The Feasts of the Lord

by Hierotheos Vlachos, Esther Williams (Translator)

The purpose of celebrating the Feasts of our Lord throughout the year is to connect our life to Christ, writes the author. This is done each and every year so that we may experience the mystery of Christ personally and grow into Him. Using scripture and passages from the Fathers of the Church on the Feasts of our Lord, Metropolitan Hierotheos, a prolific writer accomplishes this in a remarkably inspiring way.

Genres: Theology

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

His Eminence Hierotheos, Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Agios Vlassios in Greece, is regarded as one of the foremost authorities on the Orthodox spiritual life. A prolific writer, he has authored more than fifteen books, many of which have been translated into English. His Eminence’s theological vision may be summed up in the following quotation, taken from his The Science of Spiritual Medicine: “The whole therapeutic method of the Orthodox Church is not aimed simply at making human beings morally and socially balanced, but at re-establishing their relationship with God and one another. This comes about through the healing of the soul's wounds and the cure of the passions through the Sacraments and the Church's ascetic practice.”

Reviews

[John Coatney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really nice Christological approach to the feasts of Christ found in the liturgical calendar. There was a nice use of patristic commentary; some contemporary Greek teachers were cited or referenced, but it seemed half-hearted; either a more robust approach, including Orthodox writers who are not Greek, or none would have been better.

I encountered some new insights (to me) in this book, though not as many as I had hoped or expected (and some of which seem strange, like the idea that Christ was a fully-formed man at conception, which I feel compelled to explore further). For the most part, though, the book served as an exploration of the working out of Orthodox Christology by means of the annual liturgical celebrations of Christ's economy - edifying and effective devotional reading.