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Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent, Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria

The Holy Great Martyr Catherine was the daughter of Constus, the governor of Alexandrian Egypt during the reign of the emperor Maximian (305-313). Living in the capital, the center of Hellenistic knowledge, and possessed of a rare beauty and intellect, Catherine received an excellent education, studying the works of the greatest philosophers and teachers of antiquity. Young men from the most worthy families of the empire sought the hand of the beautiful Catherine, but she

Fifth Day of Christmas Advent, Meditation: Why Did He Come? (Part I)

Prayer Lord Jesus, You have come so many times to us and found no resting place, forgive us for our overcrowded lives, our vain haste and our preoccupation with self. Come again, O Lord, and though our hearts are a jumble of voices, and our minds overlaid with many fears, find a place however humble, where You can begin to work Your wonder as you create peace and joy within us. If in some hidden

The Desert Fathers and Mothers

The men and women who fled to the desert emphasized lifestyle practice, an alternative to empire and its economy, psychologically astute methods of prayer, and a very simple (some would say naïve) spirituality of transformation into Christ. The desert communities grew out of informal gatherings of monastic monks, functioning much like families. A good number also became hermits to mine the deep mystery of their inner experience. This movement paralleled the monastic pattern in Hinduism

The Fifth Friday after Pascha, Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen! How Do We Pray the Psalms?

By Jim Wellington How do we pray the Psalms? We should surely take our lead from the Holy Fathers of the Early Church and learn from their wisdom. Whilst researching the origins of the Jesus Prayer, I came across some fascinating insights in psalm-commentaries accredited to Fathers of the third, fourth and fifth centuries. These insights and the understanding of the Psalms which they promote, would have been available to the earliest monks and nuns

The Lord’s Prayer (Part VII)

There is a difference between God the king, perceived in the land of Egypt, or in the scorching wilderness, and in the new situation of the Promised Land. First, his will would prevail anyhow, whatever resistance one opposed to it would be broken: obedience means subjection. Secondly, a gradual training shows that this king is not an overlord, a slave driver, but a king of goodwill, and that obedience to him transforms all; that we

The Lord’s Prayer (Part V)

Exodus is a complex image in terms of the Lord’s Prayer; in the beatitudes we find the same progression: ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled’, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy’. First a simple bodily hunger and thirst, a deprivation of all possessions, which were a gift of corruption, a gift of the earth from the overlord, a stamp of slavery, and then

The Lord’s Prayer (Part IV)

To be able to say the first sentence that we have discussed – ‘Deliver us from the evil one’ – requires such a reassessment of values and such a new attitude that we can hardly begin to say it otherwise than in a cry, which is as yet unsubstantiated by an inner change in us. We feel a longing which is not yet capable of achievement; to ask God to protect us in the trial

Why Fast for Dormition?

By Daniel Manzuk It would be a gross understatement to say that much has been written about the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos. Yet very little has been written about the fast that precedes it. Every Orthodox Christian is aware and generally knows the reason behind the fasts for Pascha and Christmas. But while they may know of the Dormition Fast, few follow it, and more than a few question why it is

The Lord’s Prayer (Part III)

There is one thing that stands as a line of demarcation between Egypt and the desert, between slavery and freedom; it is a moment when we act decisively and become new people, establishing ourselves in an absolutely new moral situation. In terms of geography it was the Red Sea, in terms of the Lord’s Prayer it is ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive’. This ‘as we forgive’ is the moment when we take our

Liberation from our Enslavement

Once we have become aware of our enslavement, and have passed from mere lamentation and a sense of misery into a sense of broken heartedness and poverty of spirit, our imprisonment in the land of Egypt is answered by the words of the next beatitudes: ‘Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted’, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth’. This mourning that is the result of the discovery of