Fasting is a medicine. But medicine, as beneficial as it is, becomes useless because of the inexperience of the user. He has to know the appropriate time that the medicine should be taken and the right amount of medicine and the condition of the body, which is to take it, the weather conditions and the …
A leader of a community asked Abba Poemen: “How can I gain the fear of God?” Abba Poemen replied: “How indeed can we gain the fear of God when we have bellies full of cheese and jars of salted fish?” Abba Poemen thus teaches us that the ultimate goal of fasting is to help lead …
THE GREAT FAST (LENT) This fasting period has many names. For instance we call it the Holy Fast because all its days are precious or we call it the Great Fast due to it being the longest fast of the year, extending 55 days. It’s also known as the Forty Day Fast, remembering that Christ …
We all know Lent to be a period of asceticism, whereby we limit what we desire to eat for spiritual revival and growth, as quoted by St Isaac the Syrian: “There can be no knowledge of the mysteries of God on a full stomach.” So knowing this, acknowledging that the period of lent is meant …
The reckoning of time in antiquity went through a variety of permutations and combinations until Julius Caesar, on the basis of the Egyptian solar calendar, standardized a 365-day year with an extra day inserted on leap years. Both the church and Western culture in general followed this solar calendar until the reforms of Pope Gregory …
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE NATIVITY FAST (ADVENT FAST)? Why is the Coptic Church concerned with the Nativity Fast, in which her members fast for more than forty days? Undoubtedly, the Incarnation of the Word of God was the intention of God preceding the fall of Adam and Eve in sin. Upon their fall, …
The Life of St John the Baptist has some very interesting aspects that can apply to every Christian today. From The Angels announcement to his father Zachariah we know that he was specially chosen by God: “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord... He will also be filled with the Holy …
John is the voice, but the Lord is the Word who was in the beginning. John is the voice that lasts for a time; from the beginning Christ is the Word who lives forever. Take away the word, the meaning, and what is the voice? Where there is no understanding, there is only a meaningless …
Marriage was ordained by God as a blessing to the human race. A certain wise man in the Scriptures, when enumerating which blessings are the most important, included “a wife and husband who live in harmony” (The Wisdom of Sirach 25:1). From the beginning, God in His providence planned this union of man and woman. …
In our day controversy abounds over the mysterious institution we call "marriage." For some, marriage is a purely human invention, a kind of civil partnership or temporary contract. From this point of view, marriage, like any human institution, is what we make of it. It is not necessarily sacred, or permanent, and it tends to …
