Priest Yaroslav Dragun
Rating: 9,9|Votes: 16
“Don’t worry,” his confessor comforted him. “Do this: at your ordination, when the bishop places his hand on your head with the prayer invoking the Holy Spirit—at that moment ask God for everything you want that is spiritual and beneficial; and believe that it will all come true. Don’t doubt it".
Lolita Naranovich, Xenia Ryabova
Rating: 9,7|Votes: 6
Xenia Ryabova, five times Paralympic dressage champion, was born with cerebral palsy. Xenia has told me the story of her life which, in my opinion, can be regarded as a modern equivalent of “the story of a real man”.
Rating: 9,7|Votes: 13
You wouldn’t suspect that the jovial Orthodox priest who carries the gold chalise with such reverence from behind the iconostasis of “Mother of Unexpected Joy” church was once a drug dealing, rambling hippie and coffee-house owner with his own underground band.
Priest Sergei Begiyan
Rating: 9,5|Votes: 18
Indeed all the canonized righteous people make up only one percent of the total number of saints at most. And it is not because the righteous are few in number.
Rating: 9,2|Votes: 77
The Russian multimedia project “Russian Roads” www.rusroads.com was created to provide a picture of the Russian land—its nature, culture, and history; its past and its present.
Patriarch Irinej of Serbia
Rating: 8,9|Votes: 16
His Holiness Patriarch Irinej of Serbia speaks in a homily about how the Church has overcome the threat of godless communism by the grace of the Holy Spirit, entering a new period of flourishing.
Tamar Lomidze
Rating: 9,4|Votes: 11
On November 16, 2017 the self-proclaimed “Patriarch” Philaret (Denisenko) of Kiev and all Rus’-Ukraine wrote a letter of reconciliation and restoration of communion to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). But two weeks later he denied any apologies or formal unity with the ROC. So why then did he write that ambiguous letter?
Fr. Lawrence Farley
Rating: 9,5|Votes: 31
Some people in particular are distressed when they see in Christian writers anything polemical or negative. Why, they ask, do these Christian writers have to denounce certain trends and ideas?
Fr. Barnabas Powell
Rating: 8,1|Votes: 45
Is there any problem with being pro-life and supporting the death penalty? I didn't think so, until a conversation years ago got me thinking.
Vasiliy Shchipkov
Rating: 8,1|Votes: 18
You boast, “We have entered into a covenant with death, with the realm of the dead we have made an agreement. When an overwhelming scourge sweeps by, it cannot touch us, for we have made a lie our refuge and falsehood our hiding place.” (Isaiah 28:15)
Rating: 6,5|Votes: 8
As part of reporting for a piece in this week’s issue about the relationship between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox church, The Economist spoke to Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the Church’s external affairs boss. The full transcript, lightly edited for readability, is published here.
Vladimir Basenkov
Rating: 9,7|Votes: 40
Some reflections on the sensational book by an Orthodox American Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option, the post-Christian world, and some parallels with the reality in Russia.
Priest Dimitry Vidumkin
Rating: 10|Votes: 15
I should immediately clarify that I was a guest of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of All Georgia. This is how it happened…
Fr. John Valadez
Rating: 9,1|Votes: 16
As the reader will take notice, the waters David Bowie thought he could wade through turned out to be a rip current of no return. Sometime after releasing Young Americans, Bowie entered a stage of heavy drugs and dabbling in the occult. He would snort cocaine, and read books on white magic and the occult, doing what he thought would safeguard his psyche against evil powers.
Sergei Geruk, Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl
Rating: 9,6|Votes: 20
On the second day of the Nativity, January 8, on the eve of the evening services, about thirty men in balaclavas and masks from the radical right organization C14 (“Sich”) blocked the entrance to the territory of the Holy Dormition Kiev-Caves Lavra. Shouting political slogans and lighting fireworks, they demanded a meeting with the abbot of the Lavra, Metropolitan Paul (Lebed).
Rating: 7,8|Votes: 6
Bishop Mark fell asleep in the Lord on Monday, January 8.
Nicholai Bulchuk, Andrei Kotov
Rating: 9,7|Votes: 28
Only a handful of specialists now know about a liturgical rite called “the Furnace Act” practiced in Russia from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and mentioned as early as the tenth century in Byzantium. It was a rite that was celebrated on the great feasts. With this rite also began the forefeast of the Nativity of Christ.
James George Jatras
Rating: 6,6|Votes: 7
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) bills itself as “the collective voice of the Muslim world.”
Anna Yakovleva
Rating: 8,9|Votes: 20
On October 7, 2017, several prominent European intellectuals published a Paris Statement titled “A Europe We Believe In”, which consists of 36 points postulating the loss of European identity due to the prevailing political, economic and cultural codes adopted and enforced by the EU, and pointing out ways to address this challenge.
Rating: 8,8|Votes: 19
The president's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital was a blast from the past for me.
