Priest Alexander Dyachenko
Grandma fell sick exactly at that tense moment. With her lungs damaged at seventy-five or even eighty percent and with critically low blood oxygen levels, she required special attention and 24/7 care. The real problem was that there was absolutely no one to look after her under the present circumstances.
“People throw icons away. They don’t need them. You can’t imagine how many icons I’ve brought to my garage! I pray for those who throw icons away and I ask the saints not to take offense at them.”
Archpriest Alexander Yavorovsky
Our engaging talk with Fr. Alexander covered topics as varied as how a broken jaw helped him become a priest, what it is like to be ordained at the age of just twenty-one, his truck driver training course and the relationship with other truckers, continuing his ministry while at the wheel of his rig, his multi-cultural parish, the Orthodox children’s camp in Belgium, why Europeans fear death, the deserted Catholic churches in Europe, government assistance and the gift of the priesthood.
I am on my mission even while driving!
Xenia Grinkova
We often reject ballet as an a priori a sinful form of art, judging it only from hearsay or scandalous stories and personalities. Meanwhile, we know of many religious ballet dancers. Anna Pavlova, Igor Moiseyev, Andris and Ilze Liepa, Svetlana Zakharova, Ulyana Lopatkina—to name but a few.
She narrated her passions, her tortures, and her sufferings as we crossed the vineyards of the valley, peregrinating on the night of the 24th to the 25th of September to the chapel of St. John the Theolgian, the Dependency of the Holy Cenóbium of the Annunciation. There, a meager vigil was to be celebrated from the ninth hour of the evening until the third hour of Matins, and then, after a brief respite of two hours, the Liturgy was to occur at daybreak.
Olga Spiridonova
An icon painter’s goal is to create the means, or the language, of communication with the prototype, and beauty should be that language.
Abbot Parthenios of St. Paul’s Monastery on Mt. Athos spoke one day at trapeza about a prayer against the coronavirus that he reads at the end of his prayer rule.
Olga Rozhneva
That’s how Misha—thin and lanky, with faded eyes and an unhealthy pallor—wound up in the monastery. He looked around the remote monastery in horror, and in his eyes lurked an unchildlike melancholy: He didn’t have his beloved computer here.
Vladimir Krupin
“So why did you come here, only for candies? You’re going out on Christmas, you’re supposed to carry the good tidings of the birth of the Son of God! That’s what Christmas caroling is all about!"
Bogdan Berezkin
We have talked with Bogdan Vladimirovich, a professional musician, a Master of Arts, a graduate of the Minsk State Academy of Music, about bells, the meaning of bell ringing, bellringers and how people become one.
Deacon Andrei Psarev
The selfless ministry of the numerous pastors of the Russian Church in the emigration has taken shape in a kind of iconographic image of ministry as expressed in the Russian saying, “for the sake of Christ Jesus and not for a bite of bread.”
Archimandrite Luke (Golovkov)
The depth of Orthodoxy and culture influence a person through an icon on conscious and unconscious levels, even if he doesn’t understand everything.
Icons and paintings have crucial differences. Only the artist who is involved in the life of the Church and has developed a prayerful relationship with God can paint icons.
Fr. Kirill Shkarbul
Father said the visit was the most successful of his many mission trips.
This is an amazing story about the courage and resilience of the Christians of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, from whom the “believers” of the Kiev Patriarchate (now the OCU) took away two churches one after the other. In a situation where people seemed to have nothing more to hope for, the believers did not back down.
Archbishop Christophoros of Jordan
Archbishop Christophoros from Jordan tells us two stories from 1970s when an earthquake happened in Greece and Mount Athos.
Anatoly Aleshin
I always wondered about the connection between man and his faith, and what the life of a religious person is like. I met some Orthodox men among my fellow conscripts. That’s when I got a hold of a Bible for the first time in my life.
The language of the icon wasn’t formed by any specific canons; its patterns of convention were necessary for the iconographer to be able to transmit the required theological content through the icon.
Hieromonk Ambrose (Sitalo)
Hieromonk Ambrose (Sitalo) is a missionary priest in the Caribbean, visiting various islands from his base in Grenada, where he serves at the Church of St. George.
