The Sunday which follows the Ascension, the sixth Sunday after Easter, is called the Sunday of the Holy Fathers. We commemorate then the bishops who met at the Synod of Nicaea, the earliest of the seven ecumenical Synods in terms of date.

Regardle...

The Sunday of the Holy Fathers, which our Church celebrates during the time of Pentecost, is dedicated to the memory of the Holy and God-bearing Fathers of the 1st Ecumenical Synod, in Nicaea, at which Saint Athanasios the Great and Saint Spyridon...

For this particular reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see the Apostle Paul imparting his spiritual legacy upon the presbyters of Ephesus in an emotional farewell address at the seaside town of Miletus. Our Church, in its wisdom has chosen ...

(edited by Stelios Koukos)

[As written by Saint Païsios the Athonite]

When I was a beginner in the Monastery of Esfigmenou, I was told by the venerable Elder Dorotheos that an elderly monk would come and help out in the Hospice. He was of such gr...

As we know, the feast of the Ascension seals the first coming of Christ to the world, in the flesh. It thus completes the plan of God’s divine dispensation in the incarnation of his Son and Word as a human being. The nativity, the teaching, the  m...

‘God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet.’[1]

The Ascension is the last event in Christ’s earthly life. Of course, Pentecost is the fulfilment of God’s dispensation, which is why is called ‘the last feast’[2]. God the Fat...

The feast of the Ascension seems not to present any particular interest, but rather a certain sadness in our hearts that the Lord is departing from us. Nevertheless, the following points emerge from the Gospels and from our lives as Christians:

1....

The Lord’s Ascension is the visible sign of God’s reconciliation with us, but also the glorification of our human nature. This reconciliation and our glorification were achieved through the incarnation of the Son and Word of God, His teachings, Hi...

We’ve said before that God isn’t impassioned, punitive or vindictive. If he were so, he’d have to be evil. But there’s not a trace of wickedness in the divinity.

Every trial’s a divine lesson and a form of asceticism, which we’ve otherwise volunta...

(edited by Stelios Koukos)

Noetic prayer is also called prayer of the heart. You ask if oral prayer can also be called prayer of the heart. Unless it’s pure, neither noetic or oral prayer can be called ‘of the heart’.

It’s prayer of the heart when...