There’s only one passion that stops us from doing as much good as we can – negligence. This passion is cured by prayer and alms-giving.
Honoring the saints is a fundamental element of Orthodox tradition and life. Through the churches dedicated to them, through the expressive icons of them as they are in eternity, through the poetic services, through their exciting Lives, through the constant invocation of their name, they’re people who are very much alive for us and their grace intervenes in the lives of the faithful, strengthening, supporting and sanctifying. It’s not unusual for the Church to address a group of saints, rather than individuals. In this way, we honor the infants slaughtered by Herod, the Fathers of the Ecumenical Synods, and those who were martyred en masse in the various persecutions. It would have been hard, therefore, for the sensitive, poetic, monastic and ...
Never respect those who criticize their neighbours. Instead, tell them: ‘Stop that. I err every day in worse ways, so who am I to condemn anybody?’ In this way you’ll have double the benefit. With one remedy, you’ll cure both yourself and your neighbor.
Set your minds, brethren, to the examination of your affairs and don’t neglect yourselves, because even a little neglect can lead us into great danger. I lately paid a visit to a monk and found him recovering from an illness. As we were talking I learned that he’d been alone and had contracted a fever that lasted seven days. It was then forty days since the fever had left him and he still hadn’t regained his former strength. You see, brethren, what a trial it is if something goes wrong with you. People usually dismiss a small disorder and don’t realize that if a little thing happens to injure their body, especially if it’s weak to start with, they’re going ...
The devil, the source of all evil, leads us into temptation in particular with thoughts of disbelief, blasphemy, hesitancy, despair, pride and vanity. Indirectly, he brings us into temptation through other people, with thoughts of superiority, vainglory, anger and lust, with avarice, greed, envy, strife, judgment of others, gossiping and so on. The devil also brings temptations to the body with sloth, gluttony, inebriation, fornication, weakness of the will, hardness of heart and suchlike.
One of the world’s oldest churches was purchased by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the ecclesiastical center of the world’s 300 million Orthodox Christians. The Byzantine Basmelekler Church (also known as the Taksiyarhon Church) was purchased on September 10. The Turkish Hurriyet Daily News reported that the Başmelekler Church was built in 789 by Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennetos. The church, which is located in Trilye, a seaside village near Istanbul in Turkey, was put up for sale by owner Teksen Construction for $400,000 back in 2007. According to Metropolitan Elpidophoros Lambriniadis who facilitated the details of the purchase, the Istanbul-based Patriarchate completed the purchase of the church, now the Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, and that it is no longer derelict. "There ...
We shouldn’t regard with surprise and meanness of spirit the various sins, weaknesses and passions of other people. All of these are old enticements, they’re weaknesses of the whole human race. We can’t rid ourselves of them by ourselves. What we need is a savior, not an intercessor, not an angel, but the Incarnate Lord Himself.
There has been some debate, even at local school-board levels, about the theory of evolution vs. creationism and the more recently offered idea of “intelligent design.” Now Cardinal Cristoph Schönborn has weighed in with an op-ed piece in the New York Times (July 7), claiming that Christians cannot believe that life’s origins can be found in natural selection’s chancy, random stabs at development. Some kind of intelligent design must lie behind it, and reason can lead to a rational belief in an intelligent designer. This has been seized on as a retreat from John Paul II’s endorsement of the theory of evolution as real science, a sign that the new papacy will retreat from serious science into the intelligent design ...
Beyond the checking of prevailing theories, which is inherent in the research process, and the required investigation of all alternative proposals, which will provide the answers sought for, it’s difficult to avoid the observation that one point which encourages the need for a recourse to forms which by-pass the established cosmological model of the Big Bang, has to do precisely with its close relationship with the religious version of the creation of the world. Indeed, acceptance of the beginning of the universe from a particular time is more in tune with the Biblical (if not other) narratives concerning the beginning of the world through divine will and intervention. This is where things take a different turn. On the one hand, there’s ...
Regret nothing other than your time. If you spend money, you can always make more. But if you waste your time, you won’t get it back. Because we’ve been granted very little time in this present life.
Reality at all levels and in every dimension is a mystery. I will not suggest that the world which we experience with our own senses is not reality; nevertheless, what we perceive is the surface of reality, which is penetrated only with great spiritual effort over time. The more deeply we penetrate into this perceived reality, the greater the mystery becomes. Creation icon It is my proposal to demonstrate that almost all the apparent conflicts between science and faith arise from models of reality and not from reality itself. The resolution to such conflict may arise from a re-examination of the models of reality we hold which are based on obsolete information. The Church fathers should perhaps be given credit ...
In traditional societies, the father figure was always dominant. In Christian theology, the person of the Father is the very principle of the Godhead, the Begetter of the Son outside of time, and of the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from Him, also outside of time. The Father pours out the fulness of divinity onto the Son. Only the Son knows the essence of the Father and makes Him known to us through His incarnate dispensation. Human paternity is an image of divine Fatherhood. Christ Himself makes this point when He says: ‘What father among you, if his son asks for bread, would give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish would give him a snake instead of ...
Those people are good who have achieved perfection in virtue. They always want what is good, they render good for evil. They always try to do well, stressing good hope, and bear with fortitude whatever God sends them. God supports those who are good and shelters them all the days of their life.
Above all pray without ceasing and thank God for everything that happens to you (Rule of Anthony the Great) Anthony the Great is a realist. His rules or canons aren’t some formula he’s found and thrown to us. Each of them has something unique concerning the life of the monk and, if one is broken, everything comes crashing down. He says we have to pray without ceasing but at the same time thank God for everything that happens to us. He uses a coordinating conjunction because these two things can’t be separated, they go together. We thank God for pleasant things, but even more for something else: in life, matters don’t always turn out as we would want them to. We pray, ...
Time flies, the years roll by and we come ever closer to eternity. We see it, but we’re lost in a trance, until- and I’ll be the first- we end up in hell. God, Who redeemed the human race from enslavement to the enemy, release us from our future condemnation, when You come to judge the world, rendering to each according to his or her works.
Proskynetaria is the name given to manuscripts containing descriptions of the monuments of Palestine, especially the Christian ones. They have many points of similarity with modern travel books or tourist guides to archaeological sites. The name derives from the word Proskynetarion with which the majority of them begin, and is, of course, connected both with the content of the books and with their readers, who were usually visiting this exceptional part of the world as pilgrims. Many Greek manuscripts of this type are preserved in libraries and collections both in Greece and abroad-an indication of their great popularity, particularly in the period following the rail of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. They date, in fact, from the 16th, 17th ...
Mallards ducklings with mother “Let there be banished hence dejection born of passions, and thoughts that rise like tempests. In this wise shall the springtime of faith sprout up and blossom forth.” (Matins Aposticha, Thursday of Thomas week) Here we are in the springtime. Everything is blooming--the time of budding has already past. And yet we can miss it: not merely the season of the year, but the season of the Church. Thoughts besiege us. Dejection is always near. The passions don’t go away. But where we put our focus makes all the difference. I can sit here all day looking at the glowing screen before me and never walk outside to smell the blossoms and see the new life pushing out ...
