What are you human life?!.Saint Colombanus.

       

Saint Colombanus.

          Human life, fragile and marked for death, how many have you deceived, beguiled, and blinded? While in flight, you are nothing; while in sight, you are a shadow; while you rise up, you are but smoke. Every day you depart and every day you return; you depart in returning and you return in depart­ing, different ending, same beginning, different pleasure, the same passing, sweet to the foolish and bitter to the wise. Those who love you do not know you, and those who condemn you really understand you. Thus you are not true but false; you pre­sent yourself as true but prove yourself false. 

          What are you then, human life? You are the wayfaring of mortals and not their liv­ing; your beginning is in sin and in death your end. You would be true if the sin of the first human transgression had not cut you short so that you became unsteady and mortal and marked all who tread your way for death. And so you are the way that leads to life, but not life itself, for you are a true way, but not an open one: brief for some and long for others, broad for some and nar­row for others, joyful for some and full of grief for others, but for each and every one, you hurry on and cannot be called back. A way is what you are, a way, but you are not evident to all. Though many see you, few understand that you are indeed a way.

We have received grace for grace.Elder Ephraim of Arizona.

Archimandrite Ephraim of Philotheou.

Archimandrite Ephraim of Philotheou is an archimandrite and former abbot of Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos, spiritual guide of several monasteries on Mount Athos and Greece, and the founder of several monasteries in the United States. He resides in Arizona at St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery. Elder Ephraim has been a priest-monk for almost 60 years and has served as an elder for more than 50 years. He was a disciple of Elder Joseph the Hesychast of Mount Athos and lived in monastic obedience to him for 12 years until his Elder's repose in 1959.        

        "Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One." What can I, the unworthy and filthy one, say about the grandeur of the innumerable dispensations of the Most High God!. I am astonished and unable to look directly at it as I contemplate this mystery.

How did God condescend to be an infant in a cave of irra­tional beasts?. How was He wrapped in swaddling clothes and carried in the holy arms of the holy Virgin, He Who was born by the Father without a mother!. "Great art Thou, O Lord, and wondrous are Thy deeds, and no word sufficeth to hymn Thy wonders!" "Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!"

My soul shall rejoice in the Lord; I shall noetically smother with kisses that most sweet and blessed Infant, so that He may deliver me from my irrational passions.

The Power of the Holy Cross.Metropolitan Gerasimos of Belmont,California.

           

Mosaic of the Holy Cross, Ravenna, Italy.

I would like to reflect briefly on a few themes found in the Veneration of the Holy Cross. 

          The Cross is truly like the tree spoken of in the first psalm: planted besides running waters, it produces fruit in due season. How does it produce its fruit?. Where Adam snatched at equality with God and seized the forbidden fruit in Eden, the New Adam, the Son of God, willingly laid aside his glory and became obedient even unto death, to death on the Cross. In the same hour of the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday, we listen to these words addressed to us by Christ taken from an ancient homily:

           « See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree. I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you”.

The Myrrbearing Women and the Christian Women of Today.Elder Sofian Boaghiu

Elder Sofian Boaghiu of Antim Monastery (now with the Lord) was sentenced by the communists (in 1958) to 15 years of hard labor in the concentration camps for keeping the true Orthodox Christian faith and refusing to become atheist.

    

Elder Sofian Boaghiu.

As you know, the third Sunday after Easter is the Sunday of the Myrrh bearing women, or the Sunday of the faithful women, keepers of Christian family. You should be joyful that you partake of this special honor from our Resurrected Lord. And through our most pure Mother Theotokos and the Holy Myrrh-bearing women, you have a Sunday a year when you are especially honored. May the Lord multiply in you the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit and may the gift of Christian love abide truly in you, in order that you may become maintainers of Christian’ warmth and harmony in your family. For many families today are met with disaster… as you know better than me, so I will not speak about it.

"Your birth Theotokos proclaimed joy throughout the ecumene...."Homily on the Nativity of the Theotokos (Saint Luke of Simferopol).

     The vast majority of people, millions and billions of people, are common people, whom Holy Scripture calls "people of the earth" (2 Chron. 15:5). Why are they called this? Because they resemble gray grass or undergrowth. They don't have higher goals and aspirations in their lives, their minds are very superficial and only deal with living concerns, earthly goods and daily problems. But just as hills and mountains, which are covered with grass and shrubs, occasionally grow large cedars and huge oaks, so also among the people of the earth the Lord God reveals some very great people,