St. Ephraim the Syrian: If he was not flesh . . . And if he was not God . . . The facts themselves bear witness and his divine acts of power teach those who doubt that he is true God, and his sufferings show that he is true man. And if those who are feeble in understanding are not fully assured, they will pay the penalty on his dread day. If he was not
The name Matthew is derived from the Hebrew Mattija, being shortened to Mattai in post-Biblical Hebrew. In Greek it is sometimes spelled Maththaios, BD, and sometimes Matthaios, CEKL, but grammarians do not agree as to which of the two spellings is the original. Matthew is spoken of five times in the New Testament; first in Matthew 9:9, when called by Jesus to follow Him, and then four times in the list of the Apostles, where
By Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon In the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian churches of the West, the several weeks prior to Christmas are known as Advent, a name from a Latin word meaning “coming.” It happens that the beginning of Advent always falls on the Sunday closest to November 30, the ancient feast day (in both East and West) of the Apostle Andrew. Among Christians in the West, this preparatory season, which tends to
When we see life in the world as amounting to a series of responsibilities that get in the way of real Christian life, then a spiritual break-down becomes virtually inevitable. If we think we are being saved only in those times that we can get away from work, family, society and the like, then we will find our faith is slowly extinguished by the demands of those things upon us, or marked by continuous despair,
By the Reverend Andrew J Demotses President Harry Truman was the object of an assassination attempt in which two secret service agents were killed while protecting him. In recounting the experience of that terrible day, Mr. Truman said, “You can’t imagine how a man feels when someone else dies for him.” The Old Testament recounts the story in which a similar feeling caused David to worship God. When he had expressed a longing to drink
The cell is an environment for salvation because in that specific place the monk turns to God as the source of his or her true self. Salvation is the restoration of the soul to its true content rather than a purification of “the pollution of the body [29] This desert understanding of salvation is in contrast to both the contemporary Greek Gnostic thought of that period which valued the spirit over the body and to
Saint Nektarius was born in Selyvria of Thrace on October 1, 1846. After putting himself through school in Constantinople with much hard labour, he became a monk on Chios in 1876, receiving the monastic name of Lazarus; because of his virtue, a year later he was ordained deacon, receiving the new name of Nektarius. Under the patronage of Patriarch Sophronius of Alexandria, Nektarius went to Athens to study in 1882; completing his theological studies in
By Nabil Semaan GLADNESS OF ANGELS (17) “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Hebrew 1:14). St. John Chrysostom comments on this verse by saying, “Look how God loves man so that He created holy creatures to serve the man created according to His image.” Humans, although heavier than angels by their body and in a state of sin, death and corruption, when they
By Nabil Semaan THE FALL OF ANGELS (16) First of all, this event happened before the fall of man. The cause of the fall of some angels is that they rebelled against God. Their leader was one of the most beautiful Cherubim; he was gifted much more than the others in divine grace, according to the prophet Isaiah: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down
It often seems that we Orthodox only end up spinning our wheels when we try to answer questions… with reference to monastic literature. While we probably have a clear sense that there is something to be learned about such topics there, we do not always have a good picture of how to really find this value while also respecting the basic integrity and purpose of these texts. One of the key sources of this problem
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