One day, a priest was riding a commuter train listening to one of Dostoevsky’s greatest novels with his headphones. In the meantime, an elderly lady standing nearby was dying from curiosity: What was father listening to?
Mother Sergia (Starkova)
We learned this lesson from this encounter: There’s a special language—the language of the love of Christ, when hearts beat in unison and no interpreter is required.
Priest Dionisy Kamenshchikov
We are rebuilding the village church guided not by logic, but by the call of our hearts.
Priest John Dimitrov
The Church is the house of God, not of man. In this house, everybody is a guest, and there is only one Host.
Father Gică did not imagine that he would play an essential role in the rescue operation.
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.
