Seek to be like God The main aim of all rational creatures, defined by many philosophers as the greatest good, is to become like God. Actually this is not so much a discovery of the philosophers as something derived from Holy Scripture. The book of Genesis illustrates it when it describes the original creation of the human race….that the human race received the dignity of God’s image at the beginning of its creation, whereas the
Each of the Sundays of Great Lent has its own special theme in the Orthodox Church. The First Sunday of Great Lent we celebrate the “Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy” since it was on this day in 843 A.D. that the final great heresy against the person of Christ, that of Iconoclasm, was eradicated and the Orthodox Faith became the standard by which mankind could achieve purification, illumination and glorification. The Second Sunday of
The “continuous reading” of Genesis, Isaiah and Proverbs has its origin at the time when Lent was still the mainpre-baptismal season of the Church and Lenten services werepredominantly catechetical in their character, i.e., dedicatedto the indoctrination of the catechumen. Each of the threebooks corresponds to one of the three basic aspects of theOld Testament: the history of God’s activity in Creation,prophecy, and the ethical or moral teachings. The Book of Genesis gives, as it were,
The prayer of the Church is always biblical—i.e., expressed in the language, images, and symbols of the Holy Scriptures. If the Bible contains the Divine Revelation to man, it is also man’s inspired response to that Revelation and thus the pattern and the content of man’s prayer, praise, and adoration. For example, thousands of years have passed since the Psalms were composed; yet when man needs to express repentance, the shock of his entire being
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