Holy Transfiguration Orthodox Church of Vake

27/05/2026

Liturgy Homily 23.05.26
Glory to God for everything.

Happy feast day — the feast of St. Shio. If you do not know, let me tell you that he was one of the great Assyrian Fathers who came to Georgia in the sixth century and established one of the greatest monasteries in our country, the Monastery of Shio Mgvime. “Mgvime” means cave, because he lived in a cave in the earth. Today, if you go there, there is a door and you can enter easily, but in his time there was no door. There was only a hole from above, and he descended down into the earth.

Father Gabriel said that the love of Christ made this possible — that St. Shio went down into the darkness of the earth to pray there, and through this darkness he enlightened us. For this reason he was called Shio the Great.

Later, his name became hidden because of our historical sufferings. We lived under different empires, and they wanted to hide the memory of the great saints we had here. But we know who he is, and we must glorify and honor him, because he is our protector.

Now he is also a protector of our new Patriarch, and may St. Shio help him to be a good shepherd.

We also pray to St. Shio to help our English-speaking parish. Yesterday we were speaking about our situation and our community. You must understand that we need to present our situation to the new Patriarch, because he is the bishop of Tbilisi. We need his blessing and guidance, and we hope that he will look upon everything with kindness and understanding.

Tomorrow is also the feast of St. Simon the Zealot, Simon the Canaanite, whose tomb is in Abkhazia. You know that Abkhazia is now under Russian control, but it is our territory, our holy land. Yet we must understand something important: we should not desire these things only in a worldly way. God does not simply want us to demand territory. He wants us to repent and to cry for our sins.

Whether Abkhazia is returned or not is according to God’s will. But we must answer before God for our own lives. We must pray, and we will see what God allows. Our real work is the work of salvation. God will give us everything that we truly need.

You remember Patriarch Pavle of Serbia. He once said to the Serbian people: “You committed many abortions, and now you say you need this territory. But the Albanian families have seven children, and therefore they will receive the land.” And now Kosovo and Metohija, the holy places of Serbia, are in the hands of Muslims.

Tomorrow we will baptize a young man from Kosovo. Now he lives in America, because Kosovo has been separated from Serbia. In the same way, we have our own suffering with Abkhazia. We also have many abortions in our country. This is a great sin and a great problem.

Patriarch Pavle said that we must weep for these sins. Some people criticized him and said he was speaking harshly, but he spoke the truth: abortion is sin, and we suffer because of our sins.

So we can only entrust these territories to God and to the prayers of the saints. What we need, thank God, we already have. We must repent for our sins and pray that God gives us understanding.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said that spiritual understanding comes step by step. First one confession, then another confession. It is like archaeology — you dig deeper and deeper. At first you see only the surface, but gradually, if you truly desire it, you go deeper and discover who you really are.

We said before that when Moses asked God His name, God answered, “I AM WHO I AM.” God knows who He is. And we also must learn who we are.

God will help us. We are made in His image. We are not animals without spirit or grace. We are Christians. We are chrismated. God will enlighten us and help us.

And may all the saints whose memory we celebrate today enlighten us. May all the saints we know, and those we do not know, help us toward spiritual understanding.

Glory to God for everything.

Thank God. Pray that everything may become better and better, and that we may go forward with the blessing of the new bishop.

Father Gabriel Mzhavia

16/05/2026

Liturgy 16.05.2026
✝️❤️

16/05/2026

homily after Liturgy 16.05.26

First of all, congratulations on our new patriarch. You know that the Orthodox Church in Georgia is very old. This year we celebrate 1,700 years of Christianity in our country. Thanks be to God for this.

It is not easy, because it is a great responsibility to be Christian — personally, and also as a nation. But Christianity is not simply about nationality. The Greeks know this very well too: sometimes people mix nation and religion together. They think, “If I am baptized, then I am Georgian,” or, “Now I am Greek.” But it is not like this. Christianity is above every nation. We must understand this.

It is a great responsibility for our country to show that Orthodoxy is the true faith. This is not easy. But now we have our spiritual father, our good shepherd.

In the Holy Gospel, you remember when thousands of people followed Christ and they became hungry. Christ blessed the bread and the fish, then gave them to the apostles, and the apostles gave them to the people. This teaches us that we all have our own responsibility. We are not supposed to expect one person to do everything.

Sometimes our understanding is like this: “Ilia II will pray for me, and everything will be fine.” But no — each of us has our own responsibility, our own personhood. We must do everything we can, and where we cannot, God will help us.

We must learn this from the Holy Gospel: not to cling to someone else spiritually, but to do our own work with humility and love. First of all, we must read the Holy Gospel and the Holy Fathers, and grow in spiritual understanding.

And something very important: sometimes we think, “I read spiritual books, I am a good Christian, I come to confession, I receive Communion.” But this alone is not Christianity. These things are essential, but God is looking at our hearts.

When we read the Gospel or the Holy Fathers, sometimes we choose only what we like. But it should not be like this. We must work through these texts and receive everything they teach us — maybe step by step, not all at once, but still completely, not just the parts we prefer.

For example, Saint Gregory Palamas wrote a homily about problems in Thessaloniki, and he says that we must respect the services. What does this mean? It means to be present at the services, to pray there together with other Christians, and to understand how great a blessing it is to stand here.

A Georgian monk from Mount Athos was here recently. He had come for a baptism and could have left afterward, but when he heard that we were beginning Vespers, he stayed. He came and read the entire service with me. I was thinking deeply about this afterward — about what it means to respect the services. I felt as though Mount Athos itself had answered the question for me.

Why do we have so many services — Matins, Vespers, Liturgy, prayers before meals, prayers for every part of life? So that every hour may be blessed, so that we may live under the blessing of God in everything.

That is why, if we do not understand how important it is to be at the Sunday Liturgy, then there is a problem in our Christianity, and we must think seriously about it. Maybe now someone thinks, “It is not so important if I miss Sunday sometimes.” But no — we must struggle against this thought.

For two thousand years the Church has taught this. Every saint, from the first centuries onward, understood that Sunday is the Lord’s Day — the true Son’s Day, the day of Jesus Christ. We must be here, and we must not think this is unimportant.

If you come here and pray truly, if you are searching not simply to become a “good person,” but by the grace of God to become holy, to become sanctified, then you will feel how necessary this is.

We must stand here in silence, searching for the grace of God, because the services of heaven are like this also — unceasing worship. “Blessed is the Kingdom…” and it continues eternally. No one stops. We must learn to be attentive and spiritually concentrated.

And at home we must also pray more, learn prayer more deeply, and then come here together. Because when we are gathered together, Christ is among us. This is why we are here. It is the will of Jesus Christ, the will of the Holy Trinity, that we become united with God.

That is why we must work on prayer at home and everywhere else, and then come here together, offering our hearts as a sacrifice to God. The altar here is spiritual also.

Today we also thank the saints whose memory we celebrate. They prepared the way for us. We must respect our services, because when we speak about our faith — the Fathers, such as Saint Athanasius, whose feast was yesterday — they gave everything for this faith.

They also labored so that the Church could worship in the way we worship now. The order of the services, the prayers, when to bow, how to make the sign of the Cross — they preserved all of this for us. We have everything we need for salvation.

Saint Paisios said that after two thousand years of Christian experience, with so many books and examples, it is shameful for anyone not to be saved. We have been given so much. God will help us, and through His grace we can be saved. But we must become more serious about ourselves.

Everything here in this world will pass away. We will die. But we are not made only for this earthly life. We are called to become like God by grace, and we are created for eternal life. We must become serious about this, because time passes quickly.

So be careful with the services, with your hearts, and pray for yourselves and for your friends. We must stay strong and help one another. Sometimes people only need a kind word, or even just a smile. We should give this freely, because we never know what burden another person is carrying.

Sometimes outside we smile while inside we are suffering. But we should not become dark or bitter because of this. A Christian should struggle to be sincere both inwardly and outwardly.

One saint said that during the day we should smile at everyone, but at night we should stand before Christ in tears of repentance. No one needs to know those tears. During the day we should bring peace and kindness to others.

Glory to God for everything.

And you know about the 17th of May — Family Day tomorrow. If you can go, it would be very good. From Kashveti Church at eleven o’clock there will be the procession to Sameba.

This is not against anyone. It is about saying that we are Christians, and that we want Christian families. We ask God to help us and bless our families. It is not that others are bad and we are good. Holiness is something different.

Saint Paisios also spoke about these things. Sometimes Christians must witness publicly, but always with love and prayer. If God allows difficult things to happen, we do not always understand why, but we must still do what we can.

Our weapons are only prayer, love, and truthful words.

If we truly believe that prayer has power, then we must pray, and we will see God’s blessing. But our life must also be joined with repentance. Then God will hear our prayers and bless our families.

We must not become hypocrites — fighting at home with our wife, husband, or children, and then going outside speaking about “family values.” No. We must become real Christians.

Yes, every family has problems. But through these struggles we must become stronger, more patient, more loving, more Christian — gentler with our wives, our husbands, and our children.

It is not easy. But we must do everything we can, and God will bless us.

Father Gabriel Mzhavia

16/05/2026

Homily after vesper 15.05.26

Glory to God for everything. Now we are going to have a class about Saint Athanasius the Great. His feast day was today, and may he help us. You know, and you will hear, that he was a great teacher of the Church. He was a deacon at the First Council of Nicaea, and he showed everyone how to be truly Christian, both bishops and simple believers.

Maybe you are a deacon, maybe you are a layman, but you have to keep your faith — and you can. If you are humble, and if you are united with Jesus Christ in great love, you can keep your faith and accomplish many things.

Now it is very easy to say at every liturgy, “I believe in one God.” We can say that these words stand on the shoulders of Athanasius the Great, because many of the central expressions came from him. Today it is easy to profess the creed, but for this faith some people were killed, some were betrayed, and many suffered. We have to respect them, love them, and ask them to teach us how to love Christ in this way, and also how to love ourselves correctly — not in a false or prideful way, but rightly.

We are made in the image of God, and we must respect this image and live accordingly, because we are commanded to love one another as ourselves. What does it mean to love myself? If I understand this correctly, then I will also love you truly.

That is why we have to be careful, because evil is always working. What does anti-Christ mean? Not only someone who goes against Christ, but also someone who tries to imitate Him falsely. The evil one is not a creator. He cannot create anything new. He can only twist and distort what already exists, and often you cannot immediately see what is happening.

Remember what he said to Eve: “You will be gods. You and Adam will become gods.” In one sense it was true, but it was also a lie, because it was not the right time, and it was poison mixed with honey. That is why we must be very careful and ask the saints to protect us and help us guard ourselves.

Our true faith is not only words or religion. It is about our whole life. We cannot simply add faith to our life as one more earthly thing. We must live in Christ, and everything else comes after that. Christ must come first.

May Saint Athanasius bless us and help us understand how we should live today. Saint Athanasius became a bishop when he was around thirty years old, and he became a great bishop. At every stage of his life he did something remarkable. Even in childhood he showed greatness. He also had a great teacher, Saint Alexander.

We can learn from them how to live at every stage of life: as laypeople, priests, bishops — whatever we are called to be. They lived through very difficult times, and we can learn from them, not only by reading about them, but by trying to live as they lived.

It is not easy. In fact, it becomes very difficult when we try to do it by ourselves. We cannot do it alone. Only God can do it in us. That is why humility is so important. If salvation were easy, Christ would not have become man. He became man because we needed God Himself to save us. See how deep and difficult this mystery is. Yet it becomes simple when we say: only Christ can do this.

May the Holy Fathers help us to understand this more clearly. Christ is risen.

Father Gabriel Mzhavia

13/05/2026

Patriarch and Father Shalva

11/05/2026

11/05/2026

Homily 09.05.26

Glory to God for everything.

Yesterday we were talking about the Holy Fathers. We have to think about them. We have to remember that our work is to protect the faith in our hearts. This is very important—not only outwardly, but in our hearts.

The Holy Fathers are protectors of the true faith. We have to read them and understand what it means to become a new man. Because we Orthodox Christians are not simply trying to become “good people” or something like this, as Protestants often say. Our God is God and man, Jesus Christ. And we have to learn from Him how to become truly human, and after this, to become god by grace.

We are not meant to remain only at the level of man, because this world is not our final home. As the Apostle Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven. Our home is not here. We are waiting for our true home.

And already we have a foretaste of heaven: Holy Communion, the Body and Blood of Christ.

As Saint Maximus the Confessor said, when someone asked him what would happen if Christ returned in the middle of the Divine Liturgy, he answered, “We will continue the Liturgy in heaven.” Because the Liturgy is the work of heaven. It is a time to be in heaven. It is a time to “lay aside all earthly cares.”

That is why we need the Holy Fathers. And the new Holy Fathers are also very important for us. Yesterday we spoke about Father Seraphim Rose. We need to understand their lives and see how God changed them.

This is the grace of the Church. The Church can change you. And this is not only about a building. It is about living with Christ and with His Mysteries. Outside of these Mysteries, you cannot truly live the Christian life.

It is inconceivable to live without Holy Communion. But when we come to the Mysteries, we must come with humility, love, and the fear of God. It is very important not to think, “Yes, I am Christian, so this is simply for me.” Yes, the Body and Blood are given for you, but we must receive them with fear, because this is God Himself. It is not ours. He gave this gift to us, and we must approach with humility and love.

The fear of God does not mean fear like a slave. If you love someone, you are afraid to lose communion with that person. You desire to remain with him always. Christ speaks to us about everlasting life. This is why we must have fear of God.

Father Seraphim was like this. You know his life before Christ and how completely he changed afterward. We also have to become like this.

All our problems come because we do not understand how important Christ is. We must understand what the Divine Liturgy means for us. Not only this Saturday, when we have the English Liturgy. That is good. But we must understand what Sunday Liturgy truly means.

If you feel that you cannot live without the Liturgy, without Sunday worship, without this blessing, then you will begin to understand Christianity, and you will begin to live with Christ.

Sometimes it is not easy. But Christianity means forcing yourself toward Christ, pushing yourself to say: “I want Christ.”

Like Saul, we must say: “Yes, I have sins, but I will stay with You. I have sinned, but I will not deny You.” But we also must not remain in our sins. We have to struggle and work so that we may become saints.

The Church teaches this, and the new saints prove that grace is still working. Grace should not remain somewhere far away. Grace must be in our hearts, and we must do everything to receive this grace.

The Holy Fathers and the saints did not suffer for nothing. The death of Christ and the lives of the saints must not remain something outside of us. They lived and suffered for the true faith, for Christ. And we must protect this faith so that we may live with them in heaven.

We begin this life here, and then continue it there.

Christ is risen.

Father Gabriel Mzhavia

02/05/2026

Liturgy 02/05/2026

02/05/2026

Liturgy 02/05/2026

Special thanks to our guest chanters, the Basilaia family.

Tekla Basilaia
გრიგოლი ბასილაია
basilaia

27/04/2026

TV Series - Saint Paisios From Farasa to heaven
season 1 and 2

09/04/2026

Dear Father Gabriel,

On your special day, we want to celebrate you with all our hearts. You are such a humble and kind shepherd to our diverse flock. Your beautiful smile lights up every gathering, and your gentle, patient presence makes everyone feel truly seen and cared for.

You watch over each one of us with such love and attention — always mindful of every person and every detail. After a long search that took so much effort and time, finding you a year ago felt like a true blessing. You accepted all of us, from different nationalities and cultures, as your own flock, and became our loving shepherd.

Thank you for your endless patience, your deep understanding, and the way you guide us with such warmth and wisdom. May God fill your birthday and the coming year with joy, health, and peace.

Happy Birthday, dear Father Gabriel!

We are so grateful to have you as our priest and shepherd.

With love and gratitude♥️☦️