8/1/2017
In the Church we have the hands of Christ, His lips and eyes, as well as His heart. His hands are the rites of the Church, the tongue and lips of Christ are is Gospel, and His eyes are the holy Sacraments, through which he peers into our souls. His heart is the Divine Liturgy.
Marina Chizhova
Such a brilliant, fiery preacher and chanter of the Divine Liturgy as the bishop of Dimitrov, St. Seraphim (Zvezdinsky), Moscow never saw. It is not without reason that people called him the “Moscow Argyrostom” (Silver-tongued). But his main sermon was his life, which was a complete example of patient, unmurmuring, martyric cross-bearing.
The young Georgian princess resolved to become a nun at nineteen years of age. Neither her parents, nor she herself could explain the unexpected change she had undergone as she visited the convent of Saint Nino.
“We should seek humility and not holiness because holiness without humility is vanity,” Archimandrite Sergei (Chévitch), who continued the traditions of the Valaam elders for Russian emigres in France, believed.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 28
Vladyka compared Fr. John’s effect upon those around him to the effect of a miracle-working icon on a person’s soul.
Rating: 10|Votes: 28
Among the spiritual children of Elder John were both simple and highly educated people, varied in their social status and spiritual dispensation, and he found an approach and the necessary words for all of them.
Rating: 10|Votes: 20
Whenever people came to Mother Alipia (Avdeeva; c. 1910-1988) of the Goloseevsky Hermitage [named after the Goloseevsky district in Kiev.—Trans.], a renowned twentieth-century holy eldress, and sought her help, she would tell them first to go to the grave of Hieromonk Alexei (Shepelev). “Go to the cemetery! A saint lies there,” the blessed nun used to say.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 20
Two years ago the blessed elder Paul of Taganrog was recognized as a saint for the universal veneration by the Russian Orthodox Church. By his life he set a shining example of holiness in the world, and in him the Rostov region found its heavenly patron.
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 39
In the 1990s, an endless stream of people stretched from all corners of Russia to the Rylsk-St. Nicholas Monastery in the Kursk Province, —they came to resolve their most important issues, for help, and for consolation. The abbot of the monastery at that time was Archimandrite Hippolytus (Khalin, † 2002)—an unusually kind Russian elder who had passed through the spiritual school of Mt. Athos. Schema-Archimandrite Makary (Bolotov) once said of him, “If Russia had a hundred such elders, it would uproot and ascend to Heaven.”
Rating: 10|Votes: 6
For many he was more well known as Sergius of Prague. Vladyka Sergius (Korelev) spent twenty-four years of his life in Prague, and served as hierarch in countries of Western and Eastern Europe. The archbishop’s ascetic labors also have great significance for us today.
