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

By Father Thomas Hopko He came to them, but we must remember that those who were literally dead were also still somehow alive in the hands of God, even before the Messiah came. When, for example, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of Christ, tried to catch Him in his words by saying that according to the Levite law of Moses, if a man had a wife, and he died, his brother

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

By Father Thomas Hopko We Christians believe, Orthodox Christians believe, that Christ is that Messianic King who frees us, and He frees us by dying. He liberates us. He ransoms us by the power of hell. He gave Himself, a ransom, to death, by which we were held captive, in order to release us, and that is what trampling down death by death means. So the icon of the so-called Descent into Sheol shows that

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

By Father Thomas Hopko Even on the Russian Orthodox crosses, by the way, there is a little inscription at the foot of Jesus’ feet on the cross, in four Slavonic letters, M, L, R, and B, in Slavonic, which translated means, “The place of the skull (or Golgotha) has become Paradise.” So the bosom of Abraham had to be transformed into Paradise, into a living reality again, with interrelationship with all of creation—the sun, the

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

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 Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Christ Accomplished on the Cross (The Consequences of the Fall, Part II)

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

The Third Wednesday of Great Lent: Made in the Image of the Trinity we can attain to his Likeness & The Willing Slave of the Spirit

Made in the Image of the Trinity we can attain to his Likeness The image of God is revealed in us by means of the threefold division of our internal make-up. The Godhead is adored in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Similarly, three parts can be seen in the image formed in accordance with this model, namely in the human being who adores him, who has made everything from nothing, with soul, mind

Venerable Ephraim the Syrian

Saint Ephraim the Syrian, a teacher of repentance, was born at the beginning of the fourth century in the city of Nisibis (Mesopotamia) into the family of impoverished toilers of the soil. His parents raised their son in piety, but from his childhood he was known for his quick temper and impetuous character. He often had fights, acted thoughtlessly, and even doubted God’s Providence. He finally recovered his senses by the grace of God, and

You Become the God you Worship

The “Principle of Likeness” means that like knows like, love in me knows love. And hate in me will see hate everywhere else. If there’s no love in you, if you are filled with fear and hatred, you will not know God. You actually can’t. There’s no abiding place for an infinite God in you, because your field is too small and safe. The infinite cannot abide inside of the finite unless the finite is

Seventeenth Day of Christmas Advent, Meditation: Why Did He Come? (Part IV)

Meditation: Why Did He Come? Christmas means that “the Word (the Eternal God) was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).  In an attempt to capture the monumental humiliation God endured when He took on human flesh, C.S. Lewis likens it to our becoming a worm. Yet God did that for us in order to communicate His love to us. Christmas means that Emmanuel has come: God is not

The Feast of the Transfiguration

The Transfiguration of Christ is one of the central events recorded in the gospels. Immediately after the Lord was recognized by his apostles as “the Christ [Messiah], the Son of the Living God,” he told them that “he must go up to Jerusalem and suffer many things … and be killed and on the third day be raised” (Mt 16). The announcement of Christ’s approaching passion and death was met with indignation by the disciples. And then,