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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Thursday of Pascha: The Urgency of Resurrected Faith

By Fr John Breck, September 2, 2007 In an era increasingly hostile to Christian faith, our greatest challenge is to proclaim and to live out the most basic and essential affirmation of that faith: that Jesus rose from death to bestow life on the world. Best-selling, easy-to-read novels can provide welcome distraction when we’re feeling too tired or cooped-up to concentrate on serious literature. Those potboilers, the kind we find in airport bookstores or on

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Wednesday of Pascha: The Greatest Form of Knowledge [2]

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 29, 2017 Archimandrite Theofilos Lemontzis, D. Th. The ability to forgive others depends on how honest we are with ourselves. ‘The greatest form of knowledge to which you can attain’, says Saint Clement the Alexandrian, ‘is to know yourself’. If you know yourself, you know nature, the limits and the possibilities of your existence and you can put yourself on a proper footing with God, your neighbour and yourself. It’s

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Tuesday of Pascha: The Great Gain [1]

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 26, 2017 Archimandrite Theofilos Lemontzis, D. Th. Forgiveness is the effort and exercise of a love that is, in the end, transformed into joy and leads to salvation, as Saint Païsios the Athonite notes: ‘There’s no greater joy than that which you feel when you’re hard done by. I wish everybody would treat me unfairly. I can honestly tell you that the sweetest spiritual joy I’ve ever felt was through

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Mystery of Pascha

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 5, 2010  In his Revelation, St. John describes Christ as the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (13:8). It is one of many interesting statements within that book of images and wonders. However, his description of Christ has much to say about the mystery of Pascha (Christ’s resurrection). First, it is clear that Pascha is more than a historical event. It certainly includes the historical death, burial and resurrection of

Title: ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Friday of Pascha: A Festival of Celtic Christianity

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 12, 2016 My parish is having its first festival this Saturday (May 14). It was decided that since it fell on St. Brendan’s Day, we would make the festival a celebration of Celtic Christianity. It has given the parish an opportunity to study and think about the wonderful Orthodox history of the British Isles and to think about Orthodoxy in a context beyond Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. One of

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Thursday of Pascha: Paschal Musing

By Fr. John Breck, May 1, 2002 Dylan Thomas wrote some eminently quotable lines on the subject of death. The most familiar and powerful are also the most troubling. “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This ringing summons to courage in the face of one’s approaching end betrays an all too common attitude toward death. In this perspective death is and remains the last enemy.

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Wednesday of Pascha. Saint Mary Magdalene: The Revision of the Role of a Prominent Apostle (Part 2)

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 28, 2017 The second erroneous identification of Magdalene is with the anonymous adulteress (Jn. 7, 53- 8, 11) whom Christ rescues from stoning with His well-known phrase: “Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her” (Jn. 8, 7). This was the interpretation accepted by the famous actor and director Mel Gibson, in his contentious film The Passion of Christ (For more on this identification,

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Tuesday of Pascha Saint Mary Magdalene: The Revision of the Role of a Prominent Apostle (Part 1)

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 28, 2017 The years between 1976-1985 were declared by the United Nations to be the “Decade of the Rights of Women”. Within the framework of the related activities which were undertaken at the time, it was claimed, among other things, that religions bore the responsibility for the suppression of women’s rights. In response to this challenge, the Christian world, through the World Council of Churches, (WCC) promoted its own, world-wide

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Monday of Pascha: Knowing God – After Pascha

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 10, 2007  We approach things so differently in our modern world (as opposed to the ancient world). All of us have access to a great deal of information, although the information that comes to us when we are in the passive mode is less than useless (here I mean television and popular media). Thus I would paraphrase Our Lord and say, “How hard it is for a couch potato to enter the

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Friday of Pascha: Ecstatic Wonder

By Fr John Breck, April 2, 2004 On the eve of the Sunday of the Holy Myrrh-bearing Women, the Matins service includes Christ’s resurrection appearances as they are recounted at the close of St Mark’s Gospel. If Biblical scholars are correct, these last verses, Mark 16:9-20, did not originally belong to the Gospel narrative. This series of appearances of the risen Lord was apparently gathered together by the early Church for catechetical purposes and was