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Commandments and Anti-Commandments
“Amen; yes, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20) Here is the longing of the true Christian heart. From it is ever welling up a desire for Christ the Lord; a seeking of Him ever more and more. This is both personal and corporate. It is both an ongoing and reoccurring event and simultaneously one of most singular and unrepeatable uniqueness. The daily cry of the true Christian heart is “come Lord Jesus,” come today, this hour and minute and purify me of all impurity, wash me of my sin. Come Lord Jesus. This is the pulse of the Christian heart. This cry will find its final culmination at the end of…
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Holy Zeal
Links with the Holy FathersIntroduction by Fr Seraphim Rose In our confused days, when a hundred conflicting voices claim to speak for Orthodoxy, it is essential to know whom one can trust as spokesmen for true Orthodoxy. It is not enough to claim to speak for Patristic Orthodoxy; one must be in the genuine tradition of the Holy Fathers, not merely “rediscovering” them in a modern academy or seminary, but actually receiving their tradition from one’s own fathers. A merely clever explainer of the Patristic doctrine is not in this tradition, but only one who, not trusting his own judgment or that of his peers, is constantly asking of his…
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2020 Vision: From Blindness to Sight in the Age of Collapse
“Life in the hive puckered up my night, / A kiss of death, the embrace of life.” –Television, “Marquee Moon” When we were born, OUR LUNGS INHALED CHAOS, and when our umbilical cords were cut, we traded mothers for motherboards. No longer linked to human wombs, our navels found new nutrition: We plugged—as by a USB cable—into the mainframe of a society hypnotized by gadgets, machinery, and glowing screens. This mainframe, this biomechanical machine, devoured our being and with it, the human being. It became our babysitter, our pedagogue, our hero, our sibling, our uncle, our elder, our entertainment: our closest, most sadistic and inhuman friend. Our souls, discounted as…
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The Thorns of Apostasy
“And that which fell into the thorns, these are the ones who heard, and while they are going on their way, they being choked by the cares and wealth and pleasures of life, and do not bring forth fruit to perfection” (Lk. 8:14). In another place our Lord says a similar thing, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:21). If the heart is preoccupied with material, passing, things, then it will labor with all its might to preserve them. For the materialized heart, all that exists is physical existence. The preservation of material existence becomes the primary goal of the material-man; indeed it becomes the all-encompassing driving factor.…
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The Age of Distraction: Part I
In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.” St Luke 10:41-42 In the age of distraction we are fighting an invisible war against the demons who want to do everything they can to pull us away from Christ. We constantly work against our focus on Christ. Instead, we should be sitting at His feet. But, what does this mean for the 21st century Christian who has almost all the information in the world at his fingertips?…
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Speak and We Obey!
“In times past, a table used to stand in the corner wherein the holy icons were. Then, however, that space will be occupied by seductive instruments for the deception of men. Many who have departed away from the Truth will say: we need to watch and hear the news. And it is in the news that antichrist will appear; and they will accept him.” St. Lavrenty (Lawrence) of Chernigov (he was born in 1868 and reposed in the Lord in 1950.) In times past, humanity was mindful of God. Sovereignty belongs to Him alone. Western civilization of olde was indisputably Christian. Inevitably it, civilization, was imperfect, there are no perfect institutions…
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Degrees of Spiritual Perfection
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos “The most important work of the Church is to cure man. Therefore the Orthodox Church is a Hospital, an infirmary of the soul. This does not mean that the Church disregards other domains of pastoral activity, since she aims at the whole of man, consisting of both body and soul. She cares indeed for the physical, economic and social problems as well; yet the main weight of her pastoral service is put on the soul’s therapy, for when man’s soul is cured then many other intractable problems are solved. Some people accuse the Orthodox Church of not being very much involved in social problems. However,…
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The Divine Darkness
By St Gregory of Nyssa What does it mean that Moses entered the darkness and then saw God in it? What is now recounted seems somehow to be contradictory to the first theophany, for then the Divine was beheld in light, but now He is seen in darkness. Let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of things we have contemplated spiritually. Scripture teaches by this that religious knowledge comes at first to those who receive it as light. Therefore what is perceived to be contrary to religious is darkness, and the escape from darkness comes about when one participates in light, but as the mind…
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The Bread, The Wine, and The Mode Of Being
by Chrysostom Koutloumousianos, Hieromonk The recent reappearance of the ancient terror of a pandemic has prompted fertile conversation among theologians and literary people across the world. Various opinions have been articulated, such as that disease can be transmitted through the current way of distributing holy communion, or that the Eucharistic Gifts themselves can be bearers and transmitters of pathogenic germs. It is said that since the bread and the wine do not alter their essence and essential properties, it follows that they are subject to decay and can also spread toxic viruses. This idea has supposedly found Christological grounds as well in that the human body of Christ is a…
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Three Saints of Hope and Pain
by Dr Nikolaos Koios It’s a profound conviction of the Orthodox Church that every epoch has its own saints and there’s not a single age without them. In every era, the saints are proof and demonstration of the grace of Christ, the love of the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, in place and time, among us. When saints leave this earth for their celestial abode, they leave to the generation which knew them the privilege of Saint John the Theologian (I Jn. 1,2) to declare ‘what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands’. Our…
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God Is With Us
My dears! I should like to speak with you, seated at a cup of coffee. See, I have prepared coffee for myself, sweet, just as I like it. I realize that you are frightened, many of you are frightened with the current situation. Especially those who are in Italy. But let us not forget that God is standing at our wheel. God, who created heaven and earth, who created all things from nothingness. And as sacred scripture tells us with God even the hairs of your head are counted. Do you think that anything happens without God’s will, without divine permission? No. This is why I want to tell you…
