Patriarch Kirill addresses the Synaxis of Primates of Local Orthodox Churches

"Gathering together, we are clearly aware that our Church is One and Catholic, that our first concern is to preserve and consolidate her unity, which is the basis of our entire ministry, including our joint efforts for strengthening the conciliar principle in the Church. The Holy and Great Council is called to become a visible, clear and convincing testimony to the unity of the Orthodox Church."

Rating: 7|Votes: 3

Patriarch Daniel: “The Future Pan-Orthodox Synod represents an Important Historical Event for the Development of Conciliarity on a Pan-Orthodox Level”

Patriarch Daniel of Romania

"In order to emphasize the necessity of the meeting of the future Holy and Great Synod, we must recall that conciliarity represents a canonical norm of the ecclesial life in every Autocephalous Orthodox Church."

Keynote Address By His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew To the Synaxis of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches (Geneva 22-01-2016)

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew

"Indeed, every Synaxis that gathers us together, as entrusted with by God’s grace and mercy with the leadership of His most holy Church, is sacred. However, this particular Synaxis has a very special character because it is bound to the fundamental ecclesiological principle of the Church’s conciliarity inasmuch as it its primary objective is to prepare the forthcoming convocation, God willing, of the Holy and Great Council of our most holy Orthodox Church."

Rating: 8.3|Votes: 3

"Remembrance of Death" Can Overcome "Death Obsession"

Wesley J. Smith

Instead of fixating on “controlling the time and manner of our death,” or escaping the fact of our death in frivolous or Quixotic pursuits, we can let our sure end be our inspiration to live positive, worthy, and meaningful lives until that time when “there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Rating: 9.6|Votes: 7

Cremation: Incinerating Every Human Trace of Our Dearly Departed

Met. Seraphim of Piraeus

"What kind of relationship can a society have with Life when a society does not accept man in his sickness, his weakness and his death; when a society incinerates its dead; when a society destroys the remembrance of their lives and the reminder to Her members; when a society regards man’s beginning an artificial and selective one and his death a final and irrevocable one; when a society denies the breath of the eternal and entraps itself in the asphyxiation of the ephemeral?"