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Today’s Gospel (Mark 8:34-38; 9:1), read on the Third Sunday of Great Lent (Sunday of the Holy Cross) is one of the most well-known Bible readings, which includes the renowned question: “For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” The Gospel passage begins with a powerful statement, a challenge, in fact, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” The Week 1 installment of our Great Lent: Sunday Bible Reading initiative focused on five words: Follow me and Come and see. Today we will focus on only three: If anyone wishes. Does Christ say “You have ...

Athanasios Mikhailidis, as he was known in the world, was born in 1908, in Cappadocia, in the village of Moutalaski, to Victoria and Michael Mikhailidis. The village that Blessed Savvas the Sanctified was from. As he himself said, his childhood was marked by great poverty, loss of a parent,  much hard work and many hardships. His burning faith and straightforward piety, not to mention his natural Cappadocian God-fearing character, meant that he was able to weather all these storms. The  exchange of populations in1922 brought him, his mother and his two sisters to Corinth, and thereafter to Thessaloniki, where he worked at a cobbler’s.   Desire for God took him at a young age to the Holy Mountain, the mountain of God ...

In this earthly life, we have to store up oil, that is perform works of charity, which will be of use to us in the next life. The more the obstacles, the greater will be the triumph of virtue.

In Biblical scholar Bonnie Thurston’s latest offering to the study of the Scriptures All the Fullness of God: The Christ of Colossians, we are given a wonderful analysis of the theology of the Apostle Paul in his writing of this epistle to the first century Colossian church. Thurston lays out for us the history and context of that church’s confused Christology in which the Apostle attempts to correct with the writing of his letter. Thurston’s study is broken into two parts. It is almost if we are confronted with two separate works within the covers of one volume. The first part lays out for us the historical, societal, religious, and political context in which Paul and his associates found themselves in ...

In the middle of Great Lent, on the third Sunday of the fast, the Church presents the Cross for veneration by the faithful, so that they can be strengthened in their spiritual struggle, which will bring them to Great Week and Easter. On that day, the Gospel reading contains Christ’s words to His disciples, just after He’s foretold his coming death on the Cross to them: ‘Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Those who want to be my disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their soul will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save ...

Downfall, then, is severance and departure on the part of any created being from the first cause of its existence, which is God. According to divine revelation, all things are the result of a cause, they can’t exist by themselves but only by ‘partaking’ in God’s energy and providence. If therefore, they’re cut off from the cohesive power and energy of God, they crumble and become moribund.

When you turn to God, you don’t ask for anything, you’re not dissatisfied and you’re content with everything and everybody. You love everyone and they love you. And this depends on you, because you’ve united yourself with God.

As we continue our Journey to Pascha in the “arena of virtues” known as Great Lent, this week’s installment of our 40 Day Challenge focuses on two inseparable attributes of the Christian life: Faith and Good Works. There are countless Bible passages and sayings of the Church Fathers that deal with these two virtues. On faith, we will hear, for example, on Lazarus Saturday, Christ saying to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” On good works, we read the following in the Book of James: “For as the body without the spirit is dead, ...

Satan never appears to people in person and is never openly revealed as our enemy. He fights in secret, indirectly, and through wicked people, using all kinds of diabolic ploys so that we won’t recognize that he wants to bring about our downfall and perdition.

Riches and the Teaching of Saint John Chrysostom According to Saint John Chrysostom, wealth is an ‘illusion’, a ‘fantasy’ and concern over it ‘will create tension and darkening’, leading to the delights which make us soft. Opulence is an ‘unfaithful’ and ‘ungrateful deserter’, since it often leaves naked those who have cared so much for it and changes masters. It’s a ruthless ‘murderer’, a ‘traitor’ a ‘tyrant which gives harsh orders’, an ‘unrelenting enemy’, a ‘sea tossed by innumerable winds’. ‘Rich people are poor’, because ‘the more wealth they acquire, the poorer they become’. ‘In the present life, poverty and riches are no more than masks’. According to Chrysostom, true wealth isn’t becoming rich, but not even wanting to. In reality, the ...

Those who don’t know themselves, don’t know God either. Those who don’t know God, don’t know the truth and live unbearable lives full of sorrow and bitterness and they always sinning against God.

Should we be indifferent to those who are sinning? Not according to Saint Basil the Great, who bases this opinion on Scripture. According to Saint Basil, the Lord gave explicit instructions, in both the Old and New Testaments, regarding this matter. In Leviticus, the Lord orders: ‘Rebuke your neighbour frankly so you will not share in his guilt’ (19, 17). And in the Gospel, too, the Lord commands: ‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or ...

Let’s not pray hypocritically. However lazy and weak our flesh is, however drowsy you feel, you have to master yourself. Don’t feel sorry for your body, humble it for God. The gift of prayer that you offer God should be perfect. Give your heart to God.

The Lord really dislikes people passing judgement on others. Condemnation is begotten from self-satisfaction. This is why, at your every fall, you should examine the reasons that caused you to act like that. Then you’ll avoid taking the same path again. And if you restrain yourself sometimes and don’t criticize others, your struggle will then become easier. We usually criticize others when we’ve ceased to control ourselves.

The way things are today, with economic matters dominant, as well as the various theories which stem from them, it’s clear that the value of the human person has been much reduced. We recognize it not only in the way people are treated as mere cogs in the production process, nor even in the way they’ve been transformed into official figures and numbers in registers. We see it in our everyday lives where what is cultivated isn’t a spirit of fairness but rather one of harsh competition, so that people are viewed as an enemy to be done away with. And in society, too, where the prevailing indifference leaves plenty of scope for the growth of weird phenomena and conditions ...

God came and showed us that He doesn’t want to abandon us but rather that we’ve moved away from Him. I mean, in the sense that God doesn’t force us. If humankind had other principles to live by, we could feed everyone. The funds which are spent on war, even when there isn’t one, are more than enough to satisfy the needs of all the starving.

A deep scar kept me alive. I cross the earth like a brave soldier with solid steps and doleful eyes. Oh! Lord Hear the cry of your children. Hear the voices screaming in the war ruins. A veil of terror spread all over humanity. Oh! Lord Feel the agony in their pain. My eyes were suddenly burnt. Huge flames rushed in a vast desert in a voyage without return. Hopeless voices approached me filled my breath Asking me for help. Begging me to rescue them. They were thirsty They were hungry They were abandoned They had nowhere to go…. Why all this pain Lord? A relentless and long grief for their lost lives. I faced deserted countries wounded people victims of injustice. Come and embrace us all with Your wings Lord in a safe and peaceful world. I closed my eyes making a wish so dear … Stay with ...

Today’s Gospel (Mark 2:1-12, see sidebar), read on the Second Sunday of Great Lent (Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas) describes one of the many miracles performed by Christ and highlights once again His divinity. Jesus heals the paralytic, telling him: “I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.” Before this, however, Christ forgave him his sins, which is an important point because as the scribes correctly note, God alone can forgive sins. One reason that God, through the person of Jesus Christ, took on flesh and came into the world was to forgive sins and by His love and mercy free humanity from its bondage and slavery. The forgiveness of sins and, by extension, our salvation, also requires our ...

The Lord of all desires mercy, not sacrifice, and since loving-kindness is better than the sacrifice of thousands of fattened lambs, let us offer it to Him through those who are in need, through those who today are in dire straits, so that we may be welcome in the heavenly kingdom when we leave this world and go to our Lord God.