Why Go To Church When I Can Just Pray At Home?

St. John Chrysostom answers this question briefly when he writes: They say: ‘We can pray at home.’ Thou art deceiving thyself, O man! Of course, one can pray at home. But it is impossible to pray there as in church, where such a multitude of hearts are uplifted to God, merging into one unanimous cry. […]

The Unity of the Church and the Satanic Trap of Schisms and Heresies

“I believe … In one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” (The Nicene Creed) The Church is one. Since she is the living Body of Christ and Christ is one, so the Church cannot be anything but one. Indeed, it was for this reason that the Lord […]

Synaxarion for the Sunday of Pentecost

On this day, the eighth Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate Holy Pentecost. Verses In a mighty wind doth Christ distribute the Divine Spirit In the form of fiery tongues unto the Apostles. In one great day, the Spirit was poured forth upon the Fishermen.   Synaxarion We celebrate this Feast of Holy Pentecost today in […]

The Day of the Holy Spirit

The feast in honor of the Holy Spirit, “one of the Trinity of God, one in honor, one in essence and one in glory with the Father and the Son” is celebrated on the Monday after Pentecost. This feast has been established by the Church “for the majesty of the Most Holy and Life-creating Spirit, for He is […]

A Recent Appearance of the Theotokos in Bethlehem

This is the story of the miraculous appearance of the Panagia to a Muslim in Bethlehem on the first day of Holy Week 2012. The Orthodox monastic community of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem related this story to Mr. Lycourgos Markoudes who writes here as he heard it. The story begins on Holy […]

Theology in a Scientific World

First of all I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak this evening about Theology and Science, and for being here with us, not simply in this historic University and City of Oxford, where Theology and Science, and, we may hope, Wisdom are cultivated by so many eminent people, but also in […]

Christ in the Old Testament

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. [John 1:1] It is no coincidence that St John begins his gospel in the same way as begins the first book of the Old Testament: “In the beginning…” (Gen. 1:1). Orthodox Christianity rests on the belief in “one […]

The challenge of contemporary homosexual culture to the Orthodox Church

Contemporary homosexual culture? How can we talk of such a thing? What do we mean? It is to these questions that we must turn at the beginning and then consider where the challenge to the Orthodox Church lies. I am sufficiently old – the ‘wrong’ side of 60, to be able to remember quite well […]