March 17, 2024

Cheesefare Sunday: The Weapons of a Christian (Fr. George Metallinos)


By Protopresbyter Fr. George Metallinos

"The race for the virtues has opened..."

1. We are at the end of the first part of the Triodion and from tomorrow we enter its second part, Great Lent. Our Church already taught us the virtue of humility, as a basic precondition of repentance, during the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. She assured us of the reality of salvation, when there is sincere repentance, on the Sunday of the Prodigal. And finally, she highlighted to us the reason for which we need to repent and return, that is, the event of the Universal Judgment, on Meatfare Sunday. Because Great Lent is a period of spiritual and physical preparation and introduction to the Passion of our Christ, the Church reminds us today of a serious and sad event, which became the reason for Christ to come into the world and suffer. It reminds us of man's expulsion from Paradise.

March 16, 2024

A Liturgical Custom of Skiathos for the Saturday of Cheesefare


By Konstantinos Koutoubas,
Theologian, Iconographer, Professor of Byzantine Music

A week after the common Saturday of Souls, the Triodion presents a complete Service for the Saturday of Cheesefare, during which "we commemorate all our Venerable God-bearing Fathers who shined as ascetics." All those who lived as monastics and ascetics and managed to attain the heavenly kingdom, after striving to receive not the crown of martyrdom, but the crown of patience and asceticism, are therefore remembered. All the Venerables, that is, those who became sanctified as ascetics and monastics.

The Service of the Triodion has a semi-celebratory character, with an Apolytikion and Kathismata in the Matins, a complete Canon (which, corresponding to the Saturday of Souls and in exhortation to mourning for the coming fast, also contains the mournful Second Ode), Praises, Doxastikon and a Great Doxology.

In the troparia of the Canon, all the great Ascetics of Christianity are mentioned alphabetically, from the first years of Asceticism to the last of the struggling Iconophiles and Hesychasts, all the authors of the Gerontikon, the Philokalia and the Neptic Texts, the Great Cenobiarchs and also Hermits. Venerable women of monasticism are also mentioned alphabetically, as well as the greatest and most representative Fathers of the Church.

March 15, 2024

The Miracle of Saint Shio Mgvime Commemorated on Cheesefare Thursday

 
Saint Shio Mgvime is commemorated by the Georgian Orthodox Church on May 9th, but on Cheesefare Thursday a miracle of his is also commemorated that would take place every year at his grave.

Venerable Shio was one of the Thirteen Assyrian Fathers who came to Georgia as Christian missionaries. Saint Shio is said to have spent his last years as a hermit in a deep cave near Mtskheta, subsequently named Shiomghvime ("the Cave of Shio") after him. It was here that he was laid to rest.

March 14, 2024

Bishop Timothy of Assos on His Conversion to Orthodoxy and Mission in Latin America


"I am a local, I was born in Colombia, in a village on the border with Venezuela, and I come from an Indian tribe," says Bishop Timothy of Assos as he recounts his relationship with Orthodoxy, Greece and Cyprus.

"I encountered Orthodoxy when I was about 11 years old. I happened to see on television Archbishop Makarios from Cyprus, who as President had visited Colombia," he says. "I saw him," he continues, "and I asked a Western priest, 'Who is the one they are showing on TV now, who visited Colombia?' And he told me that he is an archbishop who is a heretic, but an Anglican priest said to him, “No, he is not a heretic. He is Orthodox. And Orthodoxy is the Mother Church, and if you want to be a Christian, become Orthodox and search Orthodoxy and don't easily believe what they tell you."

Bishop Timothy states that his first visit to Cyprus took place in 2010, when a strong earthquake hit Haiti, causing the death of thousands of people and massive material damage, and he had come to receive humanitarian aid from Cyprus.

Evagoras Pallikarides: The Last Hours of the Cypriot Revolutionary Hero


The story of Evagoras Pallikarides is related to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth of England in June 1953. In Cyprus, at that time, as in many other colonies under British rule, they had taken care to decorate all the cities for the great event.

15-year-old Evagoras Pallikarides was a student at the Paphos High School and disagreed when he saw that British flags were brought into his school. It was the time when the demand for the Union of Cyprus with Greece ("Enosis") stirred up the majority of Greek Cypriots.

The students refused to enter the High School, demanded that the flags be lowered, while Pallikarides headed towards the 28th of October Square. He climbed the mast and lowered the British flag to the applause of the crowd.

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