3/4/2015
Deacon Dionisy Akhalashvili
Сelebrating the New Year according to the secular calendar, if one does not approach it with excessive zeal, does not really interfere with the ordinary Orthodox rhythm of life.
Deacon Denis Akhalashvili
With Christ, the land of blood becomes a Paradisal garden, where there is no sorrow, nor sighing, nor death, where the Royal Passion-Bearers glorify the Risen Christ.
Denis Akhalashvili
So the church I have always attended with great reverence has turned from the house of God into a mere beautiful comfortable place where, to put it into modern terms, “my spiritual needs are met” and where my acquaintances whose company I enjoy go to as well.
I believe that if I get in trouble and can’t go to church, my Lord and Shepherd will put aside all His work and ninety-nine percent of His sheep and will hurry to me to share the meal with me, bless my house and make Himself an altar out of my heart so that nothing could ever separate us.
The day of the Myrrh Bearing Women is the triumph of women’s sacrificial, uncritical love over pragmatic male reason.
Earlier he wouldn’t have made up his mind to sell his granny’s beloved icons, but since he had an overwhelming loan that kept growing like a snowball, threatening to crush the remainder of what had been his very quiet life not long before, he simply had no alternative.
Our “church old ladies” are not the weakness of the Church; rather, they are the blessing of God that preserved faith in the darkest of the godless times.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 40
Now he was looking at the dome with a cross, glittering in the sun, and waiting for death to come. But it was slow in coming, though a tenfold heroin overdose should have caused a quick death. Meanwhile, death was still not going to take him, and he was gazing down at the golden cross on the church dome and couldn’t tear himself away from the view.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 33
Suddenly you begin to think that, in actuality, nothing in the world belongs to you. Because the moment can come when you’re gone, and all this is left to others. At first this frightens you, but then you just start to pray.
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 30
When some people say that they don’t want to take their children to church, let alone Sunday school, because they are allegedly forced there to complete difficult tasks, to keep fasts and stand through long services, I tell them this story.
In my school years every summer I went to grandfather Misha (a diminutive form of the name Michael) and grandmother Tamara in Digomi, Georgia, where they had a big house in which the first two years of my life passed.
Rating: 5.1|Votes: 15
Why are there so many unfortunate, wretched, broken lives, strange and simply bad people in the Church, while the saints and righteous ones are hardly to be found? This scandalizes and turns away many.
