Religion

On November 13, the Orthodox Church celebrates one of the most famous church fathers—John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, whose name is linked to the oldest and most widely used liturgy of the Eastern Church.

Pliny the Elder wrote, in Naturalis Historia, a well-known adage: "Among [mortals] the only certainty there is is that nothing is certain."[1] Few know that Pliny made this statement in a chapter on the gods.

Mary was an ordinary person, just like us. The Gospel does not suggest that she had any particular merit, yet her obedience played a pivotal role in a story that would change the world.

Some people regret the big choices they’ve made in life; others regret that life has not given them a choice.

In the heart of the most powerful man in Judea, a greater fear than any other was born: the fear of losing control. Herod's story could be our story.

The book of the Acts of the Apostles presents an encounter, supernaturally mediated by God, between Philip, one of the seven deacons, and an Ethiopian dignitary. When the Christian missionary met him, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, one of the many Messianic prophecies, and asked Philip a question we often ignore: “Tell me, please, who is...

I still remember May 21, 2011, like it was yesterday. Thousands of kilometres away in Boulder, USA, an evangelist named Harold Camping, president of the popular ministry Family Radio, was in the news spotlight. He had predicted that on May 21, more than 200 million Christians all around the world would be raptured away to heaven and that five months later, the world would end.

In the heart of the Garden of Eden, where everything seems perfect, there is an ancient struggle between freedom and restriction—a struggle we have all experienced.

Almost 500 years have passed since the 1524 publication of the work that one prominent leader of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, Andreas Karlstadt, wrote in defence of the Sabbath doctrine.[1] It was the first work on this subject written by a leader of the Reformation.

Living one day according to God's plan is a good idea to start with. But learning to live in such a way every day is something else.

Faith is a commonly used concept, but it is rarely understood in its rich semantics and philosophical implications. Christian faith rises above being defined by lists of doctrines, beliefs, moral principles, commandments, and liturgical rituals in the communicator's mind for its nature and content to be faithfully represented.

I was a pagan as a child. Not by choice, but as a consequence of lacking any access to the Word of God. In the 1980s Romania, catechizing an Orthodox child (whose parents were members of the Communist Party) was a highly unlikely event Pavlik Morozov’s myth, the hero-child that denounced his own father, generated caution.

On the night when heaven descended among mortals, it was not the high priests or scholars who were the first to see God, but some lowly shepherds.

Have you ever felt like there was nothing to your story? Like your life wasn’t anything worth sharing? Or like it would set you further apart from others?

When we think of gratitude and a lack of gratitude, the biblical scene that comes to mind is the healing of the ten lepers, of whom only one, a Samaritan, returned to thank the Saviour, worshiping and praising God in a loud voice (Luke 17:15-16).