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15 avril 2025 2 15 /04 /avril /2025 22:49
Dying to ourselves to be born in Jesus

Holiness is your goal. Perfection in love is your goal. Don't stop at the means to holiness and idolize them. Don't take the means for the end, nor the end for the means. Do not make the means your goal and your purpose; do not use holiness as a means to other ends (Words of Saint Charbel, Hanna Skandar, p.82).Holiness is your goal. Perfection in love is your goal. Don't stop at the means to holiness and idolize them. Don't take the means for the end, nor the end for the means. Do not make the means your goal and your purpose; do not use holiness as a means to other ends (Words of Saint Charbel, Hanna Skandar, p.82).

This is Holy Week.

There are some very exciting moments ahead. From the anointing of the sick on Wednesday to the Lord's Supper on Thursday, from the burial on Friday to the raising of the tomb on Saturday and, finally, the night of the Resurrection!

These intense times help us to understand and experience all that Jesus has done for us, and all that He will always do for us.

These times make us understand that we must die to ourselves to be born in Jesus. Every year is like a new baptism.

During these times of prayer and whatever we plan to do up to Sunday, let's never lose sight of why we're doing it. They won't be performances to deliver or obligations to fulfill. Absolutely not!

Let's live this blessed time only out of true love for Jesus, to encounter Him even more intimately, to find and receive God's Holy Spirit within us!

May God's love guide us to His Resurrection!

Fraternally in Christ

 

+Nicolas

Bishop of the Celtic Orthodox Church in SwitzerlandBishop of the Celtic Orthodox Church in Switzerland

Dying to ourselves to be born in Jesus
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12 avril 2025 6 12 /04 /avril /2025 22:30
Why venerate the relics of saints?

We recall that the Orthodox Church considers holy relics to be vessels of divine grace, and according to Orthodox patristic theology, we accord them respectful veneration.

St Gregory Palamas (Archbishop of Thessalonica) points out that just as Christ's divinity did not abandon his human body during his burial and three-day resurrection, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not abandon the bodies of the saints after their biological death, so as Orthodox we respectfully embrace the holy relics to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in them.

The existence of holy relics confirms the hope of the Resurrection and eternal life, the truth of the Gospel and the experiential experience of deification.

Statement by the monks of Mount Athos protesting against the Kiev government authorities for desecrating the relics of the Lavra in the Kiev caves.

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12 avril 2025 6 12 /04 /avril /2025 11:40
Why is the world fallen?

The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all. 

The accumulation of this disregard for God is the original sin that blights the world. 

And even the religion of this fallen world cannot heal or redeem it, for it has accepted the reduction of God to an area called 'sacred' ('spiritual,' supernatural') - as opposed to the world as 'profane'. 

It has accepted the all-embracing secularism which attempts to steal the world away from God...

The natural dependence of man upon the world was intended to be transformed constantly into communion with God in whom is all life.

Fr Alexander Schmemann

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