Ξένες γλώσσες

Because they know in advance the great effort required for the journey, the big birds that migrate to warmer countries show great love and bear on their wings any smaller ones they come across. But they’re often verbally attacked by chickens whose eyes are puffy from all the filth they scratch around in every day, to the extent that they can’t see straight, the poor things. It would be in such people’s best interests to take a pair of scissors to their tongues rather than go to Hell, since they find it so hard to keep their mouths zipped.

Blessed ‘whys’. It’s a question that’s so common, so profound, so powerful in its expression and so difficult to answer. It’s a question that’s so true, so human, so demanding, but one which, by its nature, is difficult to deal with in words, it’s not expressed through the mouth, it doesn’t fit into words, it’s not something to express in front of an audience, much less is it answerable by single words from people supposedly in the know to others who are patently suffering. It may be the outstanding issue on which there can’t and shouldn’t be any speeches. It’s too deep for us ever to be truly aware of it. It’s too painful to for us to countenance as bearable. ...

In this way, hospitality avoids the danger, the anomaly of favouritism and shows it to be a veritable sea of compassion. If you love your brother, you love the stranger. In any case, as Saint Basil the Great notes: «there is one nature, both this person and that are people. There is one poverty, one penury for both of them. Give to your brother and to the stranger. Do not turn away from your brother, but also make your foreign brother familiar. You should see straight. Do not prefer your friend over the stranger when it comes to dealing with their poverty… We are all related, all brothers, children of the same Father. If you look for your spiritual father, ...

We should feel that Christ’s our friend, because He is. He says so Himself when He says: ‘You are my friends…’. We should look upon Him and approach Him as a friend. Do we fall? Do we sin? With familiarity, love and trust we should run to Him. Not fearing that He’s going to punish us, but with boldness that will make us feel we’re his friends. We should say: ‘Lord I’ve done this or that, I’ve fallen. Forgive me’. And at the same time, we should feel that He loves us, that He’ll receive us tenderly and will forgive us. Sin shouldn’t separate us from Christ. When we believe that He loves us and we love Him, we don’t ...

In recognition of the state of the culture, those in authority within the Church have the awesome responsibility to unceasingly teach the doctrines of the Faith especially in the crucial area of morality. Sadly, many have chosen to remain silent. In a few cases doubtless, this silence was occasioned by culture-related attitudes manifested especially among those whose background is reflective of foreign birth and nurture far from the American concepts of freedom of speech and dissent. Then there is the silence of the naive, those who believe as did one elderly bishop that "Orthodox people don’t do such things." But the silence of the vast majority who should have spoken but have chosen to remain mute is the result of ...

We have started registration for the 9th edition, 4-8 July 2016 This year’s edition will combine the holiday atmosphere of a festival via evening concerts, services and interactive meetings with that of a workshop, through various practical courses (Large Ensemble, Women’s Ensemble, courses of intonation and interval theory, canto and instrument technique). The academic level of the event will be increased, like every year, by lectures on liturgical, historical or palaeography topics, meant to complete the training that a Byzantine music chanter will receive during five days. Main Topic We shall focus our attention, via training courses in psaltic art interpretation, on the Relation between ornaments, intervals and stresses in the musical execution of theses. From a musical-liturgical perspective, this year, discussions ...

Veria, 6 June, 2016. Most people, even Christians, are frustrated, discouraged and wearied by the sorrows of life, which are unavoidable: ‘We must suffer many tribulations to enter the kingdom of God’ . We shouldn’t see the sorrows of this life through the prism of transitory reasoning, but through that of eternity. This is when life acquires meaning and the meaning of sorrow in our lives is revealed to us: in the end they form the way of the Cross which we must follow in order to reach salvation and sanctification. Saint Luke, Archbishop of the Crimea and a doctor, is one of the saints who really did experience the way of the Cross and, with this experience and the gift of ...

People who chase the ‘prayer’ as if it were gold, and who put ever ‘cent’ to good use, can overcome everything, accept and bear anything. Then God and His Mother protect them.

It was also in the ’20s that the “correction” facilities were set up, the forced labour camps known as gulags. Within a few years they had spread throughout the vast country. It all began with a monastery, the Solovetstky, which was built in the 14th century on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea. It was a large monastic centre, a central monastery with lots of sketes throughout the islands. It was bitterly cold in the winter, which lasted 8-9 months. Since it was impossible to escape from, the Solovetsky monastery was an ideal location for a prison camp. The inmates worked16 hours a day, and if their productivity was not up to scratch they were executed as saboteurs. If they ...

In his work Outline, on the subject of the toleration of other religions, he poses the question of religious freedom from his own point of view, which is different from that of Voltaire. According to Voulgaris, freedom of thought can exist only in humanistic arts and sciences: ‘In the divine and mysterious dogmas of the faith, freedom of thought is insolence, because for anyone to seek reason in what is beyond reason is dementia’. When the soul tries ‘to see with another light’ what is taught by Holy Scripture and the Church, it is blinded and deceived. It is not permissible for people to seek freedom such as this for themselves or for others. And devout rulers should take steps ...

If you ever find yourself on the Holy Mountain or in other old churches, you will notice that many of them are painted red. If you ask the monks, they will tell you that the colour symbolizes the blood of Christ and His saints. It wants to remind us that, whereas the various religions or ideologies spread via propaganda, violence or oppression, the Church of Christ won people’s hearts through weakness, the blood of Christ and the saints, martyrdom and witness. There is not a single Orthodox Church that has not experienced its own martyrdom. And nor is there a saint that has not passed through his or her furnace of sorrows, temptations or martyrdom.  In the 20th century, the Russian ...

People who are stubborn, quarrelsome and cantankerous are vain and empty. They strive against other people until they’re exhausted, but, no matter how tired they are, they won’t give in. They take no thought for themselves and behave as if they’re possessed by insanity. What’s important to them isn’t truth, but the imposition of their will on others. This blocks out their reason and they try to win by shouting.