Thessaloniki Archives - Saint Sophia

Knowledge by Itself is Dangerous

08/19/2025

Archimandrite Iakovos Kanakis Knowledge is power and love is the aim; when they go hand in hand we have a wonderful result. ‘Knowledge puffs up whereas love builds up’ (1 Cor. 8, 1) and Saint Maximos the Confessor urges us to: ‘yoke together knowledge and love and you’ll become humble in outlook, a spiritual constructor, building up both yourself and all those you are in touch with’ (ΕΠΕ 14, Thessaloniki 2006). The holy Father analyzes the

Saint Nestor, the Martyr for Christ

10/27/2022

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, October 27, 2017 James W. Lillie We know very little concerning the martyr Nestor, other than that he was a close spiritual brother of Saint Dimitrios. He may have volunteered to fight the giant Vandal, Lyaeus, in order to prevent other Christians being drafted in to do so against their will. According to Saint Nikolaï Velimirović in the Ochrid Prologue, the emperor, Galerius, entertained the people with such spectacles and had a

World as Sacrament

10/07/2021

The whole world is a sacrament if only we have the eyes of faith to see it By Abbot Tryphon, December 21, 2019 Some of my earliest memories are of the camping trips we would take, as a family, and pitching our tent by the idyllic lakes in Northern Idaho. We would cook over a fire, catch rainbow trout for breakfast (nothing like a freshly grilled trout). When in high school I’d join friends for

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Saint Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts (Second Sunday in Lent)

03/12/2020

Pavlos Mouktaroudis The second Sunday in Lent is devoted to Saint Gregory Palamas (14th century), a hesychast from the Holy Mountain and later Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Saint Gregory Palamas defended the hesychasts of the Holy Mountain who were being mocked and attacked by the person who expressed the spirit of the Western Church, the monk Barlaam, from Calabria in Southern Italy. When Saint Gregory defended these monks, he set out the Orthodox faith regarding God,

The Eastern Christian Spiritual Tradition

03/07/2019

The Eastern Christian spiritual tradition is not composed of “schools” as in the West, where they are typically associated with a particular religious order (for example, Benedictine, Carmelite, or Franciscan). Yet there is more than one approach in the East. The one favored on Athos is known as hesychasm, from the Greek word hesychia, translated as “stillness.” It flourished especially in the fourteenth century on Athos, at a time when a controversy arose over the

The Myrrh-gushing Miracle of St. Demetrios in 1987: A Testimony

10/26/2018

It was October 26, 1987. The time was past 10:00 p.m. The city was celebrating the memory of the contest of its patron saint, St. Demetrios, and the freedom from the nearly five hundred years (1430-1912) occupation by the Ottomans. The Church of St. Demetrios with open doors received its nightly venerators, who were kneeling in front of the silver casket with the holy relics of the Myrrh-gusher. At that moment there must not have

The Myrrhgushing Miracle of St. Demetrios in 1987: A Testimony

10/26/2012

Archive

Knowledge by Itself is Dangerous

Saint Nestor, the Martyr for Christ

World as Sacrament

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Saint Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts (Second Sunday in Lent)

The Eastern Christian Spiritual Tradition

The Myrrh-gushing Miracle of St. Demetrios in 1987: A Testimony

The Myrrhgushing Miracle of St. Demetrios in 1987: A Testimony

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