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Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Fourth Tuesday of Pascha: The Descent of Jesus into Hades (Part II)

05/24/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko So you have this kind of symbolical way of speaking about the condition of being dead. And so it can sound somehow like a place, like heaven would be a place, Sheol would be a place. But all the holy fathers, and many of the modern writers, for example Hierotheos Vlachos, the Metropolitan of Nafpaktos, a very famous, well-known writer of Orthodoxy, today many of his books are translated into English,

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: The Descent of Jesus into Hades (Part I)

05/23/2016

By Father Thomas Hopko The Paschal icon, the icon of the victory of Christ, God’s Messiah, over death, the last enemy, in the Orthodox Church is an icon of the live, glorious Christ, in the realm of the dead, smashing the gates of Sheol, or of Hades, and releasing, and freeing, and pulling from the tombs, the whole of humanity, symbolized in the persons of Adam and Eve. In that icon, of course, there are

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part IV)

05/20/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part IV The Body of the resurrected Christ was incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt body of Adam before the Fall. Christ’s resurrected, spiritual Body was like the spiritual body that Adam was supposed to attain by ascending to God in Paradise. Likewise, the New Heaven and the New Earth will be incomparably more spiritual than the incorrupt creation before the Fall. Through Christ the New Adam, the

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part III)

05/19/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part III The aim of the Christian life, says St. Seraphim of Sarov, is to acquire the Grace of the Holy Spirit. [31] We receive the seed of that Grace within us at Baptism. And then, through our sacramental life in the Church, through a life of prayer and virtue, practicing the commandments of Christ, we are to cultivate and nurture this seed of inward baptismal

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II)

05/18/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II In the Gospels, especially the Gospel of St. John, Christ makes several statements which reveal how His followers would be able to receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit by means of His death. In the temple Christ preached: He that believeth on Me … out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. After quoting these words of Christ, the Apostle John explains: But this

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Tuesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part I)

05/17/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part I Now, having looked at how Christ redeemed us through His death on the Cross, let us turn to the saving fruits of Christ’s death. What does it mean for mankind to be ransomed from guilt, to be forgiven of sins? It means, in the words of St. John Damascene, that “the road back to the former blessedness [i.e., before the Fall] has been made

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Monday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part III)

05/16/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part III Many of the Holy Fathers wrote on this theme of Christ as sacrifice. Origen (who is not a Holy Father) and, following him, St. Gregory of Nyssa, posited that the sacrifice was offered to the devil. But St. Gregory the Theologian and all the Fathers after him rejected this idea. They often spoke of the sacrifice as being offered to God the Father, and sometimes they

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part II)

05/13/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part II The word “redemption,” of course, comes from this juridical explanation. As Vladimir Lossky points out: “The very idea of redemption assumes a plainly legal aspect: it is the atonement of a slave, the debt paid for those who remained in prison because they could not discharge it. [15] By His death Christ ransomed man out of servitude to sin, and redeemed man from the eternal consequences of sin which had

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part I)

05/12/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part I Now, having looked at the pre-Fall state and the consequences of the Fall, let us look more closely at how Christ restores man to the pre-Fall state and in fact beyond and above this state. The how of the redemption, like the nature of God the Holy Trinity, is ultimately a mystery. And yet the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Fathers help us to approach this mystery. They enable us

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of the Fall, Part II)

05/11/2016

By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of the Fall, Part II We are all the inheritors of the death and corruption that entered into man’s nature at the Fall. St. Gregory Palamas says that, through Adam’s one spiritual death, both spiritual and physical death were passed onto all men. [10] This is because human nature is one: we are all of the family of Adam. Orthodoxy does not accept the idea that we are guilty of

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Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Fourth Tuesday of Pascha: The Descent of Jesus into Hades (Part II)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: The Descent of Jesus into Hades (Part I)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part IV)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part III)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Tuesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part I)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Third Monday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part III)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Friday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part II)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Thursday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Means of Redemption, Part I)

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of the Fall, Part II)

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