Priest Sergei Nikulin
A crucial aspect of pastoral ministry, aside from the services, is caring for people.
Archpriest Eugene Popichenko
Gratitude is the norm of life. This is a commandment both in relation to God and to people.
LPriest Sergei Nikulin
Every person is destined for joy. This talent is given to each according to his strength.
Hieromonk Philaret (Trunin)
During the day we have many reasons for getting offended, but a Christian should not allow evil into his heart, and still less should he make plans to take revenge on anyone who offends him. But how can we do it? How can we learn this? These questions were discussed at a pastoral meeting organized by Hieromonk Philaret (Trunin) from Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery.
Elena Nasledysheva
And she was unable to explain it: “It is right here, you see, here,” and she’d point to her heart. But her husband would say, “God is telling us to do this.”
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.
Priest Alexei Shishkin
This theme raises the question of what an Orthodox Christian should be like in certain circumstances. He must be Orthodox: an Orthodox Christian on a trolleybus, an Orthodox walking down the street, an Orthodox entering a church, an Orthodox working. What makes him different from other people is that he makes efforts to fulfill the commandments of God, to pray, and to turn to God with his heart.
A real Christian remains one everywhere—in everyday life, in communication with a stranger; a seller or a buyer, a boss or a subordinate. For a Christian everything is subordinated to the same Gospel law, which is the basis of his spiritual life.
Sergei Alekseyev
In the proper sense of the word, state power is already a matter of the 10th century, and the key role here was played by the Christianization of Rus at the end of the 10th century.
Archpriest Darko Đogo, Doctor of Theology, Professor at the Orthodox Theological Faculty of St. Basil of Ostrog (University of East Sarajevo, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbian Orthodox Church), talks with Moscow seminarians about Serbian Church life, the Church in North Macedonia, Russian-Serbian relations, the New Testament, and more.
Marilyn Swezey
The main and constant miracle was the effect presence of the icon on people in the who were uplifted, and sometimes just brought to a renewal of their faith.
Olga Bobrovnikova, Nun Seraphima (Golovina)
Monastic life for men and for women is the same: we take the same vows. The most important thing is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, purity and chastity.
Hieromonk Athanasius (Deryugin)
Our saints strove to ensure that the Liturgy never ceased, even when there were a minimum of possible external conditions for this.
Bishop Benjamin of Rybinsk and Romanov-Borisoglebsk
When the Lord calls you, you have to answer yourself whether it is your path or not. You cannot go to a monastery because it is beautiful or right, but because you love God and want to serve Him.
Metropolitan Vadim (Lazebny)
If we can send a spiritual “recruit” out of our midst into the monastic “army”, then we are more or less spiritually healthy. If a monastery becomes a center that attracts those seeking spiritual life, then many problems of people in the world will disappear too.
Abbess Alexandra (Zharin)
The Orthodox were terribly persecuted by the secular authorities of Rzeczpospolita, the Catholics and Uniates. People were humiliated, deprived of their civil rights, tortured and killed, but they remained faithful to Orthodoxy.
Professor Alexei Svetozarsky, Vitaly Kaplan
Of course, the majority of people did not understand the full depth of the Christian teaching, but they accepted it in the simplicity of their hearts, out of trust. It is a distinctive characteristic of patriarchal societies: “This is what our elders did, and we will imitate it.” For example, the Tale of Bygone Years conveys this position as follows: if the prince, the boyars, and the armed force (“druzhina”) had not assessed this faith positively and had not considered it to be their own, then they would have had no reason to get baptized.
Viktor Nemerovsky
Nicholas II simultaneously initiated, supervised, and financed more than 30 international-level peacekeeping projects.
Nun Manetha (Sizintseva)
There is the “Holy Land syndrome”: if you have come here at least once, then you long to be here all the time.
