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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Friday of Pascha: Why Were the Myrrh-Bearers the First to Hear that Christ Had Risen?

05/17/2024

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on May 15, 2021 Metropolitan Avgoustinos (Kantiotis) of Florina († 2010) And he said to them: ‘Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here…’ (Mark 16,6). When Christ was born, the first to hear of it weren’t the great, the powerful and the rich, but the humble and poor shepherds abiding in the fields with their flocks in Bethlehem. Similarly, when Christ rose,

Presentation of Christ to the Temple

02/02/2024

Introduction This feast, celebrated on February 2, is known in the Orthodox Church as The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Another name for the feast is The Meeting of our Lord. Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians call the feast, The Purification of the Holy Virgin. About 450 AD in Jerusalem, people began the custom of holding lighted candles during the Divine Liturgy of this feast day. Therefore, some churches in the West refer to

The Nativity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ

12/25/2023

Reading The incomprehensible and inexplicable Nativity of Christ came to pass when Herod the Great was reigning in Judea; the latter was an Ascalonite on his fathers’s side and an Idumean on his mother’s. He was in every way foreign to the royal line of David; rather, he had received his authority from the Roman emperors, and had ruled tyrannically over the Jewish people for some thirty-three years. The tribe of Judah, which had reigned

The Falling Asleep of Saint John the Evangelist and Theologian

09/26/2023

Feast Day: September 26 John was the son of Zebedee the fisherman and Salome the daughter of Joseph, the betrothed of the Holy Theotokos. Called by the Lord Jesus, John immediately left his father and his fishermen’s nets and, with his brother James, followed Christ. From then on, he was not separated from his Lord until the end. With Peter and James, he was present at the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the Transfiguration of

Mary and the Temple

08/07/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, September 12, 2017  “And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” (Exo 25:8) The center of Jewish life at the time of Christ was the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus was presented there at forty days of age. His family traveled to the Temple when he was twelve. He taught there during His ministry and drove the money-changers out. There is a tendency in much modern thought

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The First-Fruit of the New World

04/27/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on May 18, 2021 Ioannis Karavidopoulos, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Hermeneutics, A. U. Th. The Gospel reading for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women (Mark 15, 43-47; 16, 1-8) relates two important events: the burial of Jesus’ body by Joseph (15, 43-47) and the visit of the myrrh-bearing women to the empty tomb (16, 1-8). The burial is the last act of the drama of the crucifixion, with which the cycle of the

The Fourth Saturday of Great Lent: The Annunciation of the Theotokos

03/25/2023

Reading Six months after John the Forerunner’s conception, the Archangel Gabriel was sent by God to Nazareth, a town of Galilee, unto Mary the Virgin, who had come forth from the Temple a mature maiden (see Nov. 21). According to the tradition handed down by the Fathers, she had been betrothed to Joseph four months. On coming to Joseph’s house, the Archangel declared: “Rejoice, thou Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art

Presentation of Christ to the Temple

02/02/2023

Introduction This feast, celebrated on February 2, is known in the Orthodox Church as The Presentation of Christ in the Temple. Another name for the feast is The Meeting of our Lord. Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians call the feast, The Purification of the Holy Virgin. About 450 AD in Jerusalem, people began the custom of holding lighted candles during the Divine Liturgy of this feast day. Therefore, some churches in the West refer to

The Second Day of Christmas. The Synaxis of the Theotokos

12/26/2022

On the second day of the feast, the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos is celebrated. Combining the hymns of the Nativity with those celebrating the Mother of God, the Church points to Mary as the one through whom the Incarnation was made possible. His humanity—concretely and historically—is the humanity He received from Mary. His body is, first of all, her body. His life is her life. This feast, the assembly in honor of the

The Thirtieth Day of Christmas Advent: Light into Darkness

12/14/2022

By Fr John Breck, December 2, 2005 The best way to prepare for a feast, I find, is to spend some time looking at and praying before the festal icons. Nativity offers a broad array of sacred images that spell out graphically the biblical Word of the incarnation, the coming of the eternal God in the person of a little child. One of the most striking aspects of those images is the way they blend

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