Living Orthodoxy

05/10/2025

“Christ allowed the sinful woman to approach, to show that there is no sin which cannot be forgiven if repentance is great.”

“He reproved the Pharisee not for inviting Him, but because he thought himself righteous and despised the woman who wept.”

He calls her tears a “second baptism,” teaching that her heart became an altar on which she offered her contrition.

St John Chrysostom

28/09/2025

“For the Lord said by Moses, ‘Make a serpent and set it up for a sign; and it shall come to pass that if a serpent bite a man, every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.’ And Moses made it of brass, and set it up for a sign… This was a sign of the Cross, by which He who should suffer was to destroy the serpent that sins against us.”

St. Justin Martyr

11/05/2025

“The Lord promised to send the Comforter, who should commune with us on earth and lead us to the kingdom of heaven… This water He promised to believers is the Spirit, who makes those who receive Him fruitful…As we are born by water and Spirit, we shall rise in the same body to incorruption, having been nourished by the living water.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons

08/05/2025

Christ’s Resurrection Defeated Death

“Christ has been raised to life again, as the firstfruits of the dead. The power of death has been destroyed, for Christ has trodden down death by His own death.”

St. Cyril of Alexandria

07/05/2025

“He was truly crucified and died… and truly raised from the dead, His Father having raised Him, who in like manner will raise up us also who believe in Him.”

St. Ignatius of Antioch

21/03/2025

The soul that truly loves God and Christ, even if it does much, yet thinks that it has done nothing, because it is ever hungry and thirsty for God…The soul that is not wholly and completely possessed by the Heavenly Water of the Spirit of Christ is in danger.

St. Macarius the Great

18/03/2025

25/02/2025

Fasting is the beginning of the sacred path of God, and it is a constant companion to virtues.

Fasting leads the virtues at the start of the spiritual battle and preserves chastity.

Fasting is the father of prayer, the source of serenity, the teacher of silence, and the illuminator of the mind.

The fasting of the tongue is better than the fasting of the mouth, and the fasting of the heart is better than both.

Every struggle against sin and its desires must begin first with fasting.

It is like a harlot speaking of chastity, or when one loves their body yet seeks spiritual matters.

— St. Isaac the Syrian