Fr. Lev Gillet On Holy Saturday the Church directs and concentrates our attention on our Lord’s tomb. In the whole liturgical year, there is no day with a more complex character than Holy Saturday, for this day shares both in the sorrow of the Passion and in the joy Read more
Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae Through the Cross, Christ sanctified His body- the link with the world. He rejected the temptations sent to Him by the world, that is to taste the pleasures, to satisfy His needs unrestrained or to avoid pain and death. If we, in the same way, ward Read more
Athanasios Moustakis On the evening of Great Tuesday, the tropario of Kassiani is sung in Orthodox churches. This is a poetic rendition of an event described in the Gospels and has to do with a sinful woman who showed her repentance by washing the feet of Jesus with expensive Read more
Archimandrite Ephraim, Abbot of the Vatopaidi Monastery When Christians talk about death, they don’t do so with pessimism, they aren’t resigned to it, they don’t think it natural. They see it principally as an enemy which must be defeated through Christ. ‘The last enemy to be destroyed is death, Read more
Abba Dorotheos So, all those who wish to cleanse themselves of the sins of the whole year should first guard against treating food lightly. Because the fathers say that inattention to food begets all kinds of evil for us. Equally, we must guard against breaking the fast without due Read more
Saint Silouan the Athonite Those who don’t love their enemies haven’t yet learned the wealth of the grace of the Lord, who died on the cross for his enemies and gave himself as a model to us, together with the command to love our enemies. The Lord is love. Read more
Saint John the Valaam It’s good that you practice the Jesus prayer. The holy fathers call this prayer the queen of the virtues, because it attracts other virtues to the soul. But the more sublime the prayer, the more effort it requires. Source: pemptousia.com
Fr. Christodoulos Papaïoannou On 28 February 2023, an appalling head-on collision occurred between two trains south of the Tempe Valley in Greece. The crash involved a passenger train and a freight train and killed at least 57 people, while many others were injured, some of them seriously. This funeral oration is by Fr. Christodoulos and is Read more
Protopresbyter Antonios Christou Dear readers, Great Lent is a time of strenuous, spiritual struggle with ourselves (less sleep, less nutrition, less ease and preoccupation with things we like doing, greater participation in the services and prayers, and so on). I don’t know, however, whether we truly realize the extent Read more
Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis It’s a constant exhortation on the part of the Church, all the year round, but particularly during Lent. Indeed, the prayer of Saint Efraim the Syrian is a powerful reminder which we repeat on a daily basis: ‘And not to judge my brother’. And how could Read more