Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!
Christians have a glory and a beauty and a heavenly wealth which is beyond words, and it is won with pains, and sweat, and trials, and many conflicts, and all by the grace of God.
- St. Macarius the Great
Never belittle the significance of your thoughts, for not one of them escapes God’s notice.
- St. Mark the Ascetic
The forgetting of wrongs is a sign of true repentance. But he who dwells on them and thinks that he is repenting is like a man who thinks he is running while he is really asleep.
- St. John Climacus
I have observed a peculiar kind of logic in certain pious people. Their piety is a good thing, and their predisposition for good is also a good thing; however, a certain spiritual discernment and amplitude is required so that their piety is not accompanied by narrow-mindedness or strong-headedness. Someone who is truly in a spiritual state must possess and exemplify spiritual discernment; otherwise he will forever remain attached to the “letter of the Law”, and the letter of the Law can be quite deadly.
- Elder Paisios
Fasting is not the aim, but the means towards it. See, it was your aim to come to Mount Athos, it was your destination. The boat which brought you was the means by which you arrived. Such is fasting; it is one of the means given to us by the love of God to crave for Him. God is our destination.
- An Athonite monk on fasting
The Rite of Forgiveness
After the dismissal at Vespers, the priest stands beside the analogion, or before the ambon, and the faithful come up one by one and venerate the icon, after which each makes a prostration before the priest, saying, “Forgive me, a sinner.” The priest also makes a prostration before each, saying, “God forgives. Forgive me.” The person responds, “God forgives,” and receives a blessing from the priest. Meanwhile the choir sings quietly the irmoi of the Paschal Canon, or else the Paschal Stichera. After receiving the priest’s blessing, the faithful also ask forgiveness of each other.
Hello dear friend,
From my experience, despite the fact the vast majority of us are baptized Orthodox, not all of us are participating in Church services. While a big percentage of people are attending Christmas, Paschal and Theotokos’ services, a smaller amount is participating weekly in Divine Liturgy. And those that are attending daily the Orthros and the Vespers are even fewer. Many Greeks today say that are not believing in God.
The percentage of those that are active members of the Church is about 40% of the baptized - if I am not mistaken. But, while the previous years people had abandoned the Church, now with the crisis that people have lost hope on money, on politicians, on everything are staring to return to the Church once again. I have seen this with my own eyes.
Greece without the Orthodox Church is something meaningless, pointless. Only when we return back to God we will be as happy and complete as before!
God bless you!
As the memory of fire does not warm the body, so faith without love does not bring about the illumination of knowledge in the soul.
– St. Maximus the Confessor
How are you to know if you are living according to the will of God?
Here is a sign: if you are distressed over anything it means that you have not fully surrendered to God’s will, although it may seem to you that you live according to his will. He who lives according to God’s will has no material cares. If he has need of something, he offers himself and the thing he wants to God; and if he does not receive it, he remains as unworried as if he had got what he wanted.
- St. Silouan the Athonite
Christians ought at all times to preserve the remembrance of God… in order that they may show love to the Lord not only when they go into the place of prayer, but that also when they are working, talking, or eating, they may preserve the remembrance of God, and a sense of love and yearning towards Him.
- St. Macarius of Egypt
The greatest sickness of our age is the vain thoughts of secular people, which bring stress. Only Christ can provide a cure with spiritual serenity, along with eternity, provided you repent and turn to Him.
- Elder Paisios
Be strengthened with the grace of God, be brave and be victorious over your enemies through the weapons of faith and wholehearted love for God and for your neighbor, which casts fear away and never falls…
- Elder Philotheos Zervakos
A Christian should avoid unhealthy religiosity: both the feeling of superiority due to virtue, and the feeling of inferiority due to sinfulness. One thing is it to have a complex and another, humility; one thing depression and another, repentance.
- Elder Porphyry Bairaktaris the Kapsokalivite
