Ξένες γλώσσες

My recent post on the One God has shown me that there is much more to say on the subject. "We believe in One God..." but do we? In a recent conversation, someone said to me that they had difficulty believing in "one supreme being who created everything...etc." Christians don't actually believe in one supreme being. If this startles you, then read further. Christians do not believe in "one supreme being," first because we do not believe in one of anything (or one of something). There is not a class called "supreme beings" to which the God who created everything belongs. There is no class of anything to which He belongs. The God of the Christians is in no way similar to ...

The Arab Conquest According to tradition, the brotherhood of the monastery sent a delegation to Medina in 625 A.D. to ask Mohammad for political protection. Mohammad approved the request and wrote the famous achtiname, which bears a representation of his palm, in which he declared that Muslims should protect monks. A copy of the achtiname is on display today in the monastery’s gallery. It is reported that Mohammad visited the monastery in the course of his commercial activities, which is probably why the Koran mentions the sacred sites of Sinai. So when the Sinai peninsula came under Arab rule in 641 A.D., the monastery continued its normal life without disturbance, though the number of monks began to drop and, at ...

When you walk the path of Christ, many people- perhaps even your closest relatives- will mock you. Don’t let it bother you. Don’t let it worry you. Remember they mocked Christ as well. But he didn’t make enemies of them. He held his tongue. You do the same.

To a person who had to choose between suicide and begging You write that all your worldly goods were sold off to a third party. When you found yourself out on the street with nothing and nobody, you headed to the cemetery, bent on killing yourself. You had no doubts or second thoughts about this. Exhausted by the vexations, you lay down on your parents’ grave and fell asleep. Your mother appeared to you in your sleep and berated you, saying that in the Kingdom of God there were plenty of people who had been beggars, but not a single one of those who had done away with themselves. That dream saved you from suicide. Your beloved mother really did save ...

When God, the Son of God, entered the womb of All-Holy Virgin and took flesh from her, He was born a perfect person and perfect God, without confusion. When has anything more important ever happened for us? We all believe in this Son of God and Son of the ever-virgin Mother of God, Mary, which is why we confidently accept this information about Him and this event. If we confess Him and repent from the bottom of our heart then the word of devotion is born within us like a seed, in exactly the same way as the Word of the Father entered the womb of the Virgin. Marvel at this great and astonishing miracle and accept it in ...

In recent years, there has been much discussion of the difference which exists between the notions of “person” and “individual”. It may be that the progress of the social and anthropological sciences has provided the spark for this discussion, the starting-point for which is to be found in the well-known philosophical trends of our day. In particular, we see the supporters of Christian personalism and those of existentialism wrestling in particular with the notion of “person”, in an attempt to define its role and spheres of influence and existence. We need to make a clarification at this point. The recent commotion around the person doesn’t mean that it’s only recently that people have begun thinking about concerning themselves with its role ...

Be careful not to praise one another face to face because praise harms even the perfect, not to mention you who are still weak. Only mockery and humiliations benefit people spiritually. Because they beget humility. They win crowns. If you bear them patiently, they snuff out egotism and vainglory.

Sinai is the meeting point of two continents and the dividing line between two seas. The peninsula, which is often described as “24,000 square metres of useless land”,  is the gateway between Africa and Asia and the bridge between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, i.e. the shortest route from Europe to the Indian Ocean and the Far East. At first sight, Sinai seems inaccessible, being full of barren, rocky mountains. The earth is unsuitable for cultivation and there’s not much rain; it’s very hot during the day and cold at night. And yet, Sinai isn’t monotonous and all of a piece. The northern part, from Al Arish to the Suez Canal consists of large expanses of sand, which, in ...

The people today who are not themselves close to Christianity claim vehemently that the Christian Church should consist of perfect and saintly people. They are the same ones who condemn the Church for granting a haven to sinners, imperfect souls and pseudo-Christians. This is one of the commonest arguments against Christianity. But this reasoning does not understand the nature of the Church and, in the end, forgets its whole purpose, because the Church exists, above all, for the sinners, the imperfect and the despicable. It goes out into the world and labours among people who are floundering in sin. Celestial in origin and eternal in its inception, it works in time and space without having recourse to extremes, away from ...

The Vasilopita (VasilOpita) is the main custom in Greece for New year.  It’s one which we encounter throughout Greece, though naturally with local variations. These are mostly to do with the ingredients of the cake. In some places it’s a cake, though there are also parts where it’s a savory or sweet pie, made with phyllo pastry. There even places where it’s a bread. There are also differences in the way the Vasilopita’s decorated.  One common feature, though is that there’s always a cross and a reference to the year. And in all cases, the cake or pie is round and has a coin hidden inside it. Most Greeks cut the Vasilopita  immediately after the turn of the year. In some ...

Let’s not seek Elders who have foresight or far-sight, but, above all, let them be humble and capable of the cure of our infirmities. This will appear from the manner of their life and the place and condition of their asceticism.

Recently, the industrial company ‘World Ltd’ bought from the Japanese firm ‘Sora’, the latest electronic machinery, ‘with cutting-edge technology’. Japanese engineers assembled it and gave it a test work-out. At the same time, they trained the operator. The inauguration of the new machine started with a formal ceremony. The whole of the Board of Management of the company was present. ‘We must be very proud’, said the CEO with great satisfaction, ‘of the company’s new acquisition’. ‘We have nothing like it in our factory’, the Managing Director hastened to add. ‘Sora, which means ‘heaven’ in Japanese, has given us the best it has’. The CEO wasn’t paying attention and stood up to meet the priest who was coming in, cutting off the Managing ...

Once, when a discussion was taking place between Jewish Sadducees, Pharisees and Hellenists on the subject of Our Lord Jesus Christ, some saying He was a prophet, others that He was deluded, and yet others that He was the Son of God, the blessed First Martyr and Archdeacon Stephen went and stood on a high place and preached to everyone concerning Our Lord Jesus Christ. “My brethren, why have your evils increased so greatly that the whole of Jerusalem is in uproar? Blessed are the people who have never felt any hesitation in their hearts concerning Jesus Christ. For it was He Who bent the heavens and came down for our sins and was born from the Holy Virgin, the ...

  The Bible and early post-Biblical Christian literature opposes slaveholding by Christians in the 21st-century world, although for a reason you probably did not expect.  This article reconciles Biblical acceptance of slavery with modern-day Christian opposition to it. As you are aware, the Bible does not condemn slavery.  In fact, there are passages that condone it: Exodus 21.2-4, Exodus 21.6f, Exodus 21.32, 1 Corinthians 7.21, Colossians 3.22f, Colossians 4.1, 1 Peter 2.18, and the Epistle to Philemon.  Colossians 3.22 even instructs slaves to work diligently for their Christian masters.  Much of the material on employer-employee relations in the Bible pertains to owners and slaves. In the post-Biblical literature we have the Epistle to Polycarp 4.3 (ca AD 107) by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch, ...

Most young people don’t know how to discover their calling in the life. Whether to dedicate themselves to monasticism or select the marriage path. Some have the feeling that monasticism is a more superior choice than marriage and that marriage represents a lower situation. Others believe that any young man who chooses to become a monk is a coward who avoids the responsibilities of citizenship. Bishop of Nafpaktos, Hierotheos provides a warm insight and a clear view of the essence of both marriage and monastic life, based on the teaching of the Eastern Church Fathers. “Both marriage and monasticism are powerful symbolic ways of straining toward the ultimate goal of love. Celibacy and marriage are not contrasted with each other; instead, ...

We hear about wars, earthquakes, catastrophes, tempests, but let’s just wait and the rain will come…

Too often we place our hopes in words and human thinking.  But, can human thought or words ever gain for us what we seek? St Gregory Palamas says, If someone attempts to touch the stars with his hand, even though he is tall and stretched his arm further than the rest, he is almost as far away from those ethereal heights as men of much shorter stature, the difference not being worth mentioning. In the same way, on subjects transcending words, eminent speakers are not significantly better at saying something than anyone else. Who can attempt to treat of matters which utterly defy all words without being seen to give  away beneath the weight of these topics, like those reputed to have ...

According to the Proto-Gospel of James, Righteous Joseph was away for the summer doing construction work while the infant Christ was growing in the womb of Mary. In the autumn, Joseph returned home to find his espoused wife seven months pregnant. The details of this encounter between Joseph and Mary are not recorded in the Scripture.  A few of the Fathers of the Church have attempted to construct a possible dialog between the two, with a frustrated Joseph making accusations and a preachy Mary quoting scripture.  I find such supposed dialogs hard to imagine.  After all, the Gospels say that Mary “treasured these things in her heart,” implying that she was not wont to talk about her spiritual experiences. Also, Her ...

One reason why people today suffer and have weak nervous systems is that they lack the power from above which the Church gives. And if you remember, when Christ ascended into heaven, where were the disciples told to go? To the upper room in Jerusalem, until they were ‘clothed with the power from on high’. It is precisely this power from on high that we must take and which is given freely to us, provided we desire it, provided we want it, provided we work for it and ask for it.

With His incarnation, His humanization, God entered the innermost core of our lives in the most obvious way. He entered our circulatory system, our heart, the centre of everything, the centre of the universe. After He’d been expelled from our world, our body and our soul through our voluntary sin, He returned, through His incarnation, to our world, our body and our soul, becoming completely human and working for us as a human being. He dwells in the world, and from the creation provides for the creation, sanctifying, saving, transforming it. The incarnation of God is the most earth-shattering event and the most radical upheaval on the earthly world and on all other worlds, because through it the wonder of ...