11/20/2008
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
In fact, it was not just a ruler who was killed, but a family. It was the terrible and demonstrative murder of a Russian family. They stormed into a domestic church and smashed everything inside, flooding everything with blood, desecrating everything, and then the history of our people in the twentieth century was stained with this blood.
When something happens to us, whether joy or sorrow, the first thing we should do is thank the Lord in order to be united with Him and become partakers.
Why are these sicknesses and trials being sent to me? They are sent so that hope in God’s grace would come and abide in our hearts!
In the All-Russia Museum of decorative arts an exhibition was held, called, “The Artistic Inheritance of the Stroganovs. The Starting Point. Solvychegorsk”.
The main thing that distinguishes the Mother of God from us is her submission to God’s will. No murmuring, no resistance can be seen in this Handmaiden of God, the Queen of Heaven and Earth, our Intercessor.
This man, who struggled in the wilderness and "crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts", acquired the spirit of peace, acquired the Holy Spirit, and as the Church sings: “becoming for many the way to salvation.”
Because we don’t reform, our souls are not filled with grace. Our repentance is not true. We come to confession, mumble something as if repenting, but still cannot understand anything.
The signing of the Basic Agreement strengthens the position of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the region and moves the discussion about its legal status and participation in public life in Montenegro to a totally different level.
The Nativity of St. John the Baptist among the Serbs, by analogy with many other festivals, is called Ivanjdan. In some places special church folk traditions are associated with it.
The grace of the Holy Spirit is our greatest treasure.
Today we are experiencing a wave of trials and events that are changing the life we are used to; that way of life, which has existed for probably the last fifteen to twenty years, has suddenly been shaken.
In honor of the 625th anniversary of Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, a photo album, Saints Adorning an Ancient Cathedral, dedicated to the frescoes of the Cathedral of the Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, built in the early eighteenth century, was published. The album presents the most vivid and expressive images, preserving a special artistic beauty.
In order to understand what a clear picture the Lord offered his listeners, we have to remember that His words were directed at the Jews, for whom pigs are an unclean animal.
The ideal for a Christian should be not progress but transformation—a movement upward to the grace of the Holy Spirit, to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
In this story, we see the story of our lives.
Only our repentance and prayer to the Mother of God can avert this horror, this defeat, this despondency, this captivity to the devil and his servants.
It’s even hard to imagine today how someone could have done it during those years. An eccentric, living in the Georgian caves, who for no apparent reason paints reproductions from the abandoned frescoes.
God Himself came down from Heaven and became man, and at that moment, we all became His kindred according to the flesh. When we behave poorly in some way, we thereby offend our loved ones, our kinsmen.
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov), Metropolitan Amfilohije (Radovich)
Rating: 7.4|Votes: 104
On one side is the whole Eastern civilization, and on the other is the so-called Western, Euro-American civilization, based on the imperial idea, a synthesis of pagan Rome that deified the emperor and the primacy of the Roman bishop.
Anyone who wants to desecrate your church and consign it to another use, wants to degrade you as a human being, as a people, as a faith; to take away your right to existence and a future.
If we will not be the people of God, then we will not be a people at all. We will be a mindless herd with no will of its own, sinners and slaves to the devil.
Such people, already stinking with their sins, already perished and dead, the Lord resurrects, cleanses, brings closer to Himself, and joins them to Himself in the eternal resurrection and in eternal life. The story of Lazarus is the story of every one of us.
The Annunciation symbolizes the beginning of our salvation. Therefore, the Church of God depicts this icon [often] on the royal doors, which is the entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven.
This mad, self-satisfied state is the most terrible state in spiritual life that could possibly be imagined.
This call was directed to all of us. The path of our lives should be straightened. The sins, defects, and potholes in our souls should be filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit.
The Orthodox faithful in Montenegro are greeting the New Year 2020 in on the streets of their cities. All over the country they are holding prayer services, cross processions and peaceful meetings at which people are praying and protesting against the new discriminatory Church Property Law, passed the day before by the Montenegrin Parliament and signed by President Milo Dukanovic.
Whenever he saw untruth, he struggled against it; whenever he saw any injustice, sin, or evil happening to his neighbors, St. Nicholas at once did his best to stop it and help them.
Our children, just like the Mother of God, are very pure and precious vessels, not yet sullied, not poisoned with the vices of this world. But the world is preparing a terrible lot for them—it is doing everything it can to defile them and make them vessels of sin.
Rating: 9|Votes: 16
The Holy Spirit works in Christians, but people deprived of such grace can neither understand nor tolerate it, but try to ridicule it, often from their misunderstanding. But the Spirit of Divine grace also works on them—we just have to show apostolic zeal and labor to bring this Divine grace to the entire world.
Rating: 8.1|Votes: 19
We often fall into despondency, into a certain doubt, the feeling that we have parted with Christ and He has departed from us. But the Divine grace of the Holy Spirit, promised by our Savior, is always present with us; it does not depart from us unless we lose this joy and hope that filled the apostles.
Rating: 8.7|Votes: 12
Living waters will spring from him who drinks from the well. Having filled the soul with the grace of the Holy Spirit and God’s love, each of us becomes a source of this divine grace for everyone else.
Rating: 7.9|Votes: 15
Death, infirmity, temporality and susceptibility to passions entered this world with the sin; they are interwoven. Sin destroys everything in a man, both his body and his soul. Any doctor is perfectly aware of it.
Rating: 9.8|Votes: 22
This is an example of how people who, as we believe, deserve condemnation for their hypocrisy or cowardice turn out to be even more self-denying and courageous disciples of Christ.
Rating: 10|Votes: 35
What advice can we give to a person who is getting ready to fast properly for the first time in his life and to pass through the time of Great Lent with austerity? What does he need to be cautious about and to what should he pay particular attention?
Rating: 10|Votes: 20
We recall the event that the world either doesn’t know about or tries very hard to forget. And the devil does everything he can to make sure that people either don’t think about it, or don’t know about it, or don’t know what it will be like.
Rating: 10|Votes: 26
In this article, priests of the Russian Orthodox Church offer their thoughts on what this time represents for us, how to worthily greet the feast of the Nativity of Christ, and what to pay attention to first of all in the spiritual life.
Rating: 8.2|Votes: 39
In rocky Herzegovina, not far from the city of Trebinje, there sits the Monastery of Sts. Peter and Paul. Church Tradition preserves testimony that the apostles Paul and Titus passed through the area and preached on their way to Dalmatia.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 20
Today we will acquaint you with the podvig of one of the newly-glorified saints—the holy New Martyr Vasilije, the baker from Peć.
Rating: 10|Votes: 27
Today we will acquaint you with the podvig of one of the newly-glorified saints—the holy Monk-Martyr Grigorije, a monk of Peć.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 20
Banja Monastery in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, one of the oldest holy shrines of the Serbian land, stands close to the town of Priboj in the very heart of Serbia.
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 7
This man left a great many writings after him and indeed very few ascetics can rival him in this. Yet perhaps his principal work is something that all of us participate in and that plays an important role in our salvation—that is, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
Archbishop Mark (Arndt), Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
We spoke to Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany of ROCOR--who had contributed a great deal towards the overcoming of division in the Russian Church--about the experience of the Church over the last decade, about the importance of venerating the New Martyrs, and about the events and processes that made reconciliation possible.
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
“The fathers of the Church say that this bliss is a pledge of great blessings for us, perhaps greater than the holy apostles were accounted worthy of, but on condition that we, like the apostles, full of this blessedness, must give our entire lives to Christ, and serve His Gospel evangelism. This is the condition for felicity. Such a great gift the Lord gives us: We are more blessed in this world than the apostles.“
Rating: 5.5|Votes: 2
Divine grace is indeed the real meat and drink for all of us. If we deprive ourselves of this grace, then anything else that we will achieve and acquire in our life will have no meaning—it will only lead us further and further away from our salvation and Christ, from communion with God.
“What is Serbia without Kosovo and Metodija? It is a corpse without a soul and heart. Holy Serbia can exist only together with Kosovo and Metodija."
The Montenegrin official authorities, unlike those of neighboring Serbia, in every possible way are trying to diminish the importance of St. Sava’s heritage and do not arrange any official celebrations on his feast-day. But the Church commemorates his memory for several days and organizes a wide range of meetings and cultural events.
Rating: 6.8|Votes: 5
In his recent interview with the journalists of Vesti newspaper Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral stressed that the attitude of the Church towards the so-called “gay parades” remains unchangeable.
"We still have hope," states a communiqué in the Rasko-Prizren diocese, "that the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, which prayerfully revived the monastery of the Holy Trinity, will be followed by other steps leading to a popular and spiritual rebirth, and Serbian return to this land."
We imagine New Zealand as a distant, fairy tale land at the end of the earth. Its landscapes have become known only recently through their depiction in the movies. Nevertheless, few know that Orthodox parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad have existed here for a half century now. Other local Orthodox churches also serve the spiritual needs of their flocks in New Zealand.
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov), Zinaida Oborneva
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
Missionary work in this area is always dangerous. We hope in God's grace and the protection of the Mother of God. I am often in hot spots of Eastern Congo; we experience all those events, and are consoled and thank God that we have endured these trials. We have Christians there, missionary centers and parishes, which must not be abandoned.
The bishop and the priests were told that they were undesirables and that they must abandon their flocks. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, openly told Vladyka that he must leave ‘Croatian’ Karlovac, otherwise he would be liquidated. Vladyka answered him: ‘Even if it costs me my head, I will not abandon my people!’ Soon it became clear that the Catholic Archbishop was not joking. Vladyka Sabbas was arrested and horribly tortured. During the tortures and beatings in Plashkom, the Ustashi used a gramophone to play the hymn, ‘As many as have been baptized in Christ, have put on Christ’.
