Peace be with you, sister! Why are you writing such despondent letters? Are you the only one there who is encumbered with difficulties? The point is not in external difficulties — I think you understand that yourself —but in your spiritual constitution. No matter where you may go, you can’t hide from yourself or the enemy. All that is yours will go with you and elsewhere will cause you even more suffering than here. You must not forget that the spiritual law states that 'We m

The Sunday after Pentecost is the Sunday of All Saints. In the Orthodox Church the feast of All Saints is not on a fixed date as it is in the west. Rather, the feast of All Saints is linked to Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit. This is as it should be, for the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost has the effect of producing holy people: saints. In the English language the connection between the Holy Spirit and the saints is, unfortunately, not so obvious becaus

What is Christ the God-Man? What in Him is God and what man? How is God known in the God-Man, and how is man? What has God given to us men in and with the God-Man? The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, tells us all the truth there is about Him, about God in Him and man in Him and all that is given us through Him. All this immeasurably transcends everything that the human eye has ever seen, the ear has ever heard, or has ever entered into the heart of man (I Cor. 2:9; cf. Jn 1

The Seventh Sunday of Pascha, the Sunday between Ascension and Pentecost, commemorates the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council which was held in Nicaea in the year 325. If we attend to the hymns of this feast we will notice that the hymns state very clearly that we honor these Fathers because they fought heresy by teaching and upholding the dogmas of the Church. These two terms – heresy and dogma – have fallen on hard times. In the religious and cultural climate of our da

As we keep the feast of our Lord’s ascension there is no other book of the Bible more important than St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. This is a bold statement, I know, particularly since the entire New Testament and, rightly understood, the Old Testament, too, are the result of Christ’s ascension and the Church’s conviction that he is therefore “the Lord”. This earliest Christian confession – Jesus is Lord – is based upon the Lord’s ascension to be seated at the right hand