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The understandable, deeply authoritative and bestselling book on the Orthodox Church, in a fully updated and revised Third Edition.

And God said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness” (Gen 1.26). The mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of the human person are intricately connected, and thus it is fitting that we come to know both God and man in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, the last Adam (1 Cor 15.45) in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Col 2.9). This second volume of Met. Kallistos’ collected works explores the mystery of the Trinity and of the human person created in the image of God.

St Symeon's theology is a summation of a lifelong study of the Scriptures and fathers, of an immersion in the liturgical life of the Church and of lived experience. The treatises on the mystical life, usually rendered as The Ethical Discourses, comprise St Symeon's most extensive treatment of the experience of God. Volume I selects those treatises devoted to the Church, the sacraments and the last things. The SVS Press audiobook program is sponsored by St. Symeon Illumination Fund.

A Silent Patriarch is the first scholarly biography of the desert hermit who became a most unlikely patriarch. Until now, the details of his life have remained hidden. As patriarch, Kyrillos inherited a bleeding church, one confronted by political Islamism, an indifferent Muslim president, and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Taking Jorge Luis Borges’ famous story “The Zahir” as a reference or “hypotext,” The Book of Things Unknown offers a surprising variant. Set in the cultural framework of post-Communist Orthodox Romania, Simon Palamas’ love of books, his marriage, and his travels lead him on a spiritual and literary quest through diverse religious and literary traditions (Chinese mythology; Sufi, Hindu and Buddhist mysticism; and both Western and Eastern Orthodox Christianity), yielding an astonishing end to the journey.

The Life of Repentance and Purity provides listeners with a comprehensive overview of the practice of repentance and purity, essential aspects of Christian life. Pope Shenouda III draws on Scripture, the Church Fathers, his own experience of desert monasticism, and his experience as a shepherd to millions of Christians to provide a practical understanding of how to live a life of continually turning to God.

Maximus' vision of the liturgy contemplates the interpenetrating relationships of all things with each other and with Christ, in whom all things cohere. The church building, the human being, and the cosmos are all mutually related and symbolically reflect each other. Further, in the liturgy, we enter into the mystery of Christ.

How do we acquire this mind of Christ and where is it to be found? For the Orthodox Christian, salvation is the acquisition of this mind of Christ which is to be found in the Church. This acquisition moves us from the image of God to the likeness of God; through our obedience to this call we begin to know God and this knowledge is eternal life (John 17:3). This small book hopes to begin to answer how acquiring the mind of Christ is possible and why it is necessary in our lives today.

The Chapters on Theology is one of Maximus’ most eclectic writings. In this short piece, Maximus discusses many diverse themes, including God's relation to the cosmos, monastic discipline and life, scriptural difficulties, and his vision of the consummated universe in relation to the incarnate Word of God. The work is arranged into 200 “chapters,” which are often pithy pearls of wisdom that monks could learn from the respected figure of an elder or abbot. Chapters tend to address a range of issues monks would face in the course of their spiritual progress.

Just as undertaking a journey into an unfamiliar land or climbing a mountain requires an experienced and knowledgeable guide, so also an experienced and trusted spiritual guide, a mystagogue, is needed for the spiritual journey, to ascend Mount Sinai and encounter the mysterious God in its darkness, and to climb Mount Tabor and behold the mystery of the transfigured Lord, and to be initiated into the mysteries of the Jerusalem above, our Mother, the Church. The Orthodox Way is such a guide, a book that takes the listener into the very mystery of God, and now speaks to us.

By any standard, this is a classic of Christian theology. Composed by St. Athanasius in the fourth century, it expounds with simplicity the theological vision defended at the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople: that the Son of God himself became "fully human, so that we might become god."

The seven works in this volume (some translated for the first time) explore the great human mystery of death and the promise of eternal life. They present—along with On the Soul and the Resurrection (PPS 12)—a vision that is consistent, philosophically profound, and characteristic of Gregory’s wider theology.

This is the third of a three-volume series. The first two volumes translated St Symeon's Ethical Discourses, while this audiobook seeks to place the teaching of the discourses in their proper context, both among Symeon's other writings and with regard to his sources in the Tradition. Included thus is a sketch of Symeon's life and times, together with an extensive discussion of his thought, particularly against the background in the ascetical, mystical, and theological literature of the Christian East prior to the tenth century.

People all over the world know Metropolitan Kallistos Ware as a church leader, scholar, and writer. But far fewer know him as a man. Near the end of his life, he agreed to sit for several sessions and speak about his life, as well as his memories of the many different people he met and knew over the years and to give his thoughts on some contemporary questions facing the Church in our age. These sessions were recorded, transcribed, and edited for the present volume.

Orthodox Christian Prayers is made to be passed on from generation to generation.

It is often said that the Orthodox Church is a hospital and that our understanding of salvation is therapeutic. Here Met. Kallistos explores what this means in many different ways, and helps us to understand more deeply our relationship with Christ the physician of souls and bodies, who came to save and to heal both us and the world.

Christian tradition often seems to give only grudging approval to married life, particularly its sexual aspect. In these sermons of St John Chrysostom, we find an important corrective to this view.

Nearly ten years in the making, this liturgical translation of the Psalter is the result of a collaborative effort between translators, editors, scholars, church musicians, and the communities of St Vladimir's Seminary and St Tikhon's Monastery. The goal for this project was to find translational register that was both accurate to the original and, at the same time, felt familiar within the liturgical context in which it would be read and sung.

The Inner Kingdom focuses on the themes central to Eastern Christian worship and spiritual life. The opening chapter recounts the author’s journey to Orthodoxy. The next two chapters provide profound and illuminating insights on death, bereavement, and resurrection in Christ, as well as repentance. The following four chapters bring us into the world of the desert ascetics and hesychast monks. Combining scholarly rigor with practical counsels on prayer, Metropolitan Kallistos makes the wealth of the Orthodox tradition accessible to today’s Christians.

The last half of the 20th century saw the establishment of the reputation of St Maximus the Confessor as the greatest of all Byzantine theologians, with a wholeness of vision that speaks directly to many of our concerns today. Until very recently, however, little of his work has been available in English translation, save for some collections of brief reflections arranged in centuries and a few brief treatises, too easily classified as "spirituality."