Homily on the Nativity Fast and Holy Communion (Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh)

Homily on the Nativity Fast and Holy Communion 

By Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

(Delivered on November 30, 1986)

During these days of the Nativity Fast, which lead us to the celebration of the Lord's Incarnation, the Church, through the words of Christ Himself, warns us sternly and clearly. In today's Parable of the Foolish Rich Man, Christ speaks of barnfuls of material wealth; yet we are all rich in very different ways, and not necessarily primarily in material terms. How firmly we rely on our relationship with God, what a reliable support we find in the words of the Gospel – the words of Christ Himself, in the teachings of the Apostles, in our Orthodox faith! And the longer we live, the more thoughts and knowledge we accumulate, and our own hearts become increasingly richer in feelings in response to the beauty of God's word.

Asher Raby: The Serial Killer Who Murdered Saint Philoumenos

 

 

Asher Raby – Profile of a Serial Killer

By Avi Davidovich (8/4/2017)

The article "Serial Murder in Israel" provides a comprehensive overview of the serial killers discovered in Israel. One of them was Asher Raby, who operated in the country between 1979 and 1982. During 6 different attacks, he murdered five people, injured 10 others, and attempted to murder another victim. 15 of his 16 victims were Arabs, 6 women, and 4 children.

Like many serial killers, Raby used cold weapons, but he also used firearms, mainly when he wanted to commit mass murder – similar to mass murderers. One of the murders he committed – the murder of the monk George Philoumenos – caused Israel great embarrassment throughout the Christian world. Asher Raby was included in the category of psychotic serial killers, which is rare compared to the other categories of serial killers. Asher Raby was 36 years old when he was caught after a series of murders he had committed over the years. He told his interrogators that he had acted on divine command. According to him, God commanded him to expel evil.

Holy Martyr Paramonos and Those With Him in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

These Saints lived during the reign of Decius the emperor and the ruler Aquilinus. The reason for their faith in Christ and their end is the following: In Basra near the Tigris River, in an area specifically called Iero, there was a great and abundant spring of hot waters, which miraculously cured diseases. Here, therefore, the ruler of the East, Aquilinus, arrived for the healing of his body, having ordered that the prisoners from Nicomedia and the martyrs who had been arrested for their faith in Christ should follow him. When he went to the temple of Isis and offered his vile sacrifices, he commanded the Saints to also sacrifice to the idols and to worship them. Since, of course, they refused to do so, he gave orders for them all to be killed with swords. Thus, those who were brave became wondrous martyrs of Christ, the Almighty King, totaling three hundred seventy in number.

Seeing them, the Holy Paramonos cried out with a loud voice and said: “I see great impiety. For this unclean man is slaughtering so many righteous and foreigners in an unreasonable manner.” When the ruler heard this, he was seized with rage and immediately ordered him to be killed. The ruler's envoys, after arresting Paramonos, who did not know the order and continued to walk in the place where he was, did not want one to commit the murder, but all of them together. So they ran to shed innocent blood, in front of the eyes of the ruler, with their own hands and with their own weapons. Some then struck him with spears, others with pointed reeds, passing them through the tongue and the rest of the Saint's limbs, until in front of the tyrant they killed him in the place we have mentioned, and thus sent him to the heavenly tabernacles. In the same place as the holy three hundred and seventy martyrs and in the same coffins with them, the Saint was also numbered and his relics were deposited.

Prologue in Sermons: November 29

 

On Sorrowful Reflections

November 29*

(Sermon of John Chrysostom on Eternal Torment and the Kingdom of Heaven; and on Always Keeping the Day of Departure in Mind)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The word of God sometimes commands us to have sorrowful thoughts. For example, the Lord says: "Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning" (Joel 2:12). Or the wise son of Sirach teaches: "In all your works remember your last end" (Sirach 7:40). Why then does the word of God command us to have such sorrowful thoughts: sometimes about sins, sometimes about death? Brethren, it commands us so that through these sorrowful thoughts in this life we may be saved from eternal sorrows in the life to come. We will not reveal this truth to you ourselves, but let the ecumenical teacher, Saint John Chrysostom, reveal it and prove it to you. Listen to him.

The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance

At the Synodal Divine Liturgy celebrated on Sunday, June 1st 2025, at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Athens, presided over by His Beatitude Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Hieronymos, for the 1700th anniversary of the convening of the First Ecumenical Synod in 325 in Nicaea of Bithynia, His Eminence Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou, Hierotheos, Vice-President of the Permanent Holy Synod, spoke on the topic: “The First Ecumenical Synod and Its Significance.”

The Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, during this Easter period, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, is wonderful, and rightly the Sacred Synod of the Church of Greece determined to celebrate it magnificently. This is done with a Synodal Divine Liturgy, with hymns and speeches meet for God, with a convocation of the Hierarchy of the Church of Greece and with events befitting this great feast, with the completion of 1,700 years since the convocation of the First Ecumenical Synod, which was called “Holy” and “Great” and became the model for the other Ecumenical Synods that followed, in which we, the Bishops, gave a confession that we will abide by their decisions.

This brief eucharistic homily, by decision of the Sacred Synod, also falls within this framework.