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The Fifth Tuesday of Great Lent. Lent: The Other Dimension of Life

Fr. Andreas Agathokleous Amid the turbulence of our life, the deafening noise surrounding us, the long and pointless conversations on the telephone or in person, the stress and uncertainty regarding the state of the world today and tomorrow, the Church offers us the period of time of Great Lent. What meaning can this period, beginning with Monday in the first week and lasting until Great Saturday, have for all of us who live the modern

The Fifth Monday of Great Lent. By the Rivers of Babylon: Inconsolable Home-Sickness

Mihaïl Koutsos Psalm 136. By Jeremiah to David, on captivity 1 By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. 2 We hung our instruments on the willows, 3 for there our captors asked us for songs, and our abductors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion’. 4 How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you,

The Fourth Friday of Great Lent. The Epistle Reading for the 4th Sunday in Lent

By Metropolitan of Pisidia Sotirios † In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul calls hope ‘a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul’. A ship without an anchor runs the risk of being dashed against the rocks along a coast. When people without hope are faced with the adversities of life, they’ve got nothing to lean on. What an anchor is for a ship, or air for the lungs, hope is for our spiritual existence. Hope is

The Fourth Tuesday of Great Lent. The Joy of the Annunciation

~By Fr. Andreas Agathokleous The Feast of the Annunciation lends a pre-Paschal feeling to Great Lent, during which it always falls. The atmosphere of compunction recedes and gives way to the joy of the great feast. This is why we have a dispensation to eat fish. The hymns, the celebrations and all the other things associated with a Feast of the Mother of God dispel the spirit of mourning of Lent and offer us the

The Third Thursday of Great Lent. The Sign of the Cross in the Old Testament

~By Theodore Rokas In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Saint Paul mentions that ‘the Jews seek a sign’ (1 Cor. 1, 22), that is they wanted a supernatural sign, such as resurrection of the dead, or healing of the demonically possessed, which would make them believe in the preaching concerning the Cross. So they sought this supernatural sign, ignoring and ignorant of all the signs and wonders that God had shown them in the

The Second Friday of Great Lent. Saint Gregory Palamas (2nd Sunday in Lent) – A Christian Existentialism

Fr. John Meyendorff In its opposition to Barlaamite nominalism, Palamite thought is a solemn affirmation of divine immanence in history and in man. God does not reveal Himself to the world only “through creatures” but directly, in Jesus Christ. We have all, all of us, known the Son by the Father’s voice speaking to us from on high (Matt. 3: 16-17) and the Holy Spirit himself, who is unutterable light, has shown us that this is indeed

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Great Lent: An Empirical Journey into the Depths of Our Being

~ By Elder Patapios Kavsokalyvitis, Superintendent of the Skete of the Holy Trinity, Mount Athos By fasting, we learn to say ‘No’ to our desire for food and also learn to say ‘No’ to our often self-destructive will. We also learn to say ‘Yes’ to God, which is always redemptive. We’ve begun the Triodio, this blessed period of the liturgical year, with repentance, because we’ve felt deeply, existentially, within us the need to return from

The Second Tuesday of Great Lent. And Not to Judge my Brother

~By Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis It’s a constant exhortation on the part of the Church, all the year round, but particularly during Lent. Indeed, the prayer of Saint Efraim the Syrian is a powerful reminder which we repeat on a daily basis: ‘And not to judge my brother’. And how could it be otherwise, when Jesus Christ himself, the head of the faith, gave us the commandment which expresses the existence or absence of love towards

The Second Monday of Great Lent. The Sunday of Orthodoxy

~ By Metropolitan Athanasios of Lemessos On the first Sunday of Lent [yesterday, Sunday], we celebrate[d] the Sunday of Orthodoxy, that is to say the feast of the restitution of the holy icons, as the Church once again, by the grace of God, vanquished the heresy of the iconoclasts and preserved with exactitude the faith and the tradition of the Holy Fathers of the Church, as it has been preserved throughout the ages. This faith

The First Friday of Great Lent. 1st Salutations

Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis ‘I shall open my mouth and it will be filled with praise and I shall pour out words to the Queen and Mother; I shall be seen radiantly keeping the festival and shall joyfully sing her wonders’ (irmos, ode 1, Akathistos Hymn). As the voice of the Church and of us, also, the holy hymnographer tells us that he’ll sing, he’ll shout, about Our Lady, who is the Queen and Mother. This