Willibrord, Archbishop of Utrecht, Missionary to Frisia, 739

We know of Willibrord’s life and missionary labors through a few notes written by a contemporary, the Venerable Bede, in his The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and in a biography of Willibrord written by his younger kinsman,

Alcuin. Willibrord was born in Northumbria about the year 658 and from the age of seven was brought up and educated in Bishop Wilfrid’s monastery at Ripon.

Though your sins be like scarlet,

“Though your sins be like scarlet, they may be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).

O, the boundless mercy of God! In His greatest wrath upon the faithless and ungrateful people, upon the people “laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters” (Isaiah 1:4),

A brief history of the monastic community of Meteora

fter Mt. Athos, Meteora – the Thebaid of Stagoi, as it has been aptly called – is the most important grouping of monasteries in one small location to be found anywhere in the Greek world.

The original monks climbed the steep and rugged stone pillars and nested in the hollows and cavities, on the rough plateaux, like wild birds. These were proud and brave men who turned their back on the world, devoting themselves to the ‘kingdom of God, in imitation of the angels’. ‘For wherever God so wishes, the order of nature may be vanquished’. But in that remarkable, ecstatic landscape ‘the men of God did not adore the creation, but the Creator’.

On Kissing the Priest’s Hand

A few of our new inquirers have asked about the practice of kissing the priest’s hand. For people outside of the Orthodox Tradition (and even for some of the Faithful), this is one of those foreign, counter-cultural and awkward practices that can be difficult to grasp. The following article may shed some light on this ancient practice.

Why in the world do we kiss the hand of the Priest?

The real question is, “Why don’t we kiss more people’s hands?” Kissing the hand of the priest is not an exceptional thing, but rather is the remnant of what was once a perfectly normal custom: showing reverence to our elders by kissing their right hands.

Who haven’t people mocked?

Writing to someone on the subject of confession, Saint Nikolaj had this to say:
You want to know if confession is so important. At one time you used to go more frequently for confession, but you stopped because somebody mocked you for it. You shouldn’t have stopped. Who haven’t people mocked? Do you know what the most perspicacious of all people said: ‘Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep’ (Luke 6, 25). You write that, apart from your trade, you’ve also got a vine which is very productive because you look after it well. If somebody else had a vine, abandoned it and then mocked you for taking care of yours, would you throw your hands in the air and give up on looking after it? I’m sure you wouldn’t.

So how can you haver as regards the cultivation of your soul, which is more important than all the vines in the world? When you die, you’ll take your soul with you, but you’ll leave the vine behind. And of all the hard work we do on earth, the labour we put in for our soul is the most sensible. So go back to your earlier efforts for your soul and start confessing again.

One of the elders has said

One of the elders has said: “Before everything else humility of wisdom is needful for us, so that we may be ready to say to every word which we hear, forgive me; for by humility of wisdom all the arrows of the enemy and adversary are broken.” Let us examine what meaning the words of the elder has. Why does he not say that continence (temperance) is needed first of all? For the Apostle says, (I Cor. 9:25) Every man that strivest for the mastery is temperate in all things. Or why did the elder not say that before everything else the fear of God is needful for us? For in the Scriptures it is said: (Ps. 110:10) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and again, (Prov. 15:27) By the fear of the Lord everyone departs from evil. Why did he not say that before everything else alms-giving or faith is necessary for us? For it is said, (Prov. 15:27), By alms and by faithful dealings sins are purged away, and the Apostle says, (Heb. 11:6) Without faith it is impossible to please Him (God).

Thus, if without faith it is impossible to please God, and if by means of almsgiving and faith sins are cleansed, if by the fear of the Lord everyone is brought away from evil, and if the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and one who is laboring must be continent in everything, then why did the elder say before everything else that humility of wisdom is needful for us, setting aside everything else which is so needful?

Psalm 87 (88)

Lord my God, I call for help by day; I cry at night before you. Let my prayer come into your presence. O turn your ear to my cry.

For my soul is filled with evils; my life is on the brink of the grave. I am reckoned as one in the tomb: I have reached the end of my strength,

It produces good fruit

How is it possible for your children to become good people when you yourselves often become angry in front of them and swear by the holy things? When you take what’s not yours and cheat other people? 

When you steal and lie, when you slander and commit perjury? When the whole of your mind and your efforts are on material things? When you take no care of your soul, don’t even go to confession, take communion, don’t pray or study improving or religious literature? Put all that sort of thing out of your mind. It’s impossible for your children to become good people unless you, as parents, set them a good example. And if it ever happens that you get good people from bad parents, it’s a rare thing 

An Icon of Human Freedom..

Am I not free?

(1 Corinthians 9:1)

God persuades, He does not compel;

for violence is foreign to Him.

(Epistle to Diognetus VII, 4)

by Metropolitan of Diokleia, Kallistos Ware

What Shall We Offer?

In an Orthodox hymn used at Vespers on Christmas Eve, the Virgin Mary is seen as the highest and fullest offering that our humanity can make to the Creator:

The meeting point

Observation of the commandments and patience in trials are typical of the meaning of the Cross and blessed are they who willingly agree to shoulder it.

St. John the Russian, the New Confessor of Prokopion and Evia (May 27)

The Holy Confessor John the Russian was born in Little Russia around 1690, and was raised in piety and love for the Church of God. Upon attaining the age of maturity he was called to military service, and he served as a simple soldier in the army of Peter I and took part in the Russo-Turkish War. During the Prutsk Campaign of 1711 he and other soldiers were captured by the Tatars, who handed him over to the commander of the Turkish cavalry. He took his Russian captive home with him to Asia Minor, to the village of Prokopion