The icons seen on church walls are not merely images or paintings: an icon is a focus of real presence. St John Chrysostom advises us, before we start praying, to take our stand in front of an icon and to shut our eyes. He says ‘shut your eyes’, because it is not by examining the icon, by using it as a visual aid, that we are helped by it to pray. It is not a
By Hieromonk Damascene The Consequences of Christ’s Redemptive Work, Part II In the Gospels, especially the Gospel of St. John, Christ makes several statements which reveal how His followers would be able to receive the Grace of the Holy Spirit by means of His death. In the temple Christ preached: He that believeth on Me … out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. After quoting these words of Christ, the Apostle John explains: But this
By Hieromonk Damascene The Means of Redemption, Part III Many of the Holy Fathers wrote on this theme of Christ as sacrifice. Origen (who is not a Holy Father) and, following him, St. Gregory of Nyssa, posited that the sacrifice was offered to the devil. But St. Gregory the Theologian and all the Fathers after him rejected this idea. They often spoke of the sacrifice as being offered to God the Father, and sometimes they
By Hieromonk Damascene The Primordial State Let us begin by discussing the state of man and the world before the Fall. A right understanding of this pre-Fall state is actually essential to a right understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death on the Cross. We have to understand what Adam fell from in order to understand what Christ restores us to. According to the Patristic interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, before the Fall man’s body was not subject
Now all things are filled with light; heaven and earth, and the nethermost parts of the earth… Christ is Risen! Children of God! From a fullness of unearthly joy I greet you with words full of Divine power: “Christ is Risen!” The holy fire of this salvific tiding has burst anew with bright flames over the Lord’s Tomb, and has spread throughout the world. The Church of God, filled with the light of this fire,
After the consecration in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, this prayer follows: “that they (3l) may be unto watchfulness of soul (32), unto forgiveness of sins … “. Not only before but also after Holy Communion we have need of watchfulness and vigilance toward ourselves. According to St. John Chrysostom, watchfulness of the soul is the first blessed fruit of Holy Communion. In the Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, in the prayer
Like Zacchaeus you have now climbed up into a tree to see the Lord (Luke 19). You have done so not only by your power of thought or in a mystical, mental way. You are a human being and you have a body: therefore like Zacchaeus you have made use of your strength of limb and of earthly things to climb up from the ground. And if you have done so with understanding and quiet
The sin of judgmentalism, even if we believe that it is committed in order to correct our brother, has grievous consequences for our spiritual life. l. St. Isaak considers malicious gossip to be the admittance of the passions into the soul. He says: “He who guards his mouth from speech guards his heart from the passions. The man who cleanses his heart from the passions beholds the Lord at every moment”. “If you love purity,
By Father Stelyios Muksuris Happy New Me! Naturally, you might be thinking what sort of a peculiar wish this is that we make at the beginning of the New Year. We are all accustomed to exclaiming “Happy New Year!” as the clocks strike midnight on December 31st and the year rolls over to the first day of January. The celebratory atmosphere is highlighted by such festive items as colorful hats, scrumptious food, loud music, and
Meditation: The Wise Men When the wise men learned of the plot of King Herod to kill the Christ Child, they did not come back to Jerusalem, but “went another way,” according to St. Matthew. What did Matthew mean when he wrote that the Wise Men “went back another way?” No doubt he meant that they took another route so as to frustrate Herod’s murderous intentions. But is there not more to the words than
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