Ξένες γλώσσες

August is considered the month of the Mother of God. With the feast of her Dormition in the middle, canons of supplication are sung throughout the month in honour of Our Lady, culminating in the feast of the Precious Belt on 31 August. For centuries the Precious Belt has been kept in the Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopaidi. According to tradition, the Precious Belt of the Mother of God was given to Vatopaidi by Emperor Ioannis VI Kantakouzinos (1342-1354), who thereafter resigned office  and was tonsured a monk- with the name of  Ioasaf- at Vatopaidi, where he continued to live. This is the Dismissal Hymn of the Precious Belt, sung in the slow mode, in plagial tone 4, by the Daiilaii ...

When God turns away His face, then you really do fall into the darkness of Hell, into unbearable torments. Then you understand, even in part, what eternal hell will be like.

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We have been keeping these days the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. There is a passage in the Gospel in which the Lord says to us, “No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his neighbor.” And these words resolve the antinomy between the horror of the Cross and the glory of it, between death and the resurrection. There is nothing more glorious, more awe-inspiring and wonderful than to love and to be loved. And to be loved of God with all the life, with all the death of the Only-Begotten Son, and to love one another (as well) at the cost ...

(previous publication: ) These well meaning Christians in particular no longer recognize that help, both for oneself and for others, requires the “prayer and fasting” commanded by Christ Himself. They resist the very idea that one must learn those difficult arts both through a life within the Church and under the guidance of someone with experience. In refusing such therapy, these Christians implicitly endorse the project which cost our forefathers Paradise:  They want to discern good and evil by themselves, and outside of obedience to God. Even if they do sometimes tolerate the idea of such obedience, they refuse to access its meaning by listening to their pastors. They have a deep suspicion of spiritual fatherhood, preferring guidance from therapists, friends, ...

Charity's one thing that shouldn’t be put off. Do it willingly. Because Scripture tells us to give alms with sweetness and joy. If you do it willingly, then you get twice the benefit. Because what's done with sorrow or out of necessity is joyless and without beauty.

‘No one has ascended into heaven other than he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’ (Jn. 3, 13-17). Christ’s words in this excerpt from Saint John’s Gospel form part of the discussion He had with Nicodemus, the Jewish leader who came ...

Prayer is approaching every one of God's creatures with love, and living in harmony with all of them, even the wild ones.

And now we come to another matter: I want to choose an allegory, beyond the blessed hopes that divine grace inspires in our souls. We can’t hide our unnatural sinfulness and our multitude of weaknesses. In the morass of difficulties of the times in which we live, we, too, are like a barren woman who despairs of ever becoming a mother. But here we should look at the example of barren Anna and see that ‘what is impossible for people is possible for God’. This is precisely what we find when we investigate the great goodness of Jesus, who has unerringly called us. He is the same Saviour of the world Whom this Maiden drew with her sanctity and forced to ...

The wonder-working relics of the Priest Martyr Vlasios Arkananos and the five other monks who suffered with him are kept in the church of Saint Paraskevi in Palairo, Arkanania. On their feast day, 7 July, the relics are taken to the nearby village of Sklavaina, where services are held at the blood-stained site where the six saints were martyred. In fact, these services are held on the actual site of the long-destroyed monastery of the Entry of the Mother of God, where a newer church has since been built. On the spot where they were killed, other Romans (i. e. subjects of the Christian Eastern Roman Empire, or ‘Byzantium’) from the surrounding area also suffered because they refused to ‘bow ...

An unhealthy desire for experiences. The Pharisees and Sadducees sought a sign from heaven from the Lord. They asked for a miracle that would have the features of the miracles of the Antichrist, that is one that would satisfy people with a corporeal outlook and feed their vainglory and egotism. When the Lord heard this request, His answer was: ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah’ (Matth. 16, 4). By ‘the sign of Jonah’ the Lord meant the signs that would accompany His death and resurrection: This was when ‘a sign from heaven’ was given by God. This was when the sun saw Christ crucified and was darkened, though it ...

The Jesus prayer's a good habit. Christ comes into us without our realizing it.

3. A phrase which can be found in the prophecy concerning the Messiah by the Patriarch Jacob provides St. John Chrysostom with the opportunity to speak of the sacrifice of Christ and the Divine Eucharist. “He will wash his garment in wine, his robe in the blood of grapes”. Chrysostom says: “See how the whole of the mystery has been implied for us. The faithful understand the significance of the words: ‘He will wash his garment in wine’. I believe he calls the body the garment which He condescended to put on because of the mystery of divine dispensation. Then, so that you will learn precisely what he called wine, he goes on to say that ‘he will cleanse his ...

In the recent article by Theodoros Rokas on the Sign of the Cross in the Old Testament (http://pemptousia.com/?p=25778), mention is made of the book of Deuteronomy and this brought to mind a common misconception: that it is from a Greek mistranslation of the Hebrew phrase at Deuteronomy 17:18 (mishneh ha-torah ha-zoth, which means ‘a copy of this law’) as to deuteronomion touto- ‘this second law’.  This is a serious accusation on two counts: a) it implies that the deuteronomion is not the same as the first, which would have outraged people at the time, and would still offend today; and b) it suggests that the translators didn’t know what they were talking about. But we should be very careful in claiming that our Greek ...

8 September 2016. (the transcript of an address) Today we celebrate the Nativity of Our Lady, the Mother of God. The holy Fathers, despite the natural abilities at their disposal and despite the effects of the Grace which dwelt within their souls, were unable to honour her as she deserved, because this Maiden is shrouded in a great mystery. I shall bring only one aspect to your attention, because I fear that if I try to do more, I’ll do her an injustice. A ray of light that shines on a particular point fills it with light. A ray of Grace acted on the souls of all those individuals who’ve been saved- prophets, apostles, martyrs, saints, confessors or those in general who are ...

If the Lord allows sicknesses to test people, then He'll also give them the strength of patience. If people bear their illness with patience and gratitude to God they're crowned as martyrs and strivers. Just as wax doesn't become soft unless it's heated enough to bear a stamp, so the soul can't accept the stamp of virtue unless it's been tried with labors and sicknesses.

From the beginning, it has not been so. A group of churches - among them Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian and others - organize a sunrise Easter service to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. At Thanksgiving, a group of churches prays together annually. On Saturday evenings, a Roman Catholic Church offers Mass in a Lutheran church's sanctuary. An Episcopal priest serves as the pastor of a Presbyterian church. At a certain level, these are unbelievable signs of generosity and Christian love - like a situation where two church groups pray together, the second of which exists historically and theologically in reaction against the first. These are all attempts to bring unity to the churches, waving the banner of John 17:11, Jesus' prayer ...