Holy Pascha in Hong Kong (2013)
The Service of Resurrection at Saint Luke Orthodox Cathedral in Hong Kong. Christ is Risen!
The faith of a Christian is tested by the Resurrection of Christ like gold in a furnace. Out of the entire Gospel, the Resurrection of Christ is the most unbelievable thing, totally inadmissible by our logic and a true cause of its suffering. Because it is something totally unbelievable, for this reason it requires all of our faith to believe in it.
Christ is standing firmly on two pieces of wood lying in such a way as to form a cross. These are the gates of Hell, which Christ demolished through the grace of His cross. With death, they closed, but were not powerful enough to hold Him in thrall. All around, there are broken and now useless bits of locks and chains which, until then had sealed off any escape route from Hell.
The Resurrection of Christ, which we festively celebrate after several days of fasting, repentance and prayer, is the central mystery of faith and the life in Christ. Without the Resurrection of Christ we would be under the power of death, sin and the devil and there would be no way out of life. That’s why the Apostle Paul declares: “If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile and we remain in our sins” (1 Cor. 15:17).
The Despotic Feasts were established by the Church to be celebrated within the year for us to remember the great events that took place with the Incarnation, the Passion and the Resurrection of Christ, but especially, and above all, to experience the mystery of Christ and the mystery of our [...]
In Matins of Holy and Great Tuesday, which is chanted by custom in the evening of Holy and Great Monday, there will parade before us hypocrisy and the hypocrites, the theater and actors, and will feature the terrible “woe” which our Lord sent to the exponents of hypocrisy.
In recent years, a religious uproar has exploded over ambiguous prophecies, causing widespread concern, while using the religiosity of the masses for some to gain by it. A religiosity that rekindled through miraculous and unexplained events like weeping icons and myrrhgushing relics and many, many eschatological prophecies.
In recent years, there has been much discussion of the difference which exists between the notions of “person” and “individual”. It may be that the progress of the social and anthropological sciences has provided the spark for this discussion, the starting-point for which is to be found in the well-known philosophical trends of our day. In particular, we see the supporters of Christian personalism and those of existentialism wrestling in particular with the notion of “person”, in an attempt to define its role and spheres of influence and existence.
The Philokalia, that wonderful collection of writings by the fathers on prayer of the heart, has as its full title, The Philokalia of the Neptic Saints gathered from our Holy Theophoric Fathers, through which, by means of the philosophy of ascetic practice and contemplation, the intellect is purified, illumined, and made perfect. Little wonder it is known popularly as the Philokalia.