On Cremation of the Dead (St. Paisios the Athonite)

Saint Paisios the Athonite said the following about cremation: 

 

Someone came here, a University professor, and he told me that they are seriously considering burning the bones of the dead, because there is no room.

"Look," I said to him, "why isn't there room? Thessaloniki has so many forests! The whole of Chortiatis! Fill a cemetery, after 3-4 years, you make another one further down. Why have they filled the mountains everywhere with apartment buildings?"

He also told me that it is from a hygiene point of view! What do you mean from the point of view of hygiene, while you have polluted the whole world, you have polluted the sea in Thessaloniki and elsewhere, while the bones are washed and cleaned! Have a little respect. But they want to degrade people, to make them worth nothing, to tear them from their roots, from their ancestors, from their tradition, to leave them alone and desolate, to destroy their memory, their connection with their predecessors, with the values and life of their ancestors, in order to then do whatever they want with various theories that pull them here and there. They go to spread atheism. Someone has died? Oh well, they're gone!

The Sin of War - Our Only Enemy Is Death

By Protopresbyter Fr. Thomas Bambinis

The Sin of War

War is a great temptation for the consciences of the faithful. It extinguishes love. They identify it with selfishness, at best they subjugate it to national selfishness. Of course, the battles that take place in defensive wars are not only inevitable, they are also just, but even in these just wars, all the darkness of people is easily manifested, as well as, of course, all of the brilliant greatness of those who struggle on behalf of the just, the sacred and the freedom of their people with selflessness and self-denial, without obvious hatred for the aggressors.

War and the Orthodox Church (George Mantzarides)

By George Mantzarides,
Professor Emeritus of the Theological School of the 

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

War, as an armed and bloody conflict of organized groups, is one of the most serious and distressing problems of man, especially in our time. The experience of the two world wars, the endless series of military engagements that followed them, but also the existence of terrifying means of destruction, which can wipe out hundreds of times not only the human race, but also every trace of civilization from the face of the earth, is enough to reveal the magnitude of the problem.

Heraclitus argued that war was the "father of all." This view remains with small variations strong to this day. Many even observe that peace is a form of war, waged with politics or economics. On the contrary, for the Church the "Father of all" is not war, but the God of peace (2 Cor. 13:11). And the coming of God into the world is a gospel of peace (Luke 2:14).