Great Saturday Archives

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

04/01/2025

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

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: Renewal in Joy

05/08/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on May 17, 2021 Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana ‘So that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life’ (Rom. 6, 4). The triumph of Jesus’ Resurrection over injustice, violence and, in general, over sin and death, again fills our hearts with elation and is the culmination of his ministry on earth for the renewal of the whole world. Christ, the

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Bright Tuesday: The Resurrection of Mankind

04/18/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on May 5, 2021 Archimandrite Elisaios, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Simonos Petras In the magnificent service on Great Friday, we sang the compelling and wonderful doxastiko from the ninth hour ‘Today he who hung the earth on the waters hangs upon the cross’, which ends ‘we venerate your Passion, Christ. Show us your glorious Resurrection’. Thereafter, in the doxastiko of Vespers on Great Saturday, the day ‘on which the only-begotten Son of

The Holy and Great Saturday: Knocking Down the Gates of Hell

04/23/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 1, 2021 The Swedish Lutheran theologian, Gustav Aulen, published a seminal work on the types of atonement theory in 1930 (Christus Victor). Though time and critical studies have suggested many subtler treatments of the question, no one has really improved on his insight. Especially valuable was his description of the “Classic View” of the atonement. This imagery, very dominant in the writings of the early Fathers and in the liturgical

Great and Holy Friday

04/30/2021

Introduction On Great and Holy Friday the Orthodox Church commemorates the death of Christ on the Cross. This is the culmination of the observance of His Passion by which our Lord suffered and died for our sins. This commemoration begins on Thursday evening with the Matins of Holy Friday and concludes with a Vespers on Friday afternoon that observes the unnailing of Christ from the Cross and the placement of His body in the tomb.

The Holy and Great Saturday

04/27/2019

“I am the Resurrection and the Life” (Part III) The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature (St. John of Damascus, De fide orth., 3.27; cf. Homil. in Magn. Sabbat., 29). “Today we keep the feast, for our Lord is nailed upon the Cross,” in the sharp phrase of St. John Chrysostom (In crucem et latronem, hom. 1). The death on the Cross is a victory over death not only because

Members of One Another (Part IX): Weep with Me, Forest and Desert (I)

03/06/2019

Sin and salvation, however, are not merely human in scope, but they also involve the entire created order. When Adam fell, the whole creation fell with him; and by the same token our human salvation will inaugurate the salvation of the total cosmos. As Fr Sophrony puts it, ‘Every saint is a phenomenon of cosmic character’. We are not saved from but with the world. This cosmic understanding of sin and salvation has a firm

Great and Holy Saturday

04/19/2014

Comments on the Main Themes On Great Saturday the Church contemplates the mystery of the Lord’s descent into Hades, the place of the dead. Death, our ultimate enemy, is defeated from within. “He (Christ) gave Himself as a ransom to death in which we were held captive, sold under sin. Descending into Hades through the Cross … He loosed the bonds of death” (Liturgy of St. Basil). The hymnographer of the Church describes the mystery

Archive

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

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: Renewal in Joy

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Bright Tuesday: The Resurrection of Mankind

The Holy and Great Saturday: Knocking Down the Gates of Hell

Great and Holy Friday

The Holy and Great Saturday

Members of One Another (Part IX): Weep with Me, Forest and Desert (I)

Great and Holy Saturday

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