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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

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

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Tuesday of Pascha. The Resurrection: An Affront to Reason

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 17, 2015 By Archimandrite Epiphanios Ekonomou It’s hardly surprising that the message of the Resurrection of Christ has raised a whole host of doubts and questions. Objections were registered immediately after the occurrence of the supernatural event on which the whole structure of the Christian Church is founded. For the Jews of Biblical Jerusalem, it was a blasphemy of the apostate Christians to claim that a crucified criminal could ever be

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Bright Thursday: Pascha Today

By Olivier Clément Olivier Clément is a world-renowned, contemporary French Orthodox theologian who taught for many years at the St Sergius Theological Institute in Paris. His lyrical contribution to the Festschrift >of his close friend, Father Boris Bobrinskoy, former Dean of St Sergius, ended with the following reflection on the meaning for us today of Christ’s Resurrection. [1] In our civilization, so rich in knowledge and in power, we can no longer offer any reply to the enigma

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Bright Monday: Relative to Pascha

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 20, 2009  If you have attended Pascha services, or served them, it is quite possible to suffer some of the “natural consequences,” which for me means that after a somewhat disordered sleep I am sitting, having coffee and writing at 3:30 in the morning, wide-awake. I have no complaints. I generally like to be up by around 5 or so, so I am only off by a couple of hours….

The Holy and Great Thursday: What Great Thursday Tells Us

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, April 27, 2016 On our journey to Pascha, we are reminded of the Lord’s desire for unity of his flock, that he wishes us to be as one.  The importance of this wish is reflected in the Divine Eucharist because to be in communion with God, we must first be in communion with our fellow man.  All of Jesus’ actions on earth teach us how to love our fellow man. As

Lazarus Saturday

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 24, 2021  Largely ignored by much of Christendom, the Orthodox mark the day before Palm Sunday as “Lazarus Saturday” in something of a prequel to the following weekend’s Pascha. It is, indeed a little Pascha just before the greater one. And this, of course, was arranged by Christ Himself, who raised His friend Lazarus from the dead as something of a last action before entering Jerusalem and beginning His slow

The Sixth Monday of Great Lent: The Healthy Shame at the Heart’s Core

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 20, 2017  Imagine: A large crowd has assembled and you know that something special has been planned. Unknown to you, however, is the fact that the something special is for and about you. At a given moment, you are called forward. A short speech detailing some extraordinary thing you have done is given. You had not thought anyone would notice, and you did not expect them to. However, you are being

A Bunch of Stuff We Don’t Know

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 25, 2016 Reading discussions about life after death, it is easy to get the impression that people actually know what they’re talking about, that perhaps they have been there, seen what goes on and therefore authoritatively opine on the nature of things. But, the truth is that we mostly don’t know. We have a few things given to us in Scripture, and even those few things are often somewhat cryptic