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The Third Wednesday of Great Lent. The Spiritual Fruits of Lent.

+ DEMETRIOS Archbishop of America This month…we entered the sacred period of Holy and Great Lent, a season of the Church that accords us with splendid opportunities to prepare ourselves for the glorious feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which we celebrate this year in April. Our journey throughout these next few weeks is, thus, of extraordinary significance for our spiritual lives. During this time, our occasions for prayer and worship are greatly increased,

Third Thursday of Pascha. Holy Mountain: A Universal Presence and a Heavenward Orientation (Part 2)

By Metropolitan Nikolaos of Mesogaias and Lavreotikis Here space and time acquire another dimension and perspective. One’s relationship with earthly, ephemeral and perishable things is an entirely perfunctory one. Concepts like ‘money’, ‘property’, ‘wealth’, ‘investment’, ‘entertainment’, ‘competition’ and ‘interest’ completely lose their importance. Here only the most essential worldly concerns are allowed to occupy one’s thoughts. The soul opens itself up to heavenly things. Here the main focus of interest is eternity and God’s kingdom.

Saintless Christianity

By Father Stephen Freeman What would Christianity mean if there were no saints? To rephrase the question: What would be the meaning of the Christian gospel if there were no wonderworkers, no people who had been transfigured with the Divine Light, no clairvoyant prophets, no healers, no people who had raised the dead, no ascetics living alone in the deserts for years on end, no beacons of radical, all-forgiving love? What would be the meaning

Seeing is Becoming: The Mirror of Contemplation in St Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs

By Father Matthew Baker St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Song of Songs offers a profound contemplative theology in which the category of vision occupies a central place. To see correctly for Gregory involves a process in which exegesis and askesis, a proper interpretation of scriptural images and the purification of the soul’s eye, are inseparable, having as their common goal the vision of God. All vision is tied to imitation, and subject to