Category: Great Lent
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“Beseech That Your Servants Be Written in the Book of Life”
How do we understand what we are heading towards, that is, the Passover? How do we understand that we are going in our course to the table where “the fatted calf, so that none departs hungry,” as Saint John Chrysostom says? And what is the connection of food to death and victory? Are they symbols?…
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The Resurrection Is Our Passage to the Father
All of us will remain in perpetual search for this homeland, and we may lose the way as the ancient people lost it, who believed that God wanted to give them a land to dwell in, whereas God wanted to make of Himself the homeland of the new man.
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The Sunday of Saint Gregory 2026
After we met Jesus last week and asked Him: “Where do You dwell, O Lord?” and wished to follow Him, this Sunday comes for us to begin discipleship at His hands. But discipleship with Jesus means changing our thinking, changing our minds, and also changing our standards and values, changing our view of everything. Discipleship…
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The Sunday of Orthodoxy 2026
The first Sunday of the fast is the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Even though the prevailing meaning here is that it is the Sunday of the triumph of Orthodoxy, the uprightness of faith, and the restoration of the icons, it certainly never means a triumph in the sense that we know. The first Sunday of the…
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Divine Love
On this last Sunday before Great Week, we stand before a unique model of divine love represented by Mary of Egypt. Mary was not merely a penitent; rather, she was a lover, and the object of her love was singular. Today is the Sunday of love; the lover here is the human being, represented by…
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Forgiveness Sunday: The Station of Reconciliation with Self and the Other
On the previous Sunday man took a stance in existence before God, by bearing the responsibility of becoming a man, that is, mature — for children do not bear responsibility. This stance calls today for man to make it an act, that is, a work in the society in which he lives, so that he…
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The Station of Judgment, the Station of the Stance
This Sunday is a calling to mind of the awesome second coming. Here we do not speak of the final coming (parousia), but of the second, personal coming (erchomai) — the personal coming where Christ comes to each one of us, and we do not know when the appointment is, nor the place, and it…
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Immortality
“Beseech that Your servants be written in the Book of Life” How do we understand what we are heading toward — that is, the Pascha? How do we understand that we go in our procession to the table where “the fatted calf, so that no one departs hungry,” as Saint John Chrysostom says? And what…
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John Climacus and Dostoevsky (The Fourth Sunday of the Fast, the Sunday of John Climacus)
Spiritual knowledge does not lead us to God by itself; rather, in reality it may cast us into a different world and in a completely opposite direction, for we may surrender to temptation and imagine that, by reason of the breadth of our knowledge, we have become the privileged ones with God, and thereby join…