By Matushka Constantina Palmer “I will sing unto the Lord throughout my life, I will chant to my God for as long as I have my being. May my words be sweet unto Him, and I will rejoice in the Lord,” Prophet David prays. And the sweetness of Byzantine chant makes these words my own when they are brought to life by divinely inspired melodies. Byzantine chant inspires its listener. Of course in the beginning,
As Christians we know that by participating in history we are not going to turn it into the Kingdom of God. But our horizon is not limited to history; we know that Christ is coming again in glory to raise all the dead and, through them, the flesh of the world and all that history has created. With this hope we have no need of Utopia. Christians are making ready within history a transformation which
Obedience is another indispensable implement in the struggle against our selfish will. With obedience you cut off your physical members the better to be able to serve with the spiritual, says St. John Climacus. And again, obedience is the grave of your own will, but from it rises humility. You must remember that you have of your own free will given yourself over to slavery, and let the cross you wear around your neck be
The essence of God the Trinity is love, so personal existence directed towards God can only be existence in communion. ‘By this it may be seen who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not do right is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother’ (1 John 3.10). In St Matthew’s overpowering portrayal of the Judgement, Christ says to those who are truly
PASCHA: THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE (Ps. 118-24), Part II By the Very Reverend Joseph Antypas On earth, the Resurrection of Christ proclaims to the earth the Father’s will for the universe. And in hell, the risen Christ stamps out hell, delivers all humanity and extends a liberating hand to Adam and Eve. Hippolytus of Rome reflects on the whole picture and refers to Pascha as the common feast: invisible feast for angels,
So the first situation with which Exodus begins, and we begin, is the discovery of slavery and that it cannot be resolved by an act of rebellion or flight, because whether we flee or whether we rebel we remain slaves, unless we re-establish ourselves, with regard to God and to all the situations of life, in the way taught by the first beatitude: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of
There is also the myth that Christians condemned the pagan festivities of October 31 by replacing it with All Hallows Eve, the day before the Feast of All Saints in the West. It is often recorded that in 601 AD Pope Gregory I issued a now famous edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs and customs of the peoples he hoped to convert. Rather than try to obliterate native peoples’ customs and beliefs, the
By Rod Dreher, August 12, 2013, 12:24 PM: I had not seen this comment from Pope Francis’s celebrated airplane press conference. The Pope was asked to comment on Eastern Christianity. He said something amazing. From the transcript: In the Orthodox Churches they have kept that pristine liturgy, so beautiful. We have lost a bit the sense of adoration. They keep, they praise God, they adore God, they sing, time doesn’t count. God is the center, and
The death of a loved one is excruciatingly painful, and it would seem wrong to ask moral questions about the appropriateness of someone’s grief, as if it were possible to hold our emotions in check at such horribly difficult times. It would appear cruel to imply to those in mourning that there is something wrong with them for feeling the way they do. Christianity holds that reason is a distinct faculty that gives guidance to
Catechetical Sermon of St. John Chrysostom If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third
© 2020 Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral
