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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

Here is a spectacle worthy of bitter lamentation: Christians who do not know in what Christianity consists! -St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

SSCORRE! Saint Sophia Cathedral Online Resources for our Religious Edification Topic of the Week – Here is a spectacle worthy of bitter lamentation: Christians who do not know in what Christianity consists! –St. Ignatius Brianchaninov “…St. Ignatius Brianchaninov… addresses mentalities and ideas that have only become more accentuated in our times. As Orthodox Christians, St. Ignatius calls us to cultivate our understanding, not on arbitrary ideas from the world but rather the everlasting Truth of Jesus Christ.

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

On Where We Derive Our Peace and Security

SSCORRE! Saint Sophia Cathedral Online Resources for our Religious Edification Topic of the Week – On Where We Derive Our Peace and Security “A person who owns nothing — or, more precisely, who desires to own nothing, and regards nothing as a personal possession– in spirit owns everything. He can look at a beautiful valley, regardless of who the legal owner is, and rejoice in its beauty. He can look at any fine building, and

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Thursday of Pascha: The Bridge of Diamond

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, January 3, 2017 Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of Diokleia ‘Thou hast brought us into being out of nothing’ (The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom). How are we to understand God’s relation to the world he has created? What is meant by this phrase ‘out of nothing’, ex nihilo? Why, indeed did God create at all? The words ‘out of nothing’ signify, first and foremost, that God created the universe by an act of

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: Re-crucifying the Risen Christ

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 25, 2017 Protopresbyter Christos Aiyidis Once again, the divine drama has come to an end and the Lord’s Resurrection has become the start of a new life, the unending and eternal life in Paradise, the life for which we were created. The Lord ascended the Cross and spread His arms to embrace the whole of humanity, in order to give us the opportunity and prospect of entering Paradise. Our Risen