Courage, courage. Keep gazing upwards and you’ll see the Lord, when you weep. When you seek with longing, when you bleed, you might see Him stretching out His loving and comforting hand and holding a crown out to you.
My beloved, We now enter another New Year, which is a precious gift from God to the world, and we wish and hope it will be a peaceful one. In particular, those who have suffered recently and are still suffering from local wars and terrorist attacks have only one desire: to live peacefully during the New Year. And in our country, with its unacceptable division into the North and the South, suffering has been the ongoing reality for 64 years—the consequence of the cold war. For this reason, it is inevitable that our thoughts and prayers have been and continue to be centered on a long-awaited peace. Nevertheless, we must also ask: How can political peace prevail among the peoples? Are international ...
Love for our enemies is not possible, except through the grace of the Holy Spirit.
Dear beloved in Christ, The feast of Christmas is in sight once again to remind us of the love and philanthropy of the worshipped in Trinity God. The Only-begotten Word of God takes on flesh ‘through the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary’ and is bom in Bethlehem of Judea. The Magi from the East are led by the Star and visit the holy manger, in which the divine Child was wrapped in swaddling clothes, ‘because there was no guest room available for them’ (Luke 2.7). The Angels in heaven chant the hymn of joy, peace and that blessed Hope with which the God-man Christ enriched the world: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and goodwill to all men.’ (Luke 2.14). We ...
Christmas 1914. The trenches. A different kind of cease-fire Today we call it the First World War. Then they called it the Great War. Many European countries were involved in it, in a horrendous conflict without any clear ideological stamp. Millions of people were crushed under the mill-stones of two alliances of states. Thousands of people were killed in endless battles of the trenches, which gave it the name of ‘the war of attrition’. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, stuck fast in the dugouts, quickly passed from the horrors of war to a routine that was utterly boring and had little or no meaning. The first Christmas of the War arrived and many people began to believe that it wasn’t going to ...
As far as we have the power within us let us obey the Lord with an honest and true heart so that, in time of sorrow we will have Him as a helper to protect us from great dangers.
Elder Porfyrios Kavsokalyvitis was a blessing for everyone. An angelic person. A divine child who played. A fragrance which spread and found its way into every soul. Illiterate but extremely wise. A God-inspired poet, a wordsmith who fashioned people. He used to say: ‘You have to be a poet in order to become a Christian.
And while the messiahs are multiplying in this day and age, in the guise of persons, ideologies, policies or religions*, we see a world wallowing in the mud which it has created itself. And you ask yourself: ‘What can I believe?’ ‘Where can I place my hope?’ ‘What can I expect?’ So are Christ, His Gospel and His work antiquated, then? The New Age would claim that we live in an era for which Christ is the Old Age. But despite the intense criticism to which Christianity has been and continues to be subjected, the Gospel message remains insurmountably powerful for people today, who want so much and have been disappointed by everything. The Messiah promoted by Christmas is Jesus, the human person. God takes ...
What is the human mind without Christ? It’s a suffering, tortured lamentation. What is the human soul without Christ? It’s a talking scarecrow. What is our conscience, our free will? Hopeless blindness. What is the body without Christ? A disgusting, loathsome worm. What is our will? A helpless criminal In general, what are we without Christ? A terrible, external spectacle.
Thoughts on the Events of the Nativity • Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to be counted in a census and were unable to find an inn in which to stay. Really, who has time and space for God today? How necessary is God for us in our life. Back then, people had filled all the inns and there was no lodging for the divine Infant. I think this demonstrates that people fill their lives with natural and human things and leave no margin for the supernatural, the divine. This continues to be so today: humanity is so locked into its own restrictions that it’s unwilling to accept God. Of course, the amazing thing is that, in any case, the divine ...
Knowledge of the wickedness of other people, that is the evil they do, great or small, diminishes our powers, because it’s not aligned with God.
Dear Readers, The feast of Christmas has come round again, and, according to Alexandros Papadiamantis, ‘if Easter is the brightest of the Christian feasts, Christmas is the most moving’. In both the Vigil for 25 December and in the Divine Liturgy on that day, we’ll hymn and recreate this great event of the Nativity and Incarnation of God the Word, Who, for our sakes became like us and mingled with us. Christmas has, in fact, become a source of inspiration in all areas of the spirit and of culture. The prophets in the Old Testament foretold the event, the New Testament describes it in terms of unsurpassed conciseness, the holy fathers and theologians delve into its content in incomparable fashion, ...
I see a strange and wondrous mystery. Shepherds’ music reaches my ears: not the piping of a plaintive melody, but the singing of a heavenly hymn. The angels are singing. The archangels join in. The cherubim hymn, the seraphim glorify. They all rejoice at the sight of God on earth and humankind in heaven. He Who is above, is now here below through His dispensation; and we who were below are now above through His mercy. Today, Bethlehem resembles heaven. In the place of stars, it has received the angels singing; and in place of the sun, it welcomes the Sun of Righteousness. And do not ask how, for where God so wills, the order of nature is overcome. For He willed; ...
In every facet of your life, have the humility of the Lord, His holiness, His meekness and His example as a model for yourself.
Do you know how great a sin it is to judge your neighbour? Really, what can be worse than that? What else does God hate as much and what revolts Him as passing judgement does? Yet it’s from small things that we eventually end up committing this great evil.
Beloved Fathers and brothers, today we celebrate the greatest event of all time and all ages: the birth of Christ, the ‘capital of all feasts’, according Saint John Chrysostom. God enters our life, in time, in history as ‘Jesus Christ the man’ (I Tim. 2, 5). ‘Christ appeared in the flesh’ (I Tim. 3, 16). God empties Himself, is humbled, belittles Himself, diminishes in an inconceivable manner and becomes an infant. An infant divine and human. He becomes a human person, like us, with flesh and blood, with soul and body, mind and will. Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, is perfect Man and perfect God. The entry of the eternal, the inaccessible, but merciful God without beginning into our ...
My beloved, The redemptive message of the great and joyful Feast of Christmas, which we have been deemed worthy to celebrate again this year, through God’s ineffable love and benevolence, could be summed up in a simple phrase: "God loves you personally." John, the Evangelist of love, has told us: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). Because of God's great love for each human person "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory ...” (Jn 1: 14) God’s redeeming descent onto earth as a perfect human being is the greatest proof of His personal love for every human being. This ...
As the ‘capital of feasts’, Christmas is honoured on the Holy Mountain with a vigil, during the course of which the monks sing hymns and troparia of exceptional poetic and musical beauty. At the Divine Liturgy on the day itself, ‘Those who have been baptized in Christ’ is sung in tone one. This hymn is a reminder of the practice in the ancient Church of holding the sacrament of baptism for catechumens at Christmas, a custom mentioned by Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in their Catechisms. ‘Those who have been baptized in Christ’ %audio1% ‘Christ is born, glorify him’ and ode one of the canon. %audio2%
