Pan-Orthodox Problems (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)

Pan-Orthodox Problems

Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

The articles that are written about the unity of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which in recent years has been undermined by various actions, show that a problem exists in pan-Orthodox relations at the level of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches. Meetings and dialogues are held between the Orthodox Church and other confessions and religions, but dialogues among the Orthodox Churches themselves are not taking place. One must be affected by shortsightedness not to understand this and that this is serious.

Of course, this did not arise simply from the autocephaly in Ukraine, which was granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, just as it has granted it in the past to nine other Orthodox Churches, but from internal undermining of centuries directed against the First-Throne Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate. When one reads the proceedings of the pan-Orthodox meetings, committees, and so forth — at least of the last 150 years — they will understand this very well. There the internal competition becomes clearly visible through the mentality of various social and political associations. Partisan mentalities are created, groupings, hidden internal rivalries, with the ultimate aim of showing who has the power to influence pan-Orthodox affairs, through the undermining of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Prologue in Sermons: March 14

On Patience

March 14

(A Word of our Venerable Father Palladios on the Spiritual Struggle.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Lord says: “In your patience possess your souls” (Luke 21:19), and in another place: “He who endures to the end shall be saved” (Matt. 10:22). From these words of the Savior it is revealed that the path to heaven is a sorrowful path and must be passed with patience. But here is the question: will there be a reward for patience? Is there any meaning in enduring? And what is the purpose of enduring to the end?

Our Venerable Father Palladios of Galatia once instructed the brethren who had gathered to him as follows:

“Let us struggle so that we may enjoy great blessings unto the ages. Look at the martyrs, look at the ascetics, how they endured to the end and how courageously they struggled, and how for this they were crowned by the Lord. How can one not always marvel at their constant patience? It seems to have been beyond human strength! Some had their eyes gouged out, others had their hands and feet cut off; others were burned by fire; some were drowned in the seas; others received death in rivers; some were deprived of life as criminals; others were given to be torn apart by wild beasts. And all this they endured while glorifying God. And the more the devil armed himself against them, the more they by their courage put him to shame. And their hope — that God would reward them for their sufferings — was not in vain. Their sufferings were not forgotten by God, but were praised in Heaven and glorified on earth. And the Source of miracles, God, gave them authority to open the eyes of the blind, to cleanse lepers, to cast out demons, and to heal diseases. He opened to them the heavenly doors and led them into eternal life and into the heavenly Jerusalem, where there is eternal rejoicing.”

Homily for the Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas (St. Sergius Mechev)

Homily for the Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas 

By St. Sergius Mechev

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

I spoke to you yesterday and today about the fact that the Holy Church now sets before us the example of Gregory Palamas in connection with the course of the Great Fast, and today at the Liturgy I spoke about, according to the teaching of Gregory Palamas, what life is and what death is, and what kinds of deaths there are: the death of the body and the death of the soul.

Here is what Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, writes to a certain pious old woman:

“Know, pious mother, or rather let the maidens who have chosen to live according to God learn through you, that the soul also has a death, although it is immortal by nature (Philokalia, III, 3). … For just as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this is chiefly death — the death of the soul. It was this death that God indicated when, giving the commandment in Paradise, He said to Adam: ‘In the day that you eat of the forbidden tree, you shall surely die’ (Gen. 2:17). For then his soul died, having through transgression been separated from God, while in body he continued to live from that hour on for nine hundred and thirty years” (Philokalia III, 4).

In what does true death consist?

Homily for the Second Sunday Evening of Great Lent (St. Sergius Mechev)

Homily for the Second Sunday Evening of Great Lent 

By St. Sergius Mechev

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

Repentance is above all reconciliation with oneself, and through this reconciliation with God and with people. About this I have already spoken to you, and now I want to give an example of external repentance — such repentance when outwardly there is real repentance, but inwardly it is a repentance that does not bear the knowledge of one’s sin and the striving, through the endurance of sorrows, to cleanse oneself from this sin.

In the times of the ancient Church there lived a certain steward (oikonomos), by the name of Theophilos. He lived in holiness, managed the church property righteously, and was loved by everyone for his kindness. To everyone he was a consolation in sorrow. When the bishop died, the people began to ask Theophilos to occupy the episcopal throne, but Theophilos refused. “I know my sins and therefore am unworthy of this rank; I cannot be a bishop,” he said, shedding tears and falling at the feet of the Metropolitan who wished to consecrate him as bishop. For a long time he lay at the feet of the hierarch, weeping and asking that the burden not be laid upon him. The Metropolitan gave him three days to think everything over well. After three days the same thing happened again: Theophilos stubbornly refused the episcopal rank. Then the Metropolitan appointed another bishop for the citizens, and Theophilos again remained steward. Here, it would seem, is an example of true repentance. A man recognizes his sins and refuses the episcopal rank in reconciliation with God and with men.

Venerable Ypomoni in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

It is admirable the case of the little princess, later empress and afterwards mother of an emperor, who became a nun, Helen Dragas and later Ypomoni. For certainly it is not easy for one to leave honors and glories, even in a period of decline, in order to shut oneself in a monastery, living as a “common” mortal, performing even the most difficult and “lowly” obediences. This shows a particular humility, which constitutes the prerequisite for one to receive richly the grace of God.

What is even more wonderful, however, is that not only did she become a nun, but she also reached such measures of holiness that our Church recognized them, so as to proclaim also her sanctity. The miracles, for example, that have been recorded from her interventions, earlier and more recent, are many, like the case of that taxi driver who, on this very day only a few years ago, while transporting to Loutraki from Athens a simple nun and revealing his problem – skin cancer – received her blessing, which immediately functioned as a healing from his illness. And when after a small stop he looked for her, she had disappeared; no one had seen her, wherever he asked around where he had stopped, and he recognized her a little later in the medical office that he visited, because the physician had set up her holy icon.

Prologue in Sermons: March 13

What People Have Become in the Present Time

March 13

(Instruction of Saint Symeon the Wonderworker, who dwelt on the Wondrous Mountain.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Venerable Symeon of the Wondrous Mountain says concerning the people of his time:

“Few now are the people who deliver their souls into the hands of the Angels. Lawlessness and unrighteousness have multiplied, love has withered, and the souls of sinners fall into the hands of demons. And the demons torment them, especially at the separation of their souls from their bodies. Thus it has been said by the Holy Spirit: ‘In these present times scarcely one soul out of ten thousand is received by the Angels!’”

Such, brethren, were things in the time of Symeon of the Wondrous Mountain. Let us see: have the people of the present time become better?

The Second Sunday of Great Lent Commemorated in Piraeus as a New Sunday of Orthodoxy

At the Sacred Church of Saint Basil in Piraeus, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated on Sunday, March 8, 2026 — the Second Sunday of the Fast — by His Eminence Seraphim Mentzelopoulos, Metropolitan of Piraeus, honoring the feast of our Father among the Saints Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, and the God-bearing Fathers of the Holy Ninth Ecumenical Synod.

During his sermon, His Eminence, referring to the period of Great Lent, when the Church commemorates Saint Gregory Palamas and the Fathers of the Synod of 1351, who struggled to defend the Orthodox faith against heresies, emphasized that this day is a continuation of the joy of the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

“We have a new ‘Sunday of Orthodoxy’ today, honoring the Holy Ninth Ecumenical Synod and the God-bearing Ecumenical Teacher Saint Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, who took the lead and was the mentor and guide of this sacred synod of our Holy Church,” said His Eminence.

John Calvin and the Person of the Theotokos

Protopresbyter Basil A. Georgopoulos
Associate Professor of Theology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

The person and position of the Virgin Mary constituted one of the most sensitive points of friction and controversy during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

In this connection the Roman Catholic dogmatic theologian Cardinal Gerhard Müller notes that:

“Mariology emerged as a popular field of theological controversy, mainly because within it the different conceptions regarding justification, grace, and anthropology are condensed and made manifest” (Katholische Dogmatik, 2016, p. 476).

The stance of John Calvin toward the person of the Theotokos is organically integrated into his broader theological vision, which is characterized by an absolute adherence to Holy Scripture and a strong concern about every practice or teaching that, in his judgment, might overshadow the unique salvific mediation of Jesus Christ.

Although Calvin rejects every form of honor and invocation, he does not adopt a simplistic view of the Theotokos.

On the contrary, he formulates an interpretation of her person and role which combines recognition of her election and faith with her undeniable inclusion in the common human condition — that is, in the need for redemption.

Saint Gregory Palamas Leads Us To A Theological Anthropology

By Metropolitan Chrysostomos III of Mani

The Second Sunday of the Fast of Great Lent is dedicated to the great Father of our Church, Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Sacred hymnography calls him: “a pillar of the faith,” “a champion of the Church,” “a brilliant herald of the Light,” and “a luminary of Orthodoxy.”

Indeed, Saint Gregory Palamas was an outstanding theological personality. He was born in Constantinople toward the end of the 13th century and was educated to an excellent degree. It is even preserved that at the end of one of his lectures on the logical method of Aristotle, the learned Theodore Metochites remarked that Aristotle himself, if he had been present, would have praised him. He lived as a monk for 23 years on Mount Athos, shepherded Thessaloniki as its Archbishop, and reposed in 1360.

However, in those years the fullness of the Church was disturbed by the heretic Barlaam of Calabria and other like-minded heretics, and the so-called “Hesychast controversies,” as they remained in history, arose.