What are the gates of hell?
” (Sermon on the Triumph of Orthodoxy) “I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” . Immutable is the Word of the Lord: in truth the “gates of hell” cannot conquer the Church of Christ! But what are the “gates of hell?” St John Chrysostom says: “the gates of hell” is first and foremost the hatred of Satan and his persecution of the Church; then it is heresy and schism; and finally it is the sin of mankind. For the first three and a half centuries, the entire pagan world fell upon Christ and His Church, irrigating the earth with great streams of the blood of the martyrs. Adorned with the blood of saints, the Church emerged from this tribulation with glory. Then the enemy assailed the Church with renewed vigor: he tried to diminish and doom the Work of Christthe Churchwith heresies, schisms and divisions. The Church survived victorious in this trial as well. Today, on the first Sunday of Great Lent, we mark the victory of the Church over all heresies. Th
