Give doctors the honor they deserve, for the Lord gave them their work to do. Their skill came from the Most High, and kings reward them for it. Their knowledge gives them a position of importance, and powerful people hold them in high regard.
Apart from its usual dedication to the Menaion (the commemoration of the lives of the Saints) and the early custom to celebrate Kontakia (a type of hymn) during the Pannychis (festive night vigil celebrated at the Blachernae chapel), the Akathist had also the function to celebrate military victories or to ask, during wars, for divine protection intermediated by prayers of the Mother of God, the Invincible General.
The demon of fear that tempts you, saying „Where can you flee? You have no repentance; you have no escape”, belongs to the enemy who is trying to make you lose self-control, whereas godly sadness does not attack you, but says, „Do not be afraid; try again”, for it knows that humanity is weak, and strengthens us.
Why do we need to pray? For this, we need to understand that the first thing we need is the healing of the distortion of our will and, connected to this, the healing of our loneliness.
The Mother of God was the purest being created as all the holy fathers confess together. Her basic virtue was and is virginity, the gift of shyness – the full purity of her entire existence, not only from the bodily but also from spiritual (mental) point of view.
Holy Communion does not make people sick because the Holy Communion is truly the real Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the giver of life. Let us not forget that this teaching is basic in the Church which has passed through the history of pandemics much harsher than the one which we pass today.
We must consciously realize that we are eternal. Here you have all the stages of eternal life with a short description of each one.
Only the foolish think that suffering is evil. A sensible man knows that suffering is not evil but only the manifestation of evil and healing from evil. Only sin in a man is a real evil, and there is no evil outside sin.
How did Saint Joseph the Hesychast live his life and reach holiness? Read a fragment from one of his letters:
When we have a serious illness, it does not mean that this is a revelation from God that we will die. Or, to express it more exactly, we don’t know the outcome. However, such a serious illness can be used as a revelation from God that we must prepare ourselves more intensely for death.
Today, the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate officially included in the calendar of the Church the Saints Joseph the Hesychast (Elder Joseph), Ephraim of Katounakia and Daniil of Katounakia.
Koliva: Definition Koliva is a dish, consisting of boiled wheat that is used liturgically in the Eastern Orthodox Church for commemorations of the dead.
In any society there are richer people and poorer people. People who find a job, people who can’t find a job for a variety of reasons. All of this God has left on earth in order to need each other and to learn to love one another and not to judge too much why. In any case, Jesus does not want the sinner’s death but to return and be alive.
A nation without faith in God does not become free, neither advances further as a civilization. Only in this way we can assure for our children the heavenly inheritance, the only one true inheritance which truly remains even after death.
One should not think about the doings of God when one’s stomach is full; on a full stomach there can be no vision of the Divine mysteries.
The man who has come to hate the world has escaped sorrow. But he who has an attachment to anything visible is not yet delivered from grief. For how is it possible not to be sad at the loss of something we love?
One of the most delicate—yet important—issues in the Church is the distinction between the essence of God and His energies.
We must never forget that reality is our game. Do not say: ‘I do not know what is right, therefore I am not to blame when I fail to do it.’ For if you did all the good about which you do know, what you should do next would then become clear to you, as if you were passing through a house from one room to another. It is not helpful to know what comes later before you have done what comes first. For knowledge without action ‘puffs up’, but ‘love edifies’, because it ‘patiently accepts all things’ (1 Cor. […]
While praying to Christ, I felt a certain difficulty. The Mother of God – She was just like my own Mother to me. The same was with St. Euphemia. “My dear Saint Euphemia”, I addressed to her… But it was difficult to pray to Christ. I venerated His icons with fear. When during the Jesus Prayer my mind began to distract from prayer, I did not upset me at all. “Who am I to constantly keep Christ in my poor mind?” – I said to myself. And then something happened what I want to tell you about.
From the last words of Metropolitan Paul (Yazigi) of Aleppo on the Holy Mountain: Love is not measured among virtues. Love does not count together with fasting, prayer, etc. Love is the purpose and the driving force of all virtues. The virtues build a new person, radiating love to the world. So, as Saint John Chrysostom says, you do not have to be among people to be the true friend of people. True friendship is love—not spatial or temporal closeness. Look at the monks: everybody looks for them, and the pilgrims come from far away to see them, because they […]
After Adam fell by sin and sank into corruption, at once impure pleasures rushed in, and the law of the jungle sprang up in our members. So nature became sick with sin through the disobedience of one, Adam. Then the many became sinners, not as fellow transgressors with Adam, for they did not even exist, but as being of that nature which had fallen under the law of sin. Human nature in Adam became sick through the corruption of disobedience, and thus the passions entered into it.
Many people think that cremation is an easy solution and wonder, ‘Why not?’
A husband full of grace should speak to his wife like this:
Many ask what is death in the Bible. According with the Bible, as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this death of the soul is the true death.
My child, I hope you are well. Just recently, I got somewhat better too. This is how my life has passed, with pain and illnesses. Now I have approached death once again for your sake. I said, “Let me die, only let my spiritual children live.” And I didn’t eat at all.
The soul, being created rational and understandable by the life-giving breath of God, was not created at once with irrational anger and lust, but with the power of desire and, along with that, with the force of love.
Our good God gave us Time to draw us closer to Him, and space to draw us closer to each other. However, we can’t approach God without approaching ourselves, and vice versa, because of this, we have the notion of a spacetime continuum.
Many put this question: If I don’t enjoy church, does that mean that I’m going to Hell?
Eternity cannot simply be an unchangeable substance, it cannot be like eternal self-sustaining law. Such eternity cannot be inexhaustible and creative.
“In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” I stop, struck with admiration at this thought. What shall I say first? Shall I demonstrate the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I praise the truth of our faith?