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The Holy Spirit, then, does not speak to us about Himself, but He speaks to us about Christ. 'When the Spirit of truth is come,' says Jesus at the Last Supper, 'He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak about Himself . . . He will take what is mine, and wills how it to you' (John 16:13-14). Herein lies the reason for the anonymity or, more exactly, the transparency of the Holy Spirit: He points, not to Himself, but to the risen Christ.

-- Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

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The Church as the Body of Christ

'We, who are many, are one body in Christ' (Romans xii, 5). Between Christ and the Church there is the closest bond: in the famous phrase of Ignatius, 'where Christ is, there is the Catholic Church'. The Church is the extension of the Incarnation, the place where the Incarnation perpetuates itself. The Church, the Greek theologian Chrestos Androutsos has written, is ''the centre and organ of Christ's redeeming work;. . . it is nothing else than the continuation and extension of His prophetic, priestly, and kingly power. . . The Church is Christ with us.' Christ did not leave the Church when He ascended into heaven: 'Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world,' He promised (Matthew xxviii, 20), 'for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them' (Matthew xviii, 20). It is only too easy to fall into the mistake of speaking of Christ as absent:

And still the Holy Church is here Although her Lord is gone.

But how can we say that Christ 'is gone', when He has promised us His perpetual presence?

The unity between Christ and His Church is effected above all through the sacraments. At Baptism, the new Christian is buried and raised with Christ; at the Eucharist the members of Christ's Body the Church receive His Body in the sacraments. The Eucharist, by uniting the members of the Church to Christ, at the same time unites them to one another: 'We, who are many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread' (1 Corinthians x, 17). The Eucharist creates the unity of the Church. The Church (as Ignatius saw) is a Eucharistic society, a sacramental organism which exists -- and exists in its fullness -- wherever the Eucharist is celebrated. It is no coincidence that the term 'Body of Christ' should mean both the Church and the sacrament; and that the phrase communio sanctorum in the Apostles' Creed should mean both 'the communion of the holy people' (communion of saints) and 'the communion of the holy things' (communion in the sacraments).

The Church must be thought of primarily in sacramental terms. Its outward organization, however important, is secondary to its sacramental life.

-- Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church

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The Lord is not tired of hearing us complain all the time. He is tired of our sins, not our turning to Him for help. He wants us to call upon Him all the time and to pour out our hearts to Him

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

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How will we know whether we are living according to the will of God or not? If you are sad for whatever reason, this means that you have not given yourself over to God, although from the outside it may seem that you have. He who lives according to God’s will has no worries. When he needs something, he simply prays for it. If he does not receive that which he asked for, he is joyful as though he had received it. A soul that has given itself over to God has no fear of anything, not even robbers, sickness, or death. Whatever happens, such a soul always cries, “It was the will of God.”

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

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Christian love is the "possible impossibility" to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in His eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a "good deed" or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God Himself.

--Rev Dr. Alexander Schmemann: Great Lent - Journey to Pascha

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Entry of Our Lord into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday)

Commemorated on April 28

By raising Lazarus from the dead before Your passion, You did confirm the universal Resurrection, O Christ God! Like the children with the palms of victory, we cry out to You, O Vanquisher of death: Hosanna in the Highest! Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Palm Sunday is the celebration of the triumphant entrance of Christ into the royal city of Jerusalem. He rode on a colt for which He Himself had sent, and He permitted the people to hail Him publicly as a king. A large crowd met Him in a manner befitting royalty, waving palm branches and placing their garments in His path. They greeted Him with these words: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel! (John 12:13).

This day together with the raising of Lazarus are signs pointing beyond themselves to the mighty deeds and events which consummate Christ’s earthly ministry. The time of fulfillment was at hand. Christ’s raising of Lazarus points to the destruction of death and the joy of resurrection which will be accessible to all through His own death and resurrection. His entrance into Jerusalem is a fulfillment of the messianic prophecies about the king who will enter his holy city to establish a final kingdom. “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass” (Zech 9:9).

Finally, the events of these triumphant two days are but the passage to Holy Week: the “hour” of suffering and death for which Christ came. Thus the triumph in a earthly sense is extremely short-lived. Jesus enters openly into the midst of His enemies, publicly saying and doing those things which mostly enrage them. The people themselves will soon reject Him. They misread His brief earthly triumph as a sign of something else: His emergence as a political messiah who will lead them to the glories of an earthly kingdom.

The liturgy of the Church is more than meditation or praise concerning past events. It communicates to us the eternal presence and power of the events being celebrated and makes us participants in those events. Thus the services of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday bring us to our own moment of life and death and entrance into the Kingdom of God: a Kingdom not of this world, a Kingdom accessible in the Church through repentance and baptism.

On Palm Sunday palm and willow branches are blessed in the Church. We take them in order to raise them up and greet the King and Ruler of our life: Jesus Christ. We take them in order to reaffirm our baptismal pledges. As the One who raised Lazarus and entered Jerusalem to go to His voluntary Passion stands in our midst, we are faced with the same question addressed to us at baptism: “Do you accept Christ?” We give our answer by daring to take the branch and raise it up: “I accept Him as King and God!”

Thus, on the eve of Christ’s Passion, in the celebration of the joyful cycle of the triumphant days of Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, we reunite ourselves to Christ, affirm His Lordship over the totality of our life, and express our readiness to follow Him to His Kingdom:

... that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:10-11).

Very Rev. Paul Lazor

When we were buried with You in Baptism, O Christ God, we were made worthy of eternal life by Your Resurrection! Now we praise You and sing: Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Sitting on Your throne in heaven, carried on a foal on earth, O Christ God! Accept the praise of angels and the songs of children who sing: Blessed is He that comes to recall Adam!

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Prayer is something that must be practiced always.

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

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“Find the door of your heart, and you will discover it is the door to the kingdom of God.” +St. John Chrysostom

(picture source)

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Не рыдай мене мати икона Божьей Матери // Don't cry for me Mother of God icon

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Clearly imagine the senselessness, folly and danger of procrastination. You say: "later," but later it will be even harder to do, because you will become even more accustomed to the sin, and your sinful situations and connections will become even more involved. But what point is there for one who is entangled to become more and more entangled, thinking all the while that it will be just as easy later as now to disentangle oneself? If you have already understood that you must not stay the way you are, then why tarry? After all, God may finally say: ye have become loathsome to me, I will no more pardon your sins (Is. 1:14), and you may pass beyond the point of no return. This is such a catastrophe that no labor can be justifiably stinted in order to avoid it. If care is conscientiously taken to imagine this clearly and energetically, then all those who labor over their souls will naturally turn away from procrastination, for procrastination will have no internal proponent. You will see that it is your enemy, and you will look at it with disdain.

-- Saint Theophan the Recluse: Path to Salvation; A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

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And yet the "old" life, that of sin and pettiness, is not easily overcome and changed. The Gospel expects and requires from man an effort of which, in his present state, he is virtually incapable. We are challenged with a vision, a goal, a way of life that is so much above our possibilities! For even the Apostles, when they heard their Master's teaching, asked Him in despair: "but how is this possible?" It is not easy, indeed, to reject a petty ideal of life made up of daily cares, of search for material goods, security, and pleasure, for an ideal of life in which nothing short of perfection is the goal: "be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." This world through all its "media" says: be happy, take it easy, follow the broad way. Christ in the Gospel says: choose the narrow way, fight and suffer, for this is the road to the only genuine happiness. And unless the Church helps, how can we make that awful choice, how can we repent and return to the glorious promise given us each year at Easter? This is where Great Lent comes in. This is the help extended to us by the Church, the school of repentance which alone will make it possible to receive Easter not as mere permission to eat, to drink, and to relax, but indeed as the end of the "old" in us, as our entrance into the "new".

--Rev Dr. Alexander Schmemann: Great Lent - Journey to Pascha

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We have said that the sinner is like a person who is sunk in deep slumber. Just as a person who is fast asleep will not stir and get up on his own in spite of approaching danger unless someone comes and rouses him, so will the person who is sunk in the slumber of sin not come to his sense and awaken unless divine grace comes to his aid. By the boundless mercy of God, this grace is prepared for everyone, approaches everyone in turn, and calls out clearly to each: Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light (Eph. 5:14).

-- Saint Theophan the Recluse: Path to Salvation; A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

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The Lord gave us first of all the Most Holy Theotokos.

Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

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In 1978 Fr. Thaddeus told G., one of his spiritual daughters, of another vision he had seen in a dream. "I had barely fallen asleep when I dreamt that I had died. Two young men led me into a room and had me stand on some sort of platform between them. To my right were the judges. Someone in the far left corner of the room was reading the charges against me. "That's him! That's the one who cannot get along with anyone!" I stood there dumbfounded. The voice repeated the same accusation two more times. Then the young man standing on my right said to me, 'Do not be afraid! It is not true that you cannot get along with anyone. You just cannot get along with yourself!'" At that moment the words of St. Isaac the Syrian that Fr. Thaddeus had repeated countless times to himself and to his spiritual children became his sole path to salvation: "Make peace with yourself, and both heaven and earth will make peace with you."

Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: the Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica by Ana Smiljanic

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Явление Пресвятой Богородицы преподобному Серафиму Саровскому // Appearance of the Most Holy Theotokos to Saint Seraphim of Sarov

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On Sunday, 24th February 2024, Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, His Eminence Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain presided during Matins and celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Church of St Nicholas Shepherds Bush along with His Grace Bishop Spyridon of Amastris. They were joined in the service by Revd Protopresbyter Dr Stavros Solomou, Priest-in-charge. The Revd Archdeacon Dr. George Tsourous and Revd Deacon Georgios Ntallas also served. [Photo and Text Credit]