God asks only one thing: that you should honor Him, love Him and keep His commandments, recognizing that He’s your Maker. He doesn’t want to share His glory and for you to worship any old thing. He doesn’t want you to love anything more than Him.
Let us begin by offering a definition of the soul as provided by Saint John the Damascan: ‘The soul, therefore, is a living essence, uncomplicated, incorporeal, invisible - in its proper nature - to the eyes of the body, immortal, reasoning and intelligent, formless, making use of an organic body and being the source of its powers of life, growth, sensation and generation, the intellect being its purest part though not in any way alien to it (as the eye is to the body, so the intellect is to the soul). It has power over itself, its volition and energy, and is mutable, i.e. able to be changed, because it is created. All of these features are natural to it ...
Theodora Episcopa But now let us continue to follow the lead of the feminist tour leaders through the streets ofRomefrom the Catacomb of St. Priscilla to theChurchofSt. Praxedes. There we find a ninth-century mosaic depicting four female "saints" who were dear to Pope Pascal I (817-824), a fierce opponent of iconoclasm. The heads of three of these women are each shrined in a round nimbus, signifying that they were already venerated as saints in the liturgical calendar of the Church: St. Praxedes, the Virgin Mary, and (supposes Henri Leclercq, who enjoys a kind of infallibility in these matters) St. Prudentiana. The woman on the extreme left is featured with a square nimbus, indicating that she was still alive when the mosaic ...
The verses from the Psalter which follow ‘Lord I have cried’ at the Vespers service are among the most beautiful sounds at Athonite feasts Usually sung in triple time they create a festal atmosphere which is enhanced by the bells on the censer. %audio%
All the passions are fires of the soul, conflagrations raging within us. We have to put this fire out with the water of love, which is so strong it can extinguish any internal flames of evil and the other passions. But woe betide us, woe betide our vanity, if we feed this fire with another, with wickedness and rancor.
St. George Since the Church started its earthly sojourn about two millenia ago, it has waded through a lot of history, and this historical journey has left its mark upon it, for good and for ill. One of the good things that our historical pilgrimage has given us is a wealth of saintly intercessors, who look down upon us from heaven, a “great cloud of witnesses” (see Heb. 12:1). Their many names adorn our liturgical celebrations, and at each liturgical dismissal, we not only commemorate the most-holy Theotokos and the holy, glorious and all-laudable apostles, but also our local community’s patron saint and “the saint of the day”. Pretty much every day on our church calendar has several saints, ...
Eternity is an everlasting banquet (the Divine Liturgy) that takes place in the heavenly realm. Every time we participate in the Divine Liturgy we are transported into a place where there is neither time nor space, and participate in that very banquet. As we receive the Holy Mysteries (Christ's very Body and Blood), we receive the healing medicine for that which ails us. Our brokenness in both body and soul are given the healing medicine that we so very much need. God is everywhere present and fills all things. There is no where He is not. Hell fire is none other than the Fire of God, burning those who are unloving and unresponsive to His invitation to commune with Him. God ...
One of the great spiritual figures of monasticism, St Sabbas, is honoured today. Yet he is not well known here on the Holy Mountain. This great guiding light is a great consolation to us. In the way he lived we are able to find the most essential elements of our monastic capacity. We will refer to some of these. He started his life with absolute devotion to the Lord, enforcing the prophetic verse ‘Blessed is he who carries the yoke (of the Lord) from a young age’. Even though his parents were wealthy they placed no obstacles in his path towards monasticism. He arrived in the East to become a monk. He excelled as a novice and ended up ...
In the continuation of this sacred history, we see that the relationships of men become increasingly more tragic. For example, the son of Adam, Cain, offered an abominable sacrifice to God which was rejected. Full of envy and fratricidal hatred, he murdered his brother Abel. Certainly, as all of the generations of men lived under the judgment of the fear of death, they continued to be corrupted by self-love and the struggle to survive, and in this deception they became capable of every crime. In the monotonous course of the ages, only a few righteous men were able to preserve some of the traces of the knowledge of God of the first-created. Having kept in their consciousness a little light of ...
Don’t worry if your mind wonders sometimes during the Jesus prayer. You keep saying it, God will hear it and the demons will flee.
Few teachings of the Christian faith are as easily misunderstood and equally misapplied as the things pertaining to the “End of the World.” Christian history, both East and West, offers numerous examples of popular misunderstandings – some of which led to bloodbaths and the worst moments in Church history. By the same token, apocalypticism, the belief in an end of history, has had a powerful impact on the cultures in which Christianity has dwelt. Various Utopias (Marxism, Nazism, Sectarian Millenarianism, etc.) are all products of a misunderstood Christian idea. They are not the inventions of Christianity – but they could hardly have originated in any other culture. The same can be said for various Dystopias (the belief in very difficult and ...
Adam Parker wrote two articles investigating the history of religious schism and asking the question, “should religion’s goal be a ‘universal church’ or is religious diversity a good thing?” Adam states that in times of trouble and theological debate “some believers…react by reasserting orthodoxy.” I would like to take the liberty to explain why I believe there is no ‘little ‘o’’ orthodoxy and to define and describe “Orthodoxy” as “Christianity from the beginning”. As a result we will see but one Jesus Christ, and the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Little ‘o’ orthodoxy is a concept which inherently has no meaning, precisely because it is an idea used to defend certain Reformation and Post-reformation ideas, not all of which are ...
Let it be said up front that those who would appeal to ancient precedent to justify the ordination of women to the ministry of presbyter in the Church are faced with a fairly daunting task. There is no canonical record of any office of woman presbyters: Indeed there is no literary record of any kind to that effect. Oh, that all proponents of women's ordination were honest about the lack of literary evidence. For example, a 1987 article in the Priscilla Papers (Volume 1, no. 4) claimed that "St. Cyprian writes of a female presbyter in Cappadocia in the mid-23Os." If true, of course, that would seem to be game point and match, for what fool would contest ...
1. Having been baptized into Christ, and put on Christ, you have been given the same form as the Son of God; for God, having foreordained us to adoption as His children, gave us the same features as the body of Christ’s glory. Having therefore become partakers of Christ, you are properly called Christs (anointed ones), and of you God said: “Do not touch my Christs, (or anointed ones)”. Now you have been made Christs, by receiving the stamp of the Holy Spirit ; and everything’s been done to you in imitation, because you’re images of Christ. He washed in the River Jordan, and having imparted the fragrance of His Godhead to the waters, He emerged from them; and the ...
Address delivered at the Opening Convocation of Cummins Theological Seminary, Summerville, South Carolina on September 10, 2016. The students entering seminary to begin their studies might ask “Why such a lofty topic?” “We came to seminary to become pastors and ministers, not scholars or academics.” And to them I respond, “You’re right.” Cummins has trained students for Christian ministry for over a century. Our goal is not to train scholars and theologians but to equip shepherds of the flock and servants of Christ in the vineyard of the Lord. But is only the academic or scholar a theologian? Can the term apply to the non-specialist too? I think it can and does. According to the Greek definition of the word “theologian,” Theos ...
The military and diplomatic, political and economic, as well as cultural and ideological transformations occurring across the Middle East offer fertile ground for increased cooperation between Turkey and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. For the Turkish government, there is little if any downside to improved relations yet significant upside potential. For the Patriarchate (and for His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew who is first among equals in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church) additional freedom to exercise its spiritual authority would allow it to make even more use of its unique history, international reputation and high moral standing to advocate for peace, justice, and nonviolent religious coexistence. There is precedent for such a partnership. For many years following ...
With continuous effort, with good will and by the Grace of God, every soul progresses and prospers in virtue and sanctity.
Rev. Patrick H. Reardon Few themes, I suppose, are more pronounced in the teaching of Jesus than that of God's invitation. Whether to a banquet or a wedding, Jesus sees man as invited by God. I believe this divine invitation implies many considerations of anthropology, but I limit myself here to one: human dignity. God invites man for pretty much the same reason we send invitations to one another—friendship. Orthodox Christian theology has always insisted that his motive is friendship. It is difficult, it is bewildering, and it is more than slightly frightening to assimilate the notion that God finds us lovable. It is among the most astounding truths in Holy Scripture. What could God possibly find lovable in us? Indeed, even ...
