Orthodox Christian Initiative for Africa

Κυριακή 26 Μαΐου 2019

Sunday of the Samaritan woman (5th Sunday of Pascha): "Close to God is he who in his daily life becomes the light of Christ who enlightens his neighbours..."

Please, click here!...

Τρίτη 21 Μαΐου 2019

SAINT CONSTANTINE: FROM LEGEND TO REVILEMENT / Saint Constantin le Grand, le premier empereur chrétien, et le Sainte Hélène (21 May)

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Saint Constantin le Grand, le premier empereur chrétien, et le Sainte Hélène (21 May)

Photo d'ici: «En trente et un ans de règne, Constantin avait su mettre fin aux luttes fratricides de la Tétrarchie et pacifier les frontières de Rome, il avait rétablit l’autorité de l’Etat dans les provinces de l’empire et œuvré pour rétablir la justice. En réformateur, il avait continué l’œuvre entreprit par son prédécesseur Dioclétien.

En bâtisseur, il avait fondé la capitale d’un de empire qui aura l’une des plus longue longévité de l’Histoire. En chrétien, il avait amorcé la conversion de l’empire, tout en essayant de mettre fin aux querelles qui minaient le christianisme. Mais tout en respectant les païens. Parmi toute la ribambelle de monarques et de dirigeants qui se sont affublés le surnom de " Grand ", il est sûrement l’un des seuls à l’avoir mérité»

SAINT CONSTANTINE: FROM LEGEND TO REVILEMENT

Είναι άγιος ή όχι ο Μ. Κωνσταντίνος;

Η αγιότητα του Μ. Κωνσταντίνου

Το πολιτικό μανιφέστο του αγ. Κωνσταντίνου

Άγιος Κωνσταντίνος, από το θρύλο στην ύβρι

Ο ρόλος του αυτοκράτορα στην Α΄ Οικουμενική Σύνοδο

Feast Day of Sts Constantine the Great & Helen in the Orthodox Church of Burundi, 2019 (from here)

Τετάρτη 15 Μαΐου 2019

Saint Theodore the Sanctified, Disciple of the Venerable Pachomius the Great

Commemorated on May 16

Orthodox Church in America (icon from here, Greece)

Troparion & Kontakion

Saint Theodore was called “Sanctified” because he was the first in his monastery ordained to the priesthood.
Saint Theodore came from Egypt and was the son of rich and illustrious Christian parents. The yearning for monastic life appeared early in him. Once there was a large party at the house of his parents during the feast of Theophany. The boy did not want to take part in the festivities, grieving that because of earthly joys he might be deprived of joys in the life to come. He secretly left home when he was fourteen and entered one of the monasteries.
Hearing about Pachomius the Great [May 15], he burned with the desire to see the ascetic. Saint Pachomius received the young man with love, having been informed by God beforehand about his coming. Remaining at the monastery, Saint Theodore quickly succeeded in all his monastic tasks, particularly in the full obedience to his guide, and in his compassion towards the other brethren. Theodore’s mother, learning that he was at the Tabennisi monastery, came to Saint Pachomius with a letter from the bishop, asking to see her son. Saint Theodore did not wish to break his vow to renounce the world, so he refused to meet with his mother.
Seeing Saint Theodore’s strength of mind and ability, Saint Pachomius once told him to instruct the brethren on Holy Scripture. Saint Theodore was then only twenty years old. He obeyed and began to speak, but some of the older brethren took offense that a new monk should teach them, and they departed.

St. Pachomius the Great & the Angel (from here)

Saint Pachomius said to them, “You have given in to the devil and because of your conceit, your efforts will come to naught. You have not rejected Theodore, but rather the Word of God, and have deprived yourselves of the Holy Spirit.”
Saint Pachomius appointed Saint Theodore as overseer of the Tabennisi monastery, and withdrew to a more solitary monastery. Saint Theodore with filial love continued to concern himself over his instructor, and he looked after Saint Pachomius in his final illness, and when the great abba reposed in the Lord, he closed his eyes. After the death of Saint Pachomius, Saint Theodore directed the Tabennisi monastery, and later on he was at the head of all the Thebaid monasteries. Saint Theodore the Sanctified was famed for his holiness of life and a great gift of wonderworking, and he was well known to Saint Athanasius, Patriarch of Alexandria. Saint Theodore reposed in his old age in the year 368.

Σάββατο 11 Μαΐου 2019

Love is a wound!...

The truth is that love is counted by the wounds that it leaves on the soul and the body

Fr. Haralambos Libyos Papadopoulos
Orthodox Outlet for Dogmatic Enquiries

Those we had loved had probably tormented us very much.

Those we had loved, we had most probably likewise tormented.

The mark that love imprints inside us is not the words that we have exchanged, but rather the pain we have felt, the sacrifices we have made and the light that we have partaken of...

In the words of the Metropolitan of Gortyna in one of his evening sermons:

“When Christ needed to convince His disciples that it was truly He -their Lord- who had appeared before them, He did not display the triumph of His Resurrection, but instead his wounds.”

He said: “Come and see My wounds; place your hand on the wounds of My love for you.”

What He was essentially saying to them was: “Don’t you remember Me? Don’t you recognize Me? It is I, who have loved you even to the death. Just look at the proof of My wounds.”

In the Kingdom of God, we will not be identified thanks to our successes and our achievements, but our sorrows and the torments we have suffered

Just like that poor, suffering woman undergoing dialysis who happened to show her wounds to the Elder (Saint) Paisios, and calmly saying: "Look, Elder, at my open wound... you can clearly see my bone through it ..."

To which the Saint replied: "I can't see any bone through your wound; what I can see however, is Paradise..."

Translation: K.N.

Παρασκευή 3 Μαΐου 2019

The Life-Giving Spring & the Sunday of Saint Thomas...

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Bright Friday: The Life-Giving Spring of the Theotokos!

Sunday of Saint Thomas (2nd Sunday after Easter) - The example of the doubting

"Saint Basil Orthodox Mission Center, Lusaka, Zambia
Easter Sunday 2019" (from here)

Τετάρτη 1 Μαΐου 2019

Where God Really Wanted…

Fr. Polycarpos of Hagia Anna
Orthodox Missionary Fraternity

Diocese of Madagascar
Madagascar

Wherever one serves the Lord and the Church, it is there that he finds joy and rest. This is the law and the criterion. The distinguishing feature which makes the man truly attracted and renders him unable to resist this inconsolable power, this mystical calling which will not hesitate to ask for even the ultimate sacrifice. What our Lord in John’s Gospel mentions as the highest of all sacrifices: «Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”, (John 15:13). Therefore, it is until there that one has to walk…

Yes, even as far as there, in these dark paths of death, which, though, hide in them the Light and Peace of Christ. When one looks at the Crucified Christ, behind the real pain of our Lord, behind His full of blood face and His firmly shut eyelids, His bloodstained Most Holy Body, one can distinguish three things: the first is obvious and, of course, it is nothing else but the ultimate sacrifice on the Cross. The second is immediately visible after the first one, and it is the form of His Most Holy Body which, though nailed to the Holy Tree, with modesty and humility takes His last breath on earth, His arms open, ready to embrace man, His child, who at that moment becomes His enemy and puts Him up on the wood of the Cross, which until then was considered utterly dishonorable.

This is how our Lord delivers His spirit. This is the reason why the Wood which takes His form is consecrated, and now becomes the overwhelming and noble trophy against the devil. Finally, behind all this, if one wants to look carefully, one will distinguish two great things: Peace and Rest. «This is the day of rest». Indeed, there is no other greater donation, other expectation, other ending than the rest which the fine iconographer depicts on the face of Crucified Jesus.

These three things, sacrifice love and rest of the soul, are the ultimate criteria for the choices we make in our life. Where one finds them, one should never let go of them but should keep them as something truly valuable, which will shine in front of them and help them go through the difficult times in life.

Ankilibe. Our few personal belongings have been loaded into the pirogue. I help our two guides, faithful lads of our coastal parish, to drop it into the water of the Indian Ocean. Golden blue sea! The wind, tired of blowing for so long, weak as well as aged but not forgotten companion of the South, comes and kisses the sail of the pirogue that we have already raised, and with as much strength has been left in it, blows it to the opposite shore. The burnt by the sun and the salt bodies of our two faithful guides, figures I had forgotten, are now passing again before my eyes, fighting with the sea, and driving the pirogue with the paddles where God really wanted …to the opposite shore.

Soalary. The opposite shore of the Bay of Toliara. It is late in the evening now, and all of us tired, disembark at the shore. We leave the pirogue on the beach and keep on walking. Anxiety reaches its highest point. We go through the village market. People can hardly remember you. Your feet are sinking in the sand, and now you are standing outside the hut of one of the catechumens. The voice comes out easily but your guts are burning inside of you as your anxiety is growing. «Where are you! I am the priest. «The father’s figure bashfully appears in the dark. He approaches me and greets me. He does not seem to have realized what is going on around him. He comes closer and embraces me. His arms tighten up around me. «Father, we did not expect to see you again.»

We stayed up until late at night and we were talking. He was a father to seven children, one of whom, a little boy, had a hernia. Before I left, I had given him some money to have the child operated but I had also told him to pray for his child because God could heal it. The father, a simple-hearted man, said that during my absence, he had not forgotten my words and that his child had been cured without being operated. Simple, pure hearts, hearts that we, the people of the modern world, have denied and forgotten. People with simple faith; poor creatures that struggle really hard to support their children and family. However, it is these people who see the miracle. We have ceased to see the wonders of life. The miracle of God.

Now in the poor but so beautifully and warmly prepared hut, I can hear the sound of the waves of the Indian Ocean. The images seem to be rolling like a movie inside of you. The serene song of the sea. The children’s laughs. The catechetical sessions in the makeshift grass huts that are used as temporary churches. The sacred services underneath the «kili»trees, the traditional trees of the south. The people’s complaints. The poor mother who is trying to breastfeed her little toddler from her withered breasts and asks for a little money to buy rice, some medicine. The songs of our youth, our festivals, the confessions under the sun, the baptisms, the diseases, the dangers, the hands of the robber, our dead children, the tears, the pain, a whole life!The sun is already rising and the bodies, dark figures, like the spirits of the people who you loved and who followed you to the distant land of ordeal, now come to life beside you, and you see them again struggle along with you so that you can reach where God really wanted!

Fr. Polycarpos of Agia Anna