Holy Pascha in Hong Kong (2013)
The Service of Resurrection at Saint Luke Orthodox Cathedral in Hong Kong. Christ is Risen!
Brethren and fathers, now that we have fasted for the first week we appear to each other somewhat different to what we were, leaner and paler. But even if our outward nature is wasting away, as the Apostle says, the inner is being renewed day by day. For what it is to see a body healthy-looking and sleek through pleasure; this it is to understand what follows for the soul through self-mastery, so that by humbling the body we shall bring about the beauty of the soul, that beauty which the holy David longed for when he prayed, Lord, by your will you have granted power to my beauty.
Every Saint loves the Panagia. Sainthood is not understood without this Theotokophilia. It occurs because the Saints, after tasting the Love of God, communing of the Body and Blood of Christ, and experiencing the gifts of the incarnation of Christ, feel the need to give thanks also [...]
The following vision was recorded by Patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos, the biographer of Saint Gregory Palamas, and was also later repeated by Hieromonk Athanasios of Paros in his biography of Saint Gregory Palamas.
At the Great Lavra of St. Athanasios on the Holy Mountain there dwelt [...]
By Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos
SECOND SUNDAY of LENT
On the same day, the Second Sunday of the Fast, we celebrate the memory of our Father among the Saints, Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica.
Verses
The Fountain of light leadeth unto the unwaning [...]
The Holy Church calls the second Sunday of Great Lent the Sunday of the Light-Creating Fasts. In its Divine services, in line with the destruction of the sinful condition of man, it is descriptively and touchingly represented in the church hymns, which explains the Gospel parable about the Prodigal son, [...]