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The First Thursday of Great Lent. Charity and Lent

03/06/2025

Protopresbyter Antonios Christou Dear readers, Great Lent is a time of strenuous, spiritual struggle with ourselves (less sleep, less nutrition, less ease and preoccupation with things we like doing, greater participation in the services and prayers, and so on). I don’t know, however, whether we truly realize the extent to which another fundamental aim is charity towards others. Apart from the general principle expressed in the Sermon on the Mount (‘Blessed are the merciful* for

The Search for the ‘Place of the Heart’ [II]: A Life-Giving Discipline

09/04/2024

Our whole spiritual progress is a ‘search for the place of the heart’. Little by little, the conscious self frees itself from idols, strips away the dead layers and illusions, and ‘descends’, like Psyche holding a lighted lamp, into the dark crypt of the heart. Sanctuary, crypt and tomb become the bridal chamber; the ‘heart-spirit’ is remade in the fire of grace, it trembles with joy, it bursts into flames, the world and humanity are

The Search for the ‘Place of the Heart’: A Life-Giving Discipline

07/17/2019

Our whole spiritual progress is a ‘search for the place of the heart’. Little by little, the conscious self frees itself from idols, strips away the dead layers and illusions, and ‘descends’, like Psyche holding a lighted lamp, into the dark crypt of the heart. Sanctuary, crypt and tomb become the bridal chamber; the ‘heart-spirit’ is remade in the fire of grace, it trembles with joy, it bursts into flames, the world and humanity are

To You, Whoever You May Be

05/24/2018

Whoever you are, whatever you may be, says the Lord of Love, my hand is resting upon you at this very moment. By this gesture, I am letting you know that I love you and that I call you for my own. I have never ceased loving you, speaking to you, or calling you. Sometimes it was in silence and solitude. Sometimes it was there, where others were gathered in my name. Often you did

Prayer for Universal Salvation (Part II)

10/27/2016

It is true, as we have said, that the Church condemned Origenism, the certainty that all people, even the fallen angels, will ultimately be reconciled in a ‘universal restitution’, an apocatastasis of both nature and persons. Such a conviction actually conflicts with the stern warnings uttered by Christ in the first three Gospels, and belittles the irreducible mystery of our freedom; in asserting that evil will eventually die of exhaustion, because God alone is infinite,

WATCHFULNESS IN HOLY SCRIPTURE (Part II)

02/05/2015

In Luke 21:34, having foretold the fearsome events of His Second Coming, the Lord underlines a serious danger, that of our hearts “being weighed down”. And our hearts are “weighed down” by many and different causes. What can redeem them from that disastrous evil? Christ’s commendation: “Take heed to yourselves”, the attention, that is, the watchfulness which the Lord stresses in other words further down: “Watch therefore at all times praying … “(15). “At all

The Sixth Tuesday of Great Lent

04/08/2014

Fresh for the New Day The life of the body is one of flux and change. The human being cannot exist except in ceaseless motion like the flow of a river. To relax tension we have sleep. When we wake up, the motion starts up again. Neither of the two states lasts very long. But it is thanks to their alternation that we are refreshed. A constant tension would provoke a collapse: a continuing relaxation

The Destiny of Eros: The Nuptial Way (Part II)

02/13/2014

Marriage is chaste because it integrates the erotic relationship of the two persons into their communion within the Church; as their mutual love is expressed through their complementary natures, each gives the other to the world. For nine centuries there was no distinctive rite of marriage for Christians. The couple would marry, then go together to communion. For a man and a woman whose life is rooted in Christ, their love is something they have

The Search for the ‘Place of the Heart’: A Life-Giving Discipline

02/22/2013

Our whole spiritual progress is a ‘search for the place of the heart’. Little by little, the conscious self frees itself from idols, strips away the dead layers and illusions, and ‘descends’, like Psyche holding a lighted lamp, into the dark crypt of the heart. Sanctuary, crypt and tomb become the bridal chamber; the ‘heart-spirit’ is remade in the fire of grace, it trembles with joy, it bursts into flames, the world and humanity are

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