Palm Sunday belongs to us all, old and young. This is a day in which we walk with Jesus to His Passion and His Resurrection. The joy, our joy in accompanying Him on a tour in which we all resemble children who bequeathed to us that we bless: “He Who comes in the Name of ...
Read moreAuthor: Father Elia Mitri
From Knowledge to The Knowledge
Does a preacher, from the pulpit of a church, have the right to utter words borrowed from the literary world? I was reminded of this question by a priest, who lives in the West, and who, in a sermon he had delivered on one of the Sundays of preparation for the Great Lent, had quoted ...
Read moreThe Friendship of the Word
What is the secret of these two parables, the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee (Luke 18: 10-14), and the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15: 11-32), which dominate the prayers of the Great & Holy Lent? This is a question that keeps coming to me on every Great Lent. I am not ...
Read moreA Great Word
When the great words reach us, they rest in us the way a Man rests in his house, and they emerge when they see that there is a good deed waiting for them! Today, I will leave you one of these words. Some forty years ago, I heard, along with some of our friends in ...
Read moreArise, Let Us Go
In Jesus’ farewell sermon (John 13:31-17:26), I have been frequently struck by the last word in the fourteenth chapter: “arise, let us go from here”. Did Jesus intend, with this word, to conclude a part of a speech he had already started in one place, and completed in another? What we do know is that ...
Read moreThe Raising of Lazarus
The raising of Lazarus is a disclosure of the journey of triumph, which Jesus had achieved by His Death and Resurrection. This is manifested in the feast prayers as they state that Christ, “by raising Lazarus from the dead, did confirm the universal Resurrection”. This means that, when Jesus stood before Lazarus’ tomb and called ...
Read moreThe Gift of Pascha
At the beginning of this Great Week, the Church chooses for us biblical texts that remind us of what She had said, on the first day of the fast, about the end times. Why is the end being mentioned both at the beginning and the end? The Great Lent is one whole which tells that ...
Read moreThe Light is Greater
Decades ago, it became popular for some, throughout Antioch, to boast about their spiritual fathers. This brought about, here and there, a fall into “the relationships fashion” and into “selfish ambitions and conceits”. I am not generalizing the wrath. I am not bypassing the manifestations of awareness. In spite of the wound left by this ...
Read morePrayer and Fasting
Someone said to Fr. Alexander Elchaninov: “you do not find ill-tempered people just as you do during the last week of the Great Lent”. He answered him: “what you are saying is absolutely true. This is what always happens when we separate fasting from prayer…”! I do not think there is an indication more eloquent ...
Read moreFrom Knowledge to The Knowledge
Does a preacher, from the pulpit of a church, have the right to utter words borrowed from the literary world? I was reminded of this question by a priest, who lives in the West, and who, in a sermon he had delivered on one of the Sundays of preparation for the Great Lent, had quoted ...
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