pain Archives - Saint Sophia

The Fourth Friday of Great Lent. The Epistle Reading for the 4th Sunday in Lent

03/28/2025

By Metropolitan of Pisidia Sotirios † In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul calls hope ‘a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul’. A ship without an anchor runs the risk of being dashed against the rocks along a coast. When people without hope are faced with the adversities of life, they’ve got nothing to lean on. What an anchor is for a ship, or air for the lungs, hope is for our spiritual existence. Hope is

BLIND WITH ANGER

09/02/2024

[Desert Father] Evagrius helped lead another student into liberating insight into the nature of her very active mind, especially the connection between her anger and her fear. While she was less revealing of the details of her struggles, she was grappling with the fallout and follow-through of an intervention initiated by concerned friends. She admits it needed to be done but she still struggles with feelings of betrayal and more. She wrote: Evagrius seems to

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: Saint John the Russian

05/27/2024

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on May 27, 2021 Metropolitan Meletios of Nikopolis † For people who have any understanding of God and his kingdom, nothing’s a misfortune. Saint John suffered one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall anyone. He was taken prisoner of war. By the Turks. At the age of twenty. What could have been worse? Yet this misfortune proved to be his greatest good fortune. Not only did he gain the kingdom of God, the

The Sixth Tuesday of Great Lent: The Beauty of the Christ’s Prayer

04/23/2024

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, May 28, 2017 at St. Mary Orthodox Church The Lord seems grounded and focused as he prays this long discourse-like prayer on the eve of his passion. When you might expect that fear and anxiety would distract him and overwhelm him, they don’t. He seems to be utterly non-resistant to the fear he must have been feeling and to the fate that waited for him. That doesn’t

The Pain that Leads to Joy

09/20/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on October 17, 2021 Fr. Andreas Agathokleous The ‘forgive me’ which comes from a heart in pain over a mistake breaks down the hard wall of remoteness, of animosity, and unites that which was divided. This is why it’s neither easy nor painless. Because the easy and painless ‘forgive me’, expressed as a formula for restoring relations on a superficial level, isn’t capable of breaking down walls. There’s ‘forgive me’ to God and to

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Does It Mean to Become a Cyrenian?

04/26/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on January 20, 2022 Fr. Andreas Agathokleous No one has gone through life without ever being worried, hurt, or driven to tears. As children of Adam, all of us, young and old, have to live with the consequences of the fall of our forefather, precisely because that forefather is each one of us. There’s no need to find support for this view of the human condition, since life itself is evidence of the difficulty,

As Loved Ones Die (3)

10/13/2022

By Fr John Breck, October 2, 2008 In the preceding column I raised questions about the terribly difficult issue of euthanasia, and specifically, whether in an Orthodox Christian perspective there could ever be a morally acceptable way to hasten the death of a dying person, when that person is consumed by uncontrollable pain and suffering. Fortunately, such cases today are rare. Palliative care and medications for pain management have been developed to the point that

The Three Saints of Pain and Hope

09/13/2022

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, November 29, 2017 Dr. Nikolaos Koios, Content Coach of Pemptousia It’s a profound conviction of the Orthodox Church that every epoch has its own saints and there’s not a single age without them. In every era, the saints are proof and demonstration of the grace of Christ, the love of the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, in place and time, among us. When saints leave this earth for their

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Tuesday of Pascha: The Great Gain [1]

05/17/2022

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 26, 2017 Archimandrite Theofilos Lemontzis, D. Th. Forgiveness is the effort and exercise of a love that is, in the end, transformed into joy and leads to salvation, as Saint Païsios the Athonite notes: ‘There’s no greater joy than that which you feel when you’re hard done by. I wish everybody would treat me unfairly. I can honestly tell you that the sweetest spiritual joy I’ve ever felt was through

The Fourth Tuesday of Great Lent: The Meaning of Pain in Our Lives

03/29/2022

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, October 18, 2014 By Abbot George Kapsanis of Gregoriou Apart from the suffering that it causes, physical, mental or spiritual pain– which entered man’s life by divine sufferance – also has positive effects for man’s earthly life and development. It is easy to philosophize or theologize about pain but it is difficult to have a proper attitude towards pain when one experiences great pain oneself. I believe it is very presumptuous to

Archive

The Fourth Friday of Great Lent. The Epistle Reading for the 4th Sunday in Lent

BLIND WITH ANGER

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Monday of Pascha: Saint John the Russian

The Sixth Tuesday of Great Lent: The Beauty of the Christ’s Prayer

The Pain that Leads to Joy

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Wednesday of Pascha: What Does It Mean to Become a Cyrenian?

As Loved Ones Die (3)

The Three Saints of Pain and Hope

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Tuesday of Pascha: The Great Gain [1]

The Fourth Tuesday of Great Lent: The Meaning of Pain in Our Lives

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