Christian Discipleship

His Mother, Our Mother

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

To believe that the Virgin Mary is "the mother of Jesus" is the foundation of our faith that she is our mother as well. "Behold your mother", Jesus said to His beloved disciple (John 19:27). Notice the movement of the utterance. It is Jesus Who presents Mary as a mother to His disciple, or to ...

24Jan

Follow Him Now

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

A few days ago, I was struck by the words of Rev. Aidan Wilson Tozer, who passed away in 1963: “Faith dares to fail”. Before I try to search for the meaning of the word, I would like to tell you that my reading of what has come down to us from the writings of ...

10Dec

Trust in God

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

Working with God requires us to trust Him more than ourselves, our knowledge, our effort, our intelligence, and our relationships... Some of us set, as a condition for this work, to understand God's purpose in everything. Trust is not compensation for understanding, but rather it is the most sublime understanding. At the onset of His ...

6Dec

Brother Tony Bitar

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

Those to whom God had given to spread the love of Jesus and His Church on earth are among the founders of the Orthodox Youth Movement (MJO). This is not an addition to what took place on that blessed day, the 16th of March 1942, but rather it is the consummation of history to the ...

13Oct

The Lord Is At Hand

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

Clinging to the elder brethren in the Church does not always indicate following them in love! There are people, who have accompanied elders, bishops, priests, and others, who followed them in worship meetings, and upon whom fell pearls from their words and deeds, and nevertheless, they remained alien to their secret, strangers to the awareness ...

8May

“The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved”

Father Elia Mitri in Reflections

Does this phrase, which was unique to John in his Gospel, mean that Jesus preferred a disciple over the others? You do know that the Apostle John, whom many scholars agree that he concealed himself behind this phrase, uses it, in his Gospel, five times: at the Last Supper (13:23), before the Cross (19:26), when ...