The reading of the Great Penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is the main feature of this Matins service. This practice originated around the ninth century and its history is as follows.
Elena Detinina
Finally, Sts. Chrysanthus and Daria were thrown into a deep pit and buried alive with earth and stones. Thus in the year 283 they suffered martyrdom and received crowns of victory from the Lord.
Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh
The memory and image of St. John Climacus is offered to us now as we ascend to the days of the Passion, as an example of how God’s grace can transform an ordinary, simple person into a light for the world.
During those days, through Archbishop Serapion’s prayers, three seriously ill people were healed. And after the healing of a blind man, a paralytic, and a demoniac, the plague in Veliky Novgorod stopped.
Anatoly Kholodiuk
St. Benedict was widely revered even during his lifetime for his piety, ascetic life, selflessness, compassion, and the miracles worked through his prayers. The Lord revealed much to him.
Schema-Archimandrite Iliy (Nozdrin)
The life of the soul is supported by prayer.
St. Nikolai (Velimirovic)
Great is the power of Truth, and nothing in the world can overcome this power. Great is the healing power of Truth, and there is no suffering, no infirmity in the world for which Truth is not the medicine.
We present to our readers a story from Metropolitan Joseph (Chernov; 1893–1975) of blessing memory, about how he once nearly died from the bitter cold in a Nazi prison:
In Russia, there has long been a tradition of shaping and baking lark-shaped pastries on the Feast of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste.Why skylarks?
Olga Orlova
A person living on the land becomes self-sufficient. It is here that one can more deeply feel how God blesses human labor, and this becomes his way of life.
Igumen Seraphim Bell
Fr. Seraphim spoke of how the Church confirmed that St. Gregory’s teaching was, in fact, what the Church has always experienced and taught—that “our Orthodox life is union and communion with the living God-Man, Jesus.
Life on Athos is always an ascetic struggle.
His entire life was marked by the protection of the Most Holy Theotokos, and everything he did was in fulfillment of the will of the Sovereign Lady for the strengthening of his homeland.
Svetlana Rybakova
As we read St. Nikolai’s writings, it becomes clear that God Jesus Christ is love and the true meaning of human existence.
Just a few days before his passing, Father Iliy looked very weak physically, but his eyes shone with an unearthly light. He took my hand and said: ‘Do not be afraid of anything. The Lord is everywhere. And even when it seems that He is far away, He is closer than we think. Remember this always.’
Hieromonk Nikolai (Letunovsky)
Dear brothers and sisters, we do not rely on our own strength in our lives; we rely on the power of the Holy Church in which we are standing.
The first thing she did was to distribute her wealth among the poor and the destitute. And then, on the advice of Fr. Herman, she became a member of a community of unmarried women ascetics, where she devoted all her energies and time to labors, repentance and the feats of ascetic life.
And in summer in our God–preserved city of Lugansk, as if by special order exactly during the Eucharistic Canon the glass in our church windows and stained-glass windows would always begin to shake badly from the nearby artillery fire. And what next?No one left!
St. Seraphim (Chichagov)
The proclamation of anathema means excommunication from the Church; that is, from the society of believers, and the loss of the blessing of God, the blessings of the Kingdom of Heaven.
St. Polycarp replied calmly and firmly to all this: “We do not trade the best for the worst: It is a noble thing to turn from wickedness to righteousness. I have been serving the Lord for eighty-six years now, and I will be faithful to Him to the death.”