Until Tomorrow | Saint Sabbatius of Solovki (Greek Subtitles)

 

«Create Christ centered families» - π. Γεώργιος Σχοινάς. Με αγγλικούς υπότιτλους.

 

Without place and time!!!!Εκτός τόπου και χρόνου!!!

 

Today’s Sermon in a Nutshell:

Today’s Sermon in a Nutshell:

Imagine receiving an invitation to a king’s banquet, how excited you would feel at having been considered, personally chosen; handpicked to attend such a special event. Now imagine having the audacity to look the king in the face and say “No,” refusing outright to attend the celebration; and worse yet, making light of it. Therefore, the king’s decision to punish those who refuse to attend by having them cast out into the outer darkness is warranted and makes the point of the parable quite clear: Accept the invitation and participate or suffer the consequences of your choice. For either you attend the banquet and feast on Christ, or you don’t and the devil feasts on you!

Fr. John

BEFORE ABORTION.....

 

The Last Loaf | A Story of Faith Inspired by Psalm 37 / Το Τελευταίο Ψωμί | Μια ιστορία πίστης!!!

 

Panic Attacks, Hidden Sins, and Healing: Mother Siluana | Orthodox Church

 

In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul expresses the most import tenet of the Christian Faith: “Let all you do be done in love” (1st Cor. 16:14).

Today's Sermon in a Nutshell:

In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul expresses the most import tenet of the Christian Faith: “Let all you do be done in love” (1st Cor. 16:14). Therefore, love for God and our fellow human beings should be our highest priority, inspiring and governing everything we do. It should be the force which motivates us constantly through self-sacrifice.

Jesus Himself sets the example of how we are to love one another: through forgiveness, mercy, compassion, turning the other cheek, and helping all those in need. Such love is the ecosystem in which our lives as believers operate and thrive. It is also what sets us apart from others and distinguishes us from a sinful, fallen world. Thus, to be a true follower of Christ, we must live by, imitate, and demonstrate God’s love, because without this love, all other spiritual efforts and actions fall short.

Fr. John

fr. Nikolaos Loudovikos: Love as violence.

 

When Your Dreams MUST Die (The Truth Society Hides)!!!

 

How Wrong Relationships Could Cost You Your Salvation | An Orthodox Christian Perspective.

 

DORMITION AT THE BURNING BUSH -"Rejoice, fiery throne of the Lord God; Rejoice, the sacred vessel that is filled with manna."

DORMITION AT THE BURNING BUSH -"Rejoice, fiery throne of the Lord God; Rejoice, the sacred vessel that is filled with manna."

From an Article by Sr. Joanna*

St. Catherine’s visitors typically categorize themselves as ‘pilgrim’ or ‘tourist’. Well-aware that mankind’s deepest longing is for God, monastics recognize the fallacy of such distinctions. All arrive here “hoping to experience the stillness that exists between the soul and God,” His Eminence [retired] Archbishop Damianos of Sinai has said. A hermit monk explains this is equally true whether expressed by exuberant hoots disturbing the night on the steps leading to the Holy Summit, or by anxiously searching for the entrance to the Monastery church in the same black night – hoping to arrive before the service begins, when the angels do.

Much has been made of the Sinai Monastery’s preservation of the precious artifacts of ancient Christianity, and also of the unbroken ages of its peaceful co-existence with neighbors in a non-Christian world.  

Less noted is that the Sinai represents the only center of ancient ascetic spirituality open to women – tourist, pilgrim, or monastic [historically]. In a sphere where women have often had to struggle to prove themselves much as in civilian life, female monasticism in Sinai dates from the third century, apparently to the inceptions of the current monastic community itself.

Naturally isolated by remote desert, ascetics seeking stillness never needed to fabricate a barrier to worldly civilization by sealing the Monastery off from visits by families. Of course such a step would never have been contemplated by the guardians of a holy pilgrimage of such literally Biblical proportions. By the time the world resolutely landed on their doorstep with the construction of asphalt roads and tourist infrastructure, Sinai monks had long accustomed themselves to a double burden: combining the rigors of eremitic life with hospitality to those seeking deeper understanding of God.

After all, the Holy Mountain capped by the Peak of the Decalogue – of the Ten Commandments – is the mountain of the knowledge of God. And the Burning Bush, which still thrives in the Monastery courtyard, the path to that knowledge – for it burned with the same fire of divine Wisdom that later shone forth upon all creation from the “Bush of the Holy Virgin.”

Let us ever applaud and praise the Lord God

Who was seen of old on the holy mount in glory,

Who by the fiery bush revealed the great mystery of the

Ever-virgin and undefiled Maiden unto the Prophet Moses.

Aflame but not consumed by the fire of divinity just like the Bush itself, the Holy Virgin is the fiery pillar guiding the faithful through the darkness of this world’s trials. The Israelites were led through the Sinai by fire at night and a cloud by day, and the Holy Virgin spreads the protection of her shelter over the world more broadly than a cloud. Under it, her love gathers together not only the monastics of Sinai, but all the faithful who glorify her Son, the God-man who saves the world from sin as He saved His All-holy Mother from the corruption of death at her Dormition.

Monasteries are not islands adrift on a sea beyond the wave length of stress. Tides break over their shores. They are havens only to the degree that one has learned to take refuge in the will of God – and until then, places of fierce struggle. Against the relentless enemies of one’s own egotism and pride, the invincible weaponry of salvation belongs to the Most Holy Theotokos. One says the Jesus Prayer at all times, for as Sinai’s Geronta Pavlos says, “Prayer is the sun of our souls, without which we cannot live any more than we can survive without the physical sun.”

 But in crisis – ask any monastic: The heart that was pierced with a sword at the cross of her Son rushes to help, as Father Pavlos describes, with the reflexive speed of a mother who springs forward to snatch a baby from falling. Power against evil is not lacking to the first person whose human nature was joined to the divine, the Mother of God who was also the first person to see and touch the resurrected Christ (a subtlety of the Gospels elucidated by Saint Gregory Palamas) – and to speak with Him, as she does unto the ages on our behalf. ...

"The heavens were astonished and stood in awe,

and the ends of the earth, Maid, were sore amazed,

for God appeared bodily to mankind as very man.

And behold, your womb has proved to be vaster

and more spacious than heaven's heights.

For this, O Theotokos, the choirs and

assemblies of men and angels

magnify your name."

(Source: The Dormition services’ 13th century Great Supplicatory Canon to the Most Holy Theotokos.)

* From the Article "Dormition at the Burning Bush" by Sr. Joanna, at the FMSM News Blog: https://www.mountsinaimonastery.org/news-blog/dormition2016

She will not grow old.SAINT PORPHYRIOS OF KAFSOKALIVITES.

She will not grow old.

Testimony of Mrs. Georgia Samartzi, Athens

A lady I know, Aikaterini, when she was 24-25 years old, the doctors had told her definitively: “You have a very serious gynecological problem and you will never be able to have children.”  In 1986, she went to the Saint and said to him: "Elder, I have decided, I will adopt a child. To have him, to take care of me in my old age... "You know, if you grow old, You will never grow old. This woman, when she told me, wondered: "Why should I grow old? I will always be young? It seems that I will never fall.." She did not understand what the Saint saw with his prophetic gift. 

Ekaterini, in 2017, at the age of 56, was killed in a car accident. This happened 31 whole years after her visit  to the Holy. 

Bibliography. The Holy Porphyrios the Prophet.

Testimonies.

Publications. 

Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos.

The great power of the Most Holy Theotokos! - As soon as you say Pa....., our Panagia is there!

The great power of the Most Holy Theotokos! - As soon as you say Pa....., our Panagia is there!

Several years ago (it was winter and night), we were walking with a friend in an area quite far from the city and because it was late at night, there was not a human soul! At some point, from a forest opposite us, which was pitch black, loud music was heard as if someone was playing a bagpipe. My friend thought about going to see what was being heard but I stopped him because I felt a stir inside me, as if there was something that was not of God in that forest! I told him to say the Jesus prayer and we moved on! On our way back, passing by the same spot, the demonic music continued!  After a while I met a nun friend and when I mentioned it to her she told me that this music was definitely not from God and that we did well to avoid approaching that spot! She even told me that in these moments only the prayer of Jesus Christ can protect us and that if we invoked our Blessed Mother, it would not be enough! Of course I was not reassured by what I heard because I knew very well that evil forces flee with just the name of the Most Holy Theotokos! After a while I visited Father Avraamios,

a very pious Hieromonk in the New Skete of Mount Athos and I mentioned the incident to him. The grandfather then said to me, raising his hands high: "Wouldn't the Blessed Virgin Mary help? You don't have time to say her whole name and as soon as you say Pa..., she's here"!

 Her help is truly immediate, as soon as we call upon her with faith!

  Great is Her glory and great is Her Holy Grace!  Amen!

Miltiadis Tsesmetzis - Educator

A MONK HELPS. SAINT PORPHYRIOS OF KAFSOKALIVITES.

A MONK HELPS 

Testimony of Fr. Joachim Hieromonk. Holy Cell of the Annunciation of the Theotokos. H.M. SIMONOPETRAS.

There was a group on Mount Athos that had a very strict and ascetic program. Almost every day they fasted and every night they kept a long vigil with countless kneelings, rosaries and a long Service. A monk suffered something, without even being able to determine what exactly was happening to him. He told them that he was sick, but no one in the group believed him. Even the Elder of the group mocked him for being lazy. 

He was constantly trying to be punctual in the strict schedule, but every day he was getting worse.

As soon as he learned about the Saint, he went to consult him.

This monk, Father P., was very familiar to me and had told me: “I felt like no one understood me. I am sick and they tell me: ‘You have nothing!’ When I went to Father Porphyrios, before talking to him, he said to me: ‘You are sick, but no one believes you!’ He told me exactly what I should do, how to talk to my Elder, and I left feeling very refreshed.”

 He had disturbed his nervous system with the indiscriminate and leveling ascetic program. Later, with the blessing of his Elder, he abandoned the escort and took a Holy Cell near a Monastery. He blindly obeyed his Spiritual, was taciturn, avoided socializing and did not stop saying the prayer. After years, not only I, but also many others, discerned in Father P. gifts of insight and foresight. God led him to the Saint and not only was he saved from the worst, but he also reached spiritual heights.

 This incident was very special and rare that only a Saint could shed light on it. Of course, it does not justify in any way those monks who want to abandon their entourage.

Bibliography. Saint Porphyrios the Prophet.

Testimonies.

Publications. Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos

HOLY ANGELS IN THE SKY. SAINT PORPHYRIOS KAFSOKALYVITE.

HOLY ANGELS IN THE SKY

Testimony of Mr. GE, D. Civil Engineer, Athens!

I was in the team of civil engineers who undertook the study and supervision of the construction of the Monastery of the Saint in Milesi,

One evening in 1985, we worked late and, at 01:00 after midnight, before going to sleep, we decided to take a walk in the courtyard. It was summer and the sky was clear. We could see the starry sky clearly and we headed towards the south side of the Cells, that is, approximately under the balcony of the Cell of the Saint.

 There were three of us and, since it did not have the trees it has today, we looked at the celestial dome, filled with hundreds of thousands of bright stars and luminous constellations, Small and large stars, irregularly spread out by the hand of God. At that time I loved and studied astronomy. As we were discussing this fantastic beauty, we saw the Saint coming towards us and when he came near us, very peaceful and calm, he asked us: 

“What are you doing out here? 

“We see the stars... 

“The stars, are they all you see? 

“What else can we see in the night? 

 -Well, the sky is full of Saints and Angels, don't you see them?

No, we don't see anything. 

"Do you want to see them? 

No one spoke, We were left bewildered and the Saint moved away. He descended and disappeared into the forest, apparently, at such a time he left his cell every night to go to the mountain to pray. We stayed for a while - watching him move away, I don't know why we didn't answer.  Perhaps because I felt it as audacity, as pride if I told him: “Yes, I want to see them”), 

In our lives there are opportunities that are repeated and opportunities that never come again. We missed a unique and unrepeatable opportunity, because the Saint had boldness in God and was able to show them to us. 

An elderly nun confided in me the following experience she had with the Saint. Once the Saint went to their Monastery and they hosted him.  As they were talking, he told them that he wanted to go for a walk alone on the mountain behind the Monastery, and left. After a while, this nun went to do some work on the back side of the Monastery, on the north side, and saw on the mountain, high above the trees, a large bird with its wings spread, descending. She continued her ministry and then she heard something like a flutter and saw the Saint descending to the ground right next to her. He said to her: “From what you have seen, you will not say anything to anyone.  Only when I leave, you can tell them,” He did not know if it had anything to do with the bird he saw, but the Saint descended from heaven. 

Bibliography. Saint Porphyrios the Prophet.

Testimonies.

Publications. Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos. Volume C.

Freemasonry..SAINT PORPHYRIUS.

Testimony of Mr. Evangelos P., Athens.

Freemasonry.

 Mr. Homer and Mr. Antipas were friends of my father and they encouraged him to join Freemasonry, but my father avoided it because he knew well the role of this secret organization. He even tried to bring them into contact with the Saint in order to help them escape the nets of Freemasonry.

One night, Mr. Antipas passed by our house and my father happily introduced him to the Saint, who, although he had not been informed, at one point said to him:

    You are a good man, may God bless you.., but you are in trouble!!!

 Where you are integrated, it is not as you think. Now they are presenting everything to you Perfectly, Know that in a short time their true face will be presented to you and they will pressure you. When you learn their intentions, you will not be able to stand it, you will “leave” and you will be in your office. Elder, we are working for the good of the Homeland. 

 "Come and confess and change your life... Where you are, it is a very bad thing..! However, I "see" that you will not be able to bear it... 

The Saint shook his head sadly, while the man was surprised by the Saint's straightforwardness. Without getting angry, he smiled condescendingly, bowed and kissed his hand reverently and left. 

Mr. Antipas was the director of a large bank and a very capable executive. He was a good man and from a good family, but he was also naive, because he believed what they were propagandizing to him in order to gradually introduce him into the sanctuaries of Freemasonry.  When he left home, my father asked the Saint: 

-Grandpa, what did you mean when you told him: “You will leave and be in your office”. 

“Your friend will soon learn truths that he now refuses to see. They will ask him to do things that he should not..., that he cannot imagine now! And they will put a lot of pressure on him! Then he will see their true face, he will understand how entangled he is and his heart will not be able to bear it. He will die on his desk and you will learn about it over the phone! 

Indeed, ten months later, it was noon, the phone rang and they asked for our father. A voice  informed him that that morning his friend had died of a heart attack at his desk. And he was a young man! Immediately our father asked for and we brought him the wooden cross that was a gift from the Saint, and after hugging it tightly, he cried for his unfortunate friend. 

Bibliography. Saint Porphyrios the Prophet.

Testimonies.

Publications. Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos. Volume C.

HE IS GUARDED BY SAINT NEKTARIUS. SAINT PORPHYRIUS.

.

SAINT NEKTARIUS GUARDS HIM

Testimony of Mr. Georgios Tsitsopoulos, Athens

My brother first told me about Saint Porphyrios around 1973 and I went and met him in Kallisia.

A little while later, without us having informed him where I was working, he came late at night to the sheet metal shop in Agios Fanourios where I worked as an employee with my cousin.

The Saint asked us to take a barrel and showed us how to cut it to make a wood stove.  Because it was winter and very cold, I made him and his companion sit at the back of the shop, inside the closed office. As I was cutting the barrel, the electric wheel slipped from my hands, fell on me, got tangled and cut my clothes. I called to my cousin to unplug the cable from the socket, but he did not hear me. At the same moment the wheel stopped. 

The Saint had unplugged the cable and was next to me.  I was wearing a lot of clothes and they were torn to pieces, but in a miraculous way I was not injured at all and embarrassedly I said to the Saint:

-Elder, do you see how calm I am?

-You are not calm, blessed one... Above your head was Saint Nektarios. Can't you see across? The whole area became day!

Opposite the shop were plots and fields. All I could see was darkness, because it was 12 midnight.

***

It was August 14, 1978 and I was passing through the bars of a building in Ano Liosia.  It was early noon and I said to my assistant. Gather the tools, we're going to school. Tomorrow is the Virgin Mary's. Great is Her grace, glorified is Her name! 

And as I hit the hammer to nail the last cement nail, it broke and hung off the balcony, a piece of concrete slab 2.5 x 1.3m., because the contractor had reinforced it with thin iron bars, and I ran straight over the railing into the void. From the third floor I ended up on the street! First I hit a PPC cable, from there on the pillar, then on a fig tree to end up in the lime.  A driver who saw the whole fall stopped immediately, picked me up and took me to the hospital in Kifisia. I was in a coma for a week. They only gave me 8 stitches and when I came to, I went straight to the Virgin Mary of Tinos to thank her.

I also owe gratitude to Saint Nektarios, because - as Saint Porphyrios told me - he is my patron.

When the Saint was building his Monastery, I volunteered to make the iron structures, mainly doors and windows. He didn’t want them made of wood or aluminum. 

One day I was hanging at 9 meters. I was holding on with one hand and with the other I was clinging to a window. I was standing level on a small ledge of the wall and the Saint passed by with Mr. George A..., who said to him anxiously:

-Elder, George is hanging up there!

-Go ahead... He has Saint Nektarios above his head.

He once told me:

-God has given you a great gift.

What is this and I don't know it?

You never get angry and you never blaspheme!

Bibliography. Saint Porphyrios the Prophet.

Testimonies. 

Publications. Agios Paulites Holy Cell of Saints Theodores Mount Athos. Volume C.

ONE THING IS NEEDED.

"I, the Light, have come into the world, that whoever believes in Me not remain in darkness."

"I, the Light, have come into the world, that whoever believes in Me not remain in darkness."

For the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ

IN THE LIGHT OF DIVINE LOVE

At the foot of the God-trodden Mountain of Sinai, Emperor Justinian built the great basilica of St. Catherine's Monastery to the Transfiguration of Christ - the 'Feast of monastic feasts'.

‘Let us be transfigured by that glorious transfiguration,’ exhorted St. Anastasios of Sinai in his sermon on the Feast, for ‘Jesus goes before us to show us the way, both up the mountain and into heaven … making us sharers in His divinity and raising us to heights as yet undreamed of.’

Archbishop Damianos of Sinai has pointed out that the manifestation of the Holy Trinity at the Transfiguration was foreshadowed by the earlier theophany on Mount Sinai, where the voice of God, the light of the Sun of Righteousness, and the cloud of the Holy Spirit were all similarly present.

There is a difference though: While the eyes of the apostles were enabled to see ‘a dim ray’ of the divine radiance of Christ at His Transfiguration, the Uncreated Light appears to Moses on Sinai as ‘luminous darkness’. It is invisible - except to eyes that have been transformed by the Holy Spirit.

As His Eminence also noted, the full revelation of the Trinity is reserved for the New Testament. Thus the wishes of both Moses and Elias to see God clearly on Sinai are fulfilled at the Transfiguration of Christ. ...

                        --------------------------------------------------------

... A significant characteristic of Orthodox Christianity is its understanding of the distinction between the essence of God and His uncreated energies; Orthodox saints understand creation as the voluntary will of the divine energies, an outpouring of love - reflected in the words of the Holy Trinity, 'Let us make man.'

What does this mean? That man is destined not for contemplation of God, but for union with Him. Receiving the divine energies within himself, he is created 'to become by grace what God is by nature'.

It also means that salvation is not reserved for a chosen few, but the free gift of grace offered to all. One need only reach out to take the gift, striving to follow Christ through the mysteries of the historic Orthodox Church founded by Christ through His apostles.

Thus, St. Gregory of Sinai says that Peter, James, and John were not randomly selected to participate in the Transfiguration, for each was distinguished by some individual combination of 'faith, effort, and love for Christ – even though the same grace of the Spirit had been given to all.'

Enamored of the divine radiance, Peter exclaims, 'Lord, it is good for us to be here!' His next thought is to remain in the divine glory.

At this point - validating the faith of Peter who had replied 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God' to Jesus' question six days earlier, 'Who do you say I am?' - the voice of the Father comes from the cloud: 'This is my beloved Son - listen to him.'

This is the exact moment portrayed in the icon of the Transfiguration - as illustrated in the Sinai icon above with the words of the Father inscribed across the top - portraying not just the divine energies of God's unapproachable glory - but how one may remain within it:

Geronta Pavlos of Sinai explains that the New Testament verb for 'listen' implies 'doing'. Those who seek union with God by fulfilling His commandments will be transfigured by the light of Christ into the abode of the Holy Spirit, and through them, all creation.

According to the patristic Saints of the Orthodox Church, this is the radiant message of the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Saviour, whose week-long celebration will draw to its close on August 13th, but which never dims in the hearts of the faithful.

'I, the Light, have come into the world,' said the Lord, 'that whoever believes in Me not remain in darkness.'

                         -----------------------------------------------------

Sinai's Codex Theodosianus is one of the most splendid manuscripts to survive from Byzantine times. It is a copy of the Gospels, written in Constantinople in the tenth century. It was written in one of the imperial scriptoria, and every letter on every page is executed in gold leaf. The beautiful letters gleam and flash as they catch the light.

This image [below right] shows the beginning of the Gospel passage for the Feast of the Transfiguration. One can see here the abbreviation for the Name 'Jesus' formed by its first and last letters, with a decorative line above to indicate the contraction. Names such as ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘Lord'  were always written as abbreviations, in that they are nomina sacra, 'sacred names.'

From Article "Who do you say I am?" by Sr. Joanna at FMSM's News Blog http://www.mountsinaimonastery.org/news-blog/transfiguration2017