By the Very Reverend Stelyios S. Muksuris, Ph.D Recently, a woman shared with me a series of endearing stories of how she feels called by God to spend time with elderly men and women in nursing homes, whose only hope and joy is a smile or hug or good word. But more than such acts is the presence of another person in their lives who simply listens and stands by them in their suffering. Now
THE FALLING ASLEEP IN THE LORD OF FATHER JOHN TAVLARIDES Dearest Parishioner and Friend, With a heavy heart I inform you that Saint Sophia Cathedral’s spiritual father, Father John Tavlarides, whose priestly ministry to the people of God and the Great Church of Christ spanned six decades, passed from us Monday evening, September 21, at 11:07 PM. We commend his immortal soul to Christ God, Whom he so fervently loved, and so dedicatedly served, throughout
THE FALLING ASLEEP IN THE LORD OF FATHER JOHN TAVLARIDES Dearest Parishioner and Friend, With a heavy heart I inform you that Saint Sophia Cathedral’s spiritual father, Father John Tavlarides, whose priestly ministry to the people of God and the Great Church of Christ spanned six decades, passed from us Monday evening, September 21, at 11:07 PM. We commend his immortal soul to Christ God, Whom he so fervently loved, and so dedicatedly served, throughout
By the Very Reverend Stelyios S. Muksuris, Ph.D One of my favorite passages in all of Scripture is Psalm 46 (45 LXX):10, which reads: “Be still, and know that I am God.” This brief but powerful assertion, applicable to virtually any age in history, speaks to the uneasiness and distress every person or group experiences throughout life. Specifically, the Psalm addresses signs of violence in nature and the tumults that exist between nations which seek
Just as some Eastern fathers saw Christ’s human/divine nature as one dynamic unity, so they also saw the Trinity as an Infinite Dynamic Flow. The Western Church tended to have a more static view of both Christ and the Trinity–theologically “correct” but largely irrelevant for real life, more a mathematical conundrum than invitation to new consciousness. In our attempts to explain the Trinitarian mystery, the Western Church overemphasized the individual “names” Father, Son, and Holy
Another thought may press us hard: getting out of our former life, our former profession, and doing something completely different. Often all the arguments are useless here. The thought just keeps coming back. Here too some of the sayings of the fathers show us a way. A father who had struggled for years against the thought of visiting a certain confrere concretely imagined going to him, greeting him, and speaking to him. He imagined the
Even before the revelation of Christ we find in scripture one striking example of a man who was strictly speaking a pagan, but was on the verge of this knowledge of God in terms of sonship and fatherhood; it is Job. He is termed a pagan because he does not belong to the race of Abraham, he is not one of the inheritors of the promises to Abraham. He is one of the most striking
We must not forget that from its beginning Christianity came into contact with a whole range of prehistoric systems of thought, whose influence penetrated the Mediterranean world after Alexander’s expedition, when Greek and Asian civilizations met; sciences of inner reality and underlying causes, animist or pan-psychic beliefs about existence, in which humanity and the cosmos are at one. Indian yoga and Chinese medicine, which even threaten to undermine Marxist historical materialism, are modern examples of
Abba Poemen asked at every moment: “Who am I and who are You?” St. Francis would also spend whole nights praying this same prayer. Baron Von Hugel, in his classic study of mysticism, said this might just be the perfect prayer. It is through encountering the absolute safety of God that we discover our true self, and in finding our truest self, we find a God who is always and forever larger than we expected.
By Father Stelyios S. Muksuris Perhaps I am preaching to the choir when I say that the older I become, the more I come to see that our world is full of paradoxes. Contradictions of all sorts abound in our lives — between individuals and their behavior, among ideologies and political systems, and so forth. I need not rattle off specific examples to prove my point. With age, we want to believe, comes wisdom and
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