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[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

The Passion of Christ

A Lenten homily given on February 25/March 10, 1985

Archimandrite John (Krestiankin)

We know that it was Divine will. But our heart—the human heart—remains as if unsatisfied: could there really not have been a single person with the resolve to say a kind word for the Lord before His judges, or testify in His defense?.. We are shocked by this spectacle of the ingratitude, blindness, madness, and cruelty of Christ’s contemporaries.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

The Fast, the Violin, and the Jackhammer

Valery Dukhanin

The fast is not a diet or temporary vegetarianism. The fast is first of all a spiritual activity by which we attempt to bring our soul and flesh into submission. Fasting teaches us to control our nature, rule over desires that arise, and through this, to achieve the most difficult victory—victory over our own selves.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

A Meditation on the Canon of St. Andrew

Fr. Robert M. Arida

The Canon of St. Andrew is interwoven with two complementary strands. There is first the historical strand, in which St. Andrew skillfully uses the history of salvation as the foundation for his hymn of repentance. It is the loving and compassionate God, who reveals himself through his saving acts and who calls the listener to repentance.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

On the Value of the Psalms

From St. Basil’s homily on Psalm 1

St. Basil the Great

Therefore, He devised for us these harmonious melodies of the psalms, that they who are children in age, or even those who are youthful in disposition, might to all appearances chant, but in reality, become trained in soul.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Sermon before the Fast

The fact is of real value only when it stems from a pure heart; when one is ready to deny wealth, and stand above money; when one is ready to give alms to the poor; when one has love and affection, not only for one's own children, but also for the orphans and the poor. One manifests real fasting when he is ready to deprive himself of food, in order that the hungry and destitute might be fed. One really fasts when he maintains his equilibrium under all stress, never allowing himself to lose his temper and explode like a volcano, destroying everyone around him.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Sermon on the Gospel of the Sunday of Zacchaeus

Fr. Panagiotes Carras

Who knows what was going on in his heart. Maybe he had reached a point in his life where all of a sudden he had become tired of exploiting people, tired of taking advantage of them, tired of listening to poor women cry as he took their money or food. Because this was what he had done. He went into people's homes and took their flour, oil, or whatever else they had. Many times he literally took food out of the mouths of children who were fatherless.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

The Goal of Earthly Life: Prayer

Fr. Touma Bitar

He came to me with the question, "I do not pray very much lately. I think I'm falling into negligence. What should I do to bring my prayer back?" If you truly want to bring your prayer back, then you are able to do this in an instant. Through prayer you acquire prayer. Prayer is an act of will. Pray regularly. A little or a lot? It doesn't matter. With feeling or without feeling? That doesn't matter either. You begin with the body, with words and motions. What's important is that you do it attentively.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Forgiveness Sunday

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

This Sunday is known as Forgiveness Sunday, and also Cheesfare Sunday for it is the last day on which we may eat dairy produce. On it we remember the Fall of Adam and Eve and how they lost Paradise by eating 'the forbidden fruit', which is why we fast, eating only 'the permitted fruit'. How exactly did that Fall happen?

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

The Fourth Sunday of the Triodion Period: Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday)

At the onset of Great Lent and a period of intense fasting, this Sunday reminds us of our need for God’s forgiveness and guides our hearts, minds, and spiritual efforts on returning to Him in repentance.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

On the Second Coming of Christ

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

Mercy will present to Christ also those who were only able to show mercy to themselves, who visited themselves with self-criticism and freed themselves from the poverty, sickness, and prison of sin through repentance. Repentance is impossible for the hardened heart: the heart must be softened, filled with sympathy and mercy toward its catastrophic state of sinfulness.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

The Prodigal Son

James Iliou

In the parable we are told and in our minds we think of the younger as being the Prodigal. But which one of these two brothers is truly the Prodigal Son? Is it the younger who leaves and comes back in repentance, or the older brother who refuses to welcome him back? I

[English Edition / Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days ]

The Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Archbishop Mark of Berlin

Martyrdom is the same thing as Christianity. These two words have the same meaning. Hatred against Christ and His followers should not surprise us. It is natural, it was foretold by the Lord Himself, Who said: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (John 15:18). What sort of disciples would we then be, if we did not follow the footsteps of our Teacher?

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Zacchaeus Of Little Stature

St. Nikolai Velimirovich

"Today, salvation has come to this house" said the Lord upon entering the house of Zacchaeus the sinner. Christ was the salvation that came and Zacchaeus was the house into which He entered. Brethren, each one of us is a house in which sin dwells as long as Christ is distant and to which salvation comes when Christ approaches it.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Welcome To Christianity

he commandments are mostly prohibitive – don’t do this, don’t do that. Reasons are not explicit. They are simple, to the point, and more akin to a parent’s rules than the laws of a government. It is in our best interest to follow these rules, given to us for our own good, but they are merely elementary. Christ, our teacher, graduated us to the next level of faith in his ministry. A large portion of his Sermon on the Mount expanded on the Ten Commandments.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

God Can Fill Us

Fr. Richard Demetrius Andrews

The great multitude and the disciples who followed Jesus in today’s gospel, the 8th Sunday of Matthew 14:14-22, certainly knew the story of the Israelites and the Manna in the wilderness. So when Christ takes the five loaves and two fish and feeds 5000 men, not counting women and children (vv.17,21) the people must have begun to understand that He was indeed the Son of God, the same God who fed the Israelites hundreds of years before.

[English Edition / Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days ]

Why do we bless homes on Theophany with Holy Water?

Why do we bless houses (and almost anything else that we can sprinkle) with water?

[English Edition / Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days ]

Homily at the Liturgy, January 8, 2011—the second day of Christmas, and the 85th anniversary of the birthday of Metropolitan Pitirim (Nechayev)

Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)

Today, on the second day of Christmas, the Gospel is read in church about how the Mother of God and holy righteous Joseph fled with the Christ Child from Herod to Egypt. But how many pious, good people remained in Israel then! How many innocent victims there were, beginning with the infants of Bethlehem, were slain by the evil wrath of King Herod!

[English Edition / Saints. Asceties of Piety. Church Holy Days ]

The Nativity Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom

Bethlehem this day resembles heaven; hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices; and in place of the sun, enfolds within itself on every side, the Sun of justice. And ask not how: for where God wills, the order of nature yields. For He willed; He had the power; He descended; He redeemed; all things yielded in obedience to God. This day He Who is, is Born; and He Who is, becomes what He was not. For when He was God, He became man; yet not departing from the Godhead that is His. Nor yet by any loss of divinity became He man, nor through increase became He God from man; but being the Word He became flesh, His nature, because of impassability, remaining unchanged.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

Sunday before Christmas

Today’s Gospel reading is taken from the Beginning of the New Testament, from the first chapter of the Gospel according to St Matthew. This reading begins with a long list of Hebrew names that give the family tree of Jesus on the human side. All in all, some 47 names are mentioned – the great, the near great, and the not so great.

[English Edition / Homilies and Spiritual Instruction]

On the Saints of the Old Testament

St. Gregory Palamas

Impossible to recount is Christ’s descent according to His divinity, but His ancestry according to His human nature can be traced, since He who deigned to become Son of Man in order to save mankind was the offspring of men. And it is this genealogy of His that two of the evangelists, Matthew and Luke, recorded.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

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