Many people ask many times, what could be the greatest qualification one could have to do a mission. And we all struggle to be trained with the appropriate education, to learn languages, to do planning, calculations, savings, to fortify ourselves in general from all sides in order to “succeed”. But we forget to ask the…
Dear friends of the Mission, Honestly, every time I write a piece for your publication, I hope and pray that it will be the last time I fill the page with human pain. After an unprecedentedly arid four years, for the entire territory of Southern Madagascar, the majority of the indigenous people are facing the…
The speech of the Missionary Apostle of South Madagascar (Toliaras) in the courtyard of the Holy Church of Saint John the Baptist in Thessaloniki, which took place on Sunday 13 June 2021 (in the presence of Bishop Gulos Silvestro)
The sun once again began its cycle in the sky. Warm, almost bearable. Window open, a peculiar insect with long slender legs climbs onto the desk and approaches me unconcernedly. In the corridor of the clinic I hear voices. People come and go, apparently carrying X-rays, which make an almost eerie sound with every movement….
What unspeakable joy for one to be called “my child” by the great apostle who claimed divine adoption and rapture to heaven, Paul, the Apostle to the nations! Timothy, my child, the beginning, the address, the literal love of the Epistle to Timothy, of the text that said it all to all of us like…
I will never get tired of confessing, because first of all, it relaxes me to experience things myself, that the life of the Gospel takes on flesh and blood every day, in every step of our Church Mission. I myself used to be an indifferent reader of the Bible; emotional, moderately faithful, or of course,…
The Church is the natural space of love and peace, and it is wonderful when this House of God is experienced thus, and only thus. It is this God who willingly humbled himself so as to leave this unique legacy on the Wood of the Cross, admitting first into His heavenly Kingdom neither a prophet,…
Everytime I listen the objection “But is this what the Mission stands for? Charities?” –and it is not rare–, I fee like something cracks inside me, something like what we vaguely call “the conscience”, which we, monks, willingly put to martyrdom. It is actually an act of martyrdom not to respond hotly to this question….
On a downhill road we met a family that was crushing stones into gravel… All its members were working… The grandfather, the grandmother, the son, the daughter-in-law… The latter, named Tajine, had her baby in a basket next to her… It was just one month old and was sleeping despite the hammerings. One meter away was her four-year-old son Michael. He also had a hammer and was breaking stones!…
Fifteen years! Five thousand four hundred and seventy-five days! Countless hours, numberless minutes, an ocean of seconds; and yet, all this time, all this measurement with its subdivisions, which is desperately trying to put some order in the chaotic space between events is an act so subjective! The fluid time itself, as the Holy Fathers…