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 ...

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 ...

The Apostle’s saying, “flee sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18), which is read by the Church on the “Prodigal Son Sunday”, reminds me of the All Comely Joseph who had fled from his master’s wife who wanted him for herself (Genesis 39). This allows us to believe that, from the days of preparation for the fast ...

He who loves money, cannot possibly have, in the temples of his brain, a place for human feelings! I will give you, as an example of that, what happened in Lazarus’ house on one of these similar days. There, Jesus was hosted by Lazarus and his two sisters. The joy was great, in the house ...

Great Lent is an openness towards eternity, a restoration of the time that was broken by Adam. God had created Man to live forever. Adam sinned. He became mortal. His sin had broken his time; it became finite. This is what Christ is come to heal us from. Fasting came to be so that we ...

The theologian is a theologian wherever he may be. Theology flows out of him. You see it. You touch it. You hear it, whether he speaks in the Church or at home, or on the road… Once, Father Thomas Hopko (+2015) stopped a taxi. On the way, the taxi driver asked him: “are you a ...

This is the time to call down for gifts for the public good. The best that is done by a man, who strives for the good, is for him to remind himself constantly, in an acceptable and in an unacceptable time, that he is a servant who “does what is his duty to do” (Luke ...

Friday morning, I woke up to a pain in my back. I know the pain, a nasty pain that overpowers me in winter, in the cold; a pain that deprives me of what flexibility is left for me in my back, that folds me in two, whether I stand up or sit down. I set ...

If you are really looking for someone to heal our public or our personal history for us, as individuals and as communities, do not waste your breath in looking. Do one single thing. Lift up your eyes. There is one person who is capable of accomplishing this miracle for us, Jesus Who came to us ...