Constantinople having been taken by the Franks during the Fourth Crusade (1204). Here he met his clergyman uncle, who was a close adviser to Emperor Theodoros (Laskaris). ...

The beginning and the Litany of Peace The priest lifts up the Gospel, makes the sign of the cross with it over the altar and says in a loud voice: ‘Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and for ever and to the ages of ages’. The choir, or the people, reply ‘Amen’- (May it be so). Then the priest- or the deacon if there is one- begins to say the Litany of Peace. He encourages us to pray to God with the words: ‘In peace let us pray to the Lord’, and we submit our supplications regarding our salvation and also our everyday life. We entreat God to grant us health, ...

When you hoard more money than you need, the slightest breeze, a temptation in your life, will be enough to sink the ship with all hands. But if you’ve got only what you need then even if you’re caught in a violent storm, you’ll be light enough to ride the waves.

The endeavours and teaching of Saint Gregory Palamas were directed at ensuring that people could enjoy the possibility of participating in God, at demonstrating that God is not merely completely transcendental and beyond involvement but is also here with us in the world and welcomes our involvement with Him. Gregory correctly saw, in Varlaam’s views, the renewal of the theological heresies of the 4th century, those of Evnomios, Areios, and Makedonios, who, by accepting the Son and Holy Spirit as creations, deprived people of the chance of glorification . Because how could They glorify people if They Themselves were also creations and in need of deification, as Gregory the Theologian so succinctly and provocatively says about the Holy Spirit: “unless ...