5/9/2014
Andrei Gorbachev
How good, how pleasant, how joyful it is to be a Christian! If you are a Christian, you are always with God, and God is always with you. Wherever you are, wherever you go, everywhere you will have God Himself as your Companion.
The one who renounced Christ lost both this earthly life and eternal salvation, while the one who resolved to die for the Lord inherited eternal blessedness.
The services of Holy Thursday and Great and Holy Friday repeatedly and unequivocally state that Judas was a communicant of the Body and Blood of Christ along with the other apostles.
Thus, satan acted through Judas after the Savior had given him a morsel just as demons spoke through the possessed man, and the devil tempted Eve through the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Therefore, the Lord said to satan himself through Judas: "That thou doest, do quickly".
Probably everyone has in their lifetime heard someone admit roughly the following: “I’m unlucky; all my life I’ve been surrounded by scoundrels.” Others say the exact opposite: “I’m lucky. All my life I’ve had such wonderful people with me, kind and upright.” What is the reason for such contradictory opinions?
“I am disappointed in human beings,” was the first thing I heard, when I answered the phone call from a priest I knew. This priest was a father of five, a quiet and collected person, who was no stranger to moderate and appropriate humor and absolutely averse to melodrama.
Why do we see the need for drivers to have driving skills and know the Highway Code as natural, yet the suggestion that we should be at least minimally acquainted with “the rules of spiritual life” often causes our indignation and even protest?...
Rating: 9.9|Votes: 22
The joy that Christian saints had is immutable because it is founded not upon the sand of earthly passions and consolations, but upon the rock of divine love. A clear example of this spiritual joy is to be found in the life of Holy Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky).
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The absence of passed-down tradition in modern daily Orthodox life often leads us to situations when we believe in Orthodoxy, but we don’t know how to react to those everyday situations in a Christian way. Perhaps the following unpretentious examples from the life of a simple Russian woman might aid us in resolving this complicated problem.
Today one can often hear the phrase: “Why go to church if I have God in my heart?” It would seem that one could only envy this person. True, if God is in your heart, then church-going is seen as something quite unnecessary.
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 16
Nowadays in Church circles there is more and more talk that the lives of the new martyrs remain irrelevant, and the names of the majority of new martyrs and confessors of Russia are little known even to church people. That is true, and it indicates that Church-related issues are alien to the bulk of modern Russian society. This is why new martyrs’ подвиг is still incomprehensible.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 8
“A thousand-mile journey begins with one step,” say the Chinese. So also every passion begins with one thought, which is called prilog, or “suggestion”. This term describes a thought, but also an image, a feeling, a desire, or a state that suddenly arises in the human soul; however that is not to mean all thoughts or states, but only those aimed at separating us from God.
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
“He simply would give away everything that he had—which they asked for. He wasn’t interested in his things. So someone, out of charity, had to look after his suitcase at any rate. And he had such a helper on Solovki, too…"
