2 Kingdoms*, Chapter 24 In verse 1 of this chapter, we read that God incites David against his people of Israel. It is not saying that God caused him to sin. Rather, it represents a reflection of the sinful state of David’s soul, since, against God’s wishes, David decided to conduct a census and count his people. This stirring of David bears parallels to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 4:21. Much like Pharaoh, it was David’s decision to harden his own heart, rather than God interfering with free will. The decision to take a census does not seem [...]

The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) This parable shows us how to be Christian. The father in the parable has two sons, and at certain times we are one or the other. We can sometimes be like the younger son, who in taking his share of the inheritance and living prodigally, is when we fall into sin. The solution to the problem is also shown in this parable when the son humbled himself and returned to the father. We too must humble ourselves, repent, cease from sin, and return to our Heavenly Father. At other times, we can be like the [...]

The Church in Your House   Our motto this year, “the church in your house”, is a phrase taken from several of Apostle Paul’s Epistles, where in the early Church, groups of Christians gathered in homes to pray and worship together and partake of Holy Communion. This was a time when Christians felt they weren’t part of the world anymore, that is, they had rejected a world full of idolaters, people that sacrificed animals and children to the hundreds of gods they believed in, or people who had rejected the Messiah. Christians wanted to live God’s promise - they wanted [...]

Does Hades exist?   In ancient Greek mythology, Hades was the god of the underworld. When people died, mourners would place a coin under the tongue of the deceased to pay Charon, to take them across the river into the underworld. There they were assigned to one of the different areas of the underworld, ranging from the pitch darkness of Tartarus, where the souls were being punished for their sins, to the Fortunate Isles, where the souls lived in eternal bliss. Hades, as the ruler of the underworld, would maintain a relative balance, and ensure that no one escaped or [...]

The Holy and Righteous St Symeon the God-Receiver (Commemorated 3rd February)   Holy Tradition teaches Holy Tradition teaches that Symeon was one of the seventy Jewish scholars chosen for the task of translating the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek, also known as the Septuagint, used to this day by the Orthodox Church. Symeon was specifically assigned the task of translating the book of Isaiah. When he came to the verse foretelling the Incarnation of Christ, ‘Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel’ (Is. 7:14), he wanted to cross out ‘virgin’ and replace [...]