What is the Christian Life?

The followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians in the ancient city of Antioch in the first years after the death and resurrection of Christ, and the creation by the Holy Spirit of a new spiritual community of believers called the Church.

The life these first Christians were committed to was not one of intellectual assent to various religious ideas, and the life which Christians live today is equally not a matter of simply believing things about Jesus and God. On the contrary, the Christian life is first of all a trust in a person, and that person who Christians put their trust in is Jesus Christ, who we believe to be God himself.

Indeed Orthodox Christians believe that our life should be spent seeking to experience the presence of God in our lives more and more, so that the presence of God, his Holy Spirit, becomes our whole life. Everything we do is rooted in this desire to know God better, and to live the life of God more completely in our own lives.

So we pray many times each day in the words of the written prayers which have been used by countless generations of Orthodox Christians, because we want to learn to speak to God in the best words that the best Christians have used before over the centuries.

We gather together and worship God in Church, and we receive the bread and wine which we believe to be the body and blood of Christ, because we want to receive Christ into the closest possible union with ourselves, a union both of body and spirit.

We read the Bible, and the accounts of the lives of the saints, and the teachings of the great Orthodox Christians of the past and present because we want to put into practice the teachings of Jesus Christ as far as is possible for us.

During many periods in the year Orthodox Christians also fast, that is we abstain from animal and dairy products, and we eat later in the day. This is not at all because we don't like food, it is because we do not want the good things in life to take over. We want to make sure that we have things the right way around, so that our spiritual desire for unity with God and with each other has proper priority in our lives. This practice of fasting, and other such spiritual effort, is called ascesis, and is a Greek word meaning 'exercise'. When we engage in prayer, study, fasting and helping others we believe that we are exercising our spiritual self, just like an Olympic athlete must have a serious exercise regime if they want to succeed.

But the Christian life is not only about personal spiritual development, or rather such a personal development is actually only possible if we forget about ourselves and seek to serve God and others. Those living the Christian life should be servants, thinking of the needy around them, not putting themselves forward, asking always how others can be put first.

The Christian life is not easy, but we do not believe that it can ever be lived in a purely human strength. We believe that we receive strength from God as we pray, and worship and serve others, so that we can say that God is living in us. We believe that the Christian life is the way that humans are truly meant to live, and we invite you to visit us and share with us so that we can experience this life of God together.

An Icon of the Resurrection of Christ in the Coptic style

Many of our icons have been created by the internationally renowned iconographer, Deacon Stephane Rene. Visit the Icon Gallery to see more.