4/29/2023
Bishop Nestor (Donenko) of Yalta
And the experience of a martyr says that if an external evil is coming, evil thoughts are beginning to attack from inside, your neighbors appear to be very “distant”, and you are betrayed and sold, you understand that there is something that you cannot betray—and a hero appears in literature—but most importantly, a Christian, a martyr appears.
When the time of persecution, sorrows, and illness comes, a person mobilizes and realizes that earthly life is a special space, that it is not a health resort or a sanatorium. There is little point in seeking pleasures and pleasant sensations—that is the greatest illusion.
Svetlana Rybakova
Mother Anna was, as they say now, an icon of her age. As a little girl, she went to the funeral of Patriarch St. Tikhon with her father.
It would be no exaggeration to say that Mother Anania’s entire life was a prayerful labor of service to the Lord and for the salvation of the souls of others.
St. Alexei Monastery was the first monastery for women in Moscow.
The wonderful stork walked in procession right with the faithful along the side of the road as far as Belynichi—over seven miles!
Having become famous in Moscow, the veneration of the “Three Joys” Icon spread throughout Russia very quickly, but in the Russian iconographic tradition.
In the early twenty-first century, the wonderworking “Unfading Blossom” Icon of the Mother of God, not made by hands, was revealed to the world in Russia’s Samara region.
