The Three-Day-Fasting Monks of Mount Athos – A Story of Grace for Great Lent

With a typikon that has been preserved uninterruptedly for more than ten centuries, the monks of Mount Athos enter Holy and Great Lent immediately after the Vespers of Forgiveness.

On the evening of Cheesefare Sunday, after the completion of Vespers and Compline, the fathers in the Holy Monasteries and in the Huts withdraw to their cells, limiting their movements only to what is absolutely necessary. For three days their life is devoted entirely to prayer and spiritual watchfulness.

The refectory is not set for the monks during this first three-day period of Lent; only for visitors is a simple refreshment offered, usually a little tea and some rusks. Most observe complete abstinence from food until Wednesday at noon, while many refrain even from water — except, of course, those who face health problems.

Throughout these days, the monks leave their cells only to participate in the long sacred services. Silence is a fundamental element of their struggle, and many remain awake as much as possible, dedicating their time to unceasing prayer.

Saint Tarasios of Constantinople in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Tarasios defined as dogma the veneration of the august and holy icons, and through him the imperial and Roman authority returned to the venerable traditions of the Holy Apostles and of the Ecumenical Synods, and the Holy Church was united with the other Patriarchates. Tarasios lived piously and became respected by the emperors, and he also founded a sacred monastery beyond the strait, where he gathered multitudes of monks. He was very merciful to the poor, governed the Church well for twenty-two years and two months, and reposed in peace; his body was then laid in the monastery built by himself. In bodily appearance he was in every way like Gregory the Theologian, except for his age and the scar beneath his eye. For he was not altogether advanced in years. 

Three are the levels that the hymnography of the feast of Saint Tarasios sets forth:

Venerable Walburga of Heidenheim the Wonderworker

Saint Walburga or Walpurga (c. 710–777) was an 8th-century English-born Benedictine nun, abbess, and missionary to Germany who is recognized by some Orthodox jurisdictions (notably in Western Europe) as a saint who lived before the Great Schism. She is commemorated on February 25, honored for her piety, miracles, and role in establishing German monasticism. 

Walburga was the daughter of Saint Richard the Pilgrim and Wunna his wife, and sister to Saints Willibald and Wunnibald, and she remained and was educated at the abbey at Wimborne under the Abbess Saint Tetta when her menfolk set off for the Holy Land. Later she joined her brothers in Germany, when her uncle, Saint Boniface, sent to Wimborne asking for sisters to help with missionary work.

After a couple of years with Saint Lioba at Bischofsheim she was appointed abbess of the convent of nuns founded by her brothers in Heidenheim, and when Winnibald died, his monastery for monks was added to hers to make a double community, which she ruled until her own death. 

Prologue in Sermons: February 25

On Communion with God

February 25

(From the Discourse of Saint Antiochus on the Calling of God)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

We must seek communion with God. Why? Because it is to this communion that God Himself calls us.

“If you will listen to My voice,” He says, “you shall be My chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation; and you shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. I have chosen you as My own special people.”

And Wisdom says: “Draw near to Me, you who desire Me, and be satisfied with My sweetness, for I am sweeter than honey. He who eats of Me shall hunger no more, and he who listens to Me shall not be put to shame.”

And again: “Come, eat My bread and drink the wine which I have prepared for you; forsake folly and you shall live, and seek understanding.”

And David says: “Draw near to Him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not be ashamed.”

The First Week of Holy Great Lent (St. Sergius Mechev)

The First Week of Holy Great Lent 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

By the mercy of God, having passed through the preparatory weeks, we now enter into Holy and Great Lent. And we enter it remembering the very beginning of man’s life on earth: his creation, his fall into sin, and his expulsion from paradise.

The Holy Church now compels us not only to recall what once happened to the first man, but to come to know ourselves.

Abba Poemen, explaining his teaching on the foundations of spiritual life, said that only he has begun spiritual labor who has come to know himself. And Isaac the Syrian, speaking of a man who has come to know himself, places him above the one who has been counted worthy to see an angel.

Self-knowledge is the work of a Christian’s entire life; yet the beginning of this knowledge — knowing who I am, whence I came upon the earth, and where I shall go from this life — is necessary even for beginners.

The 1st and 2nd Finding of the Head of Saint John the Baptist in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The honorable and venerable head, revered even by the angels, was first found — according to the good pleasure and revelation of Saint John the Forerunner — by two monks in the house of Herod, when they had come to Jerusalem to venerate the life-giving tomb of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. From these monks a certain potter received it and carried it to the city of Emesa. Because the potter felt joy and happiness in his heart through it, he honored it greatly. Then, as he was about to die, he entrusted it to his sister, giving the command not to move it or open it, but only to honor it. After the woman’s death, many received the head in succession, one after another. Finally, the head of the Forerunner came into the possession of a certain monk and presbyter, Eustathios, who belonged to the heresy of the Arians. He was driven out by the Orthodox from the cave in which he dwelt, because he exploited the healings that occurred through the honorable head, claiming that they were due to his heretical faith. Therefore, by divine providence, as he fled he left behind the head of the divine Forerunner in the cave. It remained hidden there until the time of Marcellus, who was archimandrite, during the reign of Valentinian the Younger and the episcopate of Uranios of Emesa. At that time, since many revelations were made concerning it, it was found in a jar and was brought into the Church by Bishop Uranios, performing many healings and miracles.

Once again, the finding of the honorable head of the Forerunner gives our Church the occasion to emphasize his exalted position among all the saints. We believers are reminded that he was the one who “proclaimed the saving coming of Christ the Savior, perceived the descent of the Holy Spirit who dwelt upon Him at the Lord’s baptism, and mediated between the Old and the New Grace” (Vespers sticheron); that he was the one who, “when Herod transgressed the law, rebuked him, and therefore the coward, like a madman, cut off his head” (Matins kathisma); that he was the one who “sealed the Old Testament and became the end of the prophets, while preparing the way for the New” (Ode 4); and finally that he was the one who “appeared with the power and spirit of the Prophet Elijah as an unshakable tower” (Ode 5), and was praised by the Lord “as the greatest among all men” (Ode 7).

Homily for the Commemoration of the First and Second Finding of the Head of John the Baptist (Fr. Daniel Sysoev)

 

On the Commemoration of the First and Second Finding of the Head of John the Baptist 

By Fr. Daniel Sysoev

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

I congratulate you all on the feast of the first and second finding of the honorable head of John the Baptist. In our Church there are three feasts in honor of the finding of the head of John the Baptist. By God’s providence it came to pass that over the many centuries since the time when John the Baptist bore witness to his faithfulness to God — when Herod executed the Forerunner at the instigation of Herodias — his head appeared in various places.

The head of the Forerunner was cut off and taken to Herodias, who in fury and malice seized it, pierced the tongue that had denounced her lawlessness, and buried it in an unclean place on the Mount of Olives. The steward of the palace was a man faithful to God, and his wife became one of the Myrrhbearing women. He washed the head of John, placed it in a large clay vessel, and buried it near Jerusalem, on his estate on the Mount of Olives. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the burial place was lost.

Homily on the Fourth and Fifth Days of the Creation of the World (Fr. Daniel Sysoev)

On the Fourth and Fifth Days of the Creation of the World

By Fr. Daniel Sysoev

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

During these days, God created the luminaries from nothingness. By His will, the primordial light created on the first day of Creation was collected into the luminaries, as if into vessels. The planets were placed like mirrors to shine upon the earth. We also heard of the creation of the first beings, endowed with a living soul. On this day, I would like to reflect on what some current teachings oppose. 

Nowadays, many people, even those who consider themselves Christians, profess a false doctrine of the planets. How many people do we have today who believe that their lives are somehow determined by the positions of the luminaries in the sky! And with the advent of the fashion for celebrating Chinese New Year, many Christians have begun calling themselves all sorts of animals. And this frenzy in our country reaches its peak with the arrival of the civil New Year.

This would be understandable if they were atheists, for an atheist is "a slave to all the elements," as the Apostle Paul says; such a person works for all the elements of the world. But a Christian, who has been freed from slavery to the elements of the world through the Blood of Christ the Savior, how dare he return to these feeble elements and think that they will somehow influence him?! Nevertheless, I have seen dozens, if not hundreds, of Orthodox Christians who sincerely believe that the stars influence, if not their fate, then their character. As if there are bad days and good days (if the day starts badly, it will continue to be bad). All these superstitions are spread with complete seriousness. There are countless people who consider themselves Orthodox, yet in reality they worship not God, but the luminaries. Because a real person who believes in horoscopes, who believes that he is subject to the voice of these luminaries, can he really be called a Christian? He is an idolater in the literal, not figurative, sense of the word. How did paganism itself originate? People worshiped the celestial bodies. Seeing the terrible, catastrophic impacts of celestial bodies on Earth (humanity has witnessed asteroid impacts and floods caused by cosmic objects), people decided that the celestial bodies themselves governed the world and were supposedly animate beings. There were even heretics in the Church — Origen, for example — rwho claimed that the Moon, the Sun, the stars, and even planet Earth itself were living bodies endowed with intelligence.

Fr. Stephanos Anagnostopoulos Has Reposed

Today, February 24, 2026, the Orthodox world mourns the passing of a spiritual giant, Protopresbyter — and in his final days, Hieromonk — Stephanos Anagnostopoulos. His repose on this Clean Tuesday marks the end of an era for thousands of faithful who looked to him as a beacon of liturgical depth and hesychastic practice in the midst of the modern world.

Brief Biography

Fr. Stephanos was born in Drama, Macedonia, in 1930, to a Greek father and a Romanian mother. He completed elementary school and high school in Drama, spending his childhood in poverty and with many hardships. He served in the Greek Army for 30 months as a reserve second lieutenant. After his military service he worked as an accountant. In 1957 he married Eleni Liaskopoulou (later the nun Ephraimia) from Thessaloniki, with whom he had seven children — six daughters and one son. Rejecting a significant scholarship to study classical vocal music in France, and having a calling to the priesthood, he entered in 1958 the Higher Ecclesiastical Tutorial School of Thessaloniki.