May 24, 2013

Pastoral Message on the Fast of the Ninevites

Jonah the Prophet

As we begin the Fast of the Ninevites and remem­ber how God sent the Prophet Jonah to exhort them to turn away from their wicked­ness and repent, it is meet and ben­e­fi­cial for us to med­i­tate on the sig­nif­i­cance of Jonah’s mis­sion to the Ninevites. The key to under­stand­ing Jonah’s mis­sion is found, not in […]

Do You Fast? by St. John Chrysostom

Chrysostom and St Paul

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being hon­ored, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye and the ear and the feet and the hands and all the mem­bers of our bod­ies. Let […]

What is Success?

Joseph

In the Eng­lish lan­guage, suc­cess is defined as “the accom­plish­ment of an aim or pur­pose.” In other words, a per­son sets for her­self a cer­tain goal or pur­pose and then works to achieve it. When she achieves it, we look at her as being suc­cess­ful. She attained suc­cess by achiev­ing her spe­cific goal or pur­pose. For this […]

Lessons from the Life of Abba Moses the Strong

Abba Moses the Strong

This week, we cel­e­brate the feast of one of the great saints of Chris­tian­ity whose life and exam­ple are a light to all of us, the Strong Saint Abba Moses. Biog­ra­phy Let us first speak of the details of Abba Moses’ life. We know about Abba Moses pri­mar­ily from an early Chris­t­ian work known as the Lausiac […]

On Modern Materialism

Saint Verena

First of all, to me the prob­lem arises from the prob­lem that we do not dis­tin­guish between “what I want” and “what I need.” I want many things, but do I need them all? The assump­tion in our west­ern soci­ety has been that we should have a con­tin­u­ing rise in the level of our eco­nomic well-being, that peo­ple should have […]

Do You Read?

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Do you read? Read­ing involves you inti­mately with the word, and the word is the defin­i­tive means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between man and man, and between God and man. Remem­ber, the Son of God Him­self is called the Word in the holy Scrip­tures. The Scrip­tures them­selves form a record of God’s rev­e­la­tion to mankind, writ­ten in the […]

The Existence of God and the Feast of the Resurrection

the resurrection

Our beloved father, the thrice-blessed Pope Shenouda III of blessed memory, was fond of repeat­ing a sim­ple, yet pow­er­ful phrase: “God exists.” What does this phrase mean in the con­text of our Lord’s Res­ur­rec­tion? In his First Epis­tle to the Corinthi­ans, St. Paul addressed those peo­ple who deny the Res­ur­rec­tion of our Lord Jesus Christ and told […]

The Sixth Sunday of the Great Holy Fast: Blindness and Baptism

Byzantine icon of our Lord healing the man born blind

The gospel read­ing of the Sixth Sun­day of the Great Holy Fast is full of pow­er­ful images of light and dark­ness. Our Lord says, for exam­ple, “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is com­ing when no one can work. As long as I am in the […]

The Life and Miracles of Pope Kyrillos

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He who flies after dig­nity, will be ignored of it; who refrains from dig­nity with dis­cre­tion, will be pur­sued by dig­nity, and will be led to it by peo­ple. “… Watch­ing this elderly man, near the age of sev­enty, rise daily at four o’clock in the morn­ing to pray with inten­sity and per­se­ver­ance, made many […]

Pastoral Message on the Great Holy Fast 2012

Adam and Eve Expulsion from Eden

Beloved brethren, as we begin the Great Holy Fast, I would like to empha­size that the Fast is a great and won­der­ful oppor­tu­nity. We shouldn’t look at the Fast in a neg­a­tive sense as though it were some kind of hor­ri­ble pun­ish­ment or oblig­a­tion. Rather, we should look at the Fast as an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­nity to return to […]

Renewal of our Faith

Patriarch Abraham

Among all of the tal­ents and abil­i­ties that God has given us, faith is the most pre­cious, because faith gives us the proper out­look to under­stand God and our rela­tion­ship with Him. Faith reveals to us the very pur­pose of our lives; it encour­ages us dur­ing tribu­la­tions and glad­dens our heart; it moves our prayer […]

The Annunciation and the Virgin

Annunciation

On the sec­ond Sun­day of Kiahk, we cel­e­brate the Annun­ci­a­tion of the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Holy Vir­gin Mary. As we rejoice in the news of our Lord’s glo­ri­ous Birth, we can­not under­es­ti­mate the value and impor­tance of the Holy Theotokos St. Mary. She was the per­son for whom all generations […]