2/8/2016
St. Seraphim (Sobolev)
Therefore, beloved, let us always remember that not a single prayer to the Mother of God is fruitless, for her love for us is too great, and her intercession for us before the throne of God is all-powerful.
Our preservation of the Orthodox faith, or Church teaching, which is alien to all heresies and every kind of modernism, is the fount of all the ineffable mercies of God to us.
Of course, acquiring humility is the most difficult of all podvigs.
And because the Most Pure Mother of God is our first Intercessor and Deliverer from all our misfortunes, it is clear that all our prayers to her to save us from all our afflictions, and that we might receive every temporal blessing, should have humility behind them. She turns directly away from the proud and greatly loves the humble, as Church tradition testifies; or more precisely, the lives of holy people testify.
Rating: 7.8|Votes: 4
What does it mean to live with Christ? To live with Christ means to dwell with Him in unity; and unity with Christ is nothing other than our love for Him, the desire of our hearts to ever contemplate Him, to ever prayerfully converse with Him, and to do only that which is pleasing to Him.
Rating: 5|Votes: 1
We must not only rejoice that we are children of the Orthodox Church, receiving from it this great grace; but we must unveil this grace in our lives, unto its wondrous manifestations. And this will come to pass only when we will steadily fulfill all the Divine commandments. Therefore let the words of Apostle Paul, heard by us in the Liturgy today, awaken in us not only a feeling of joy, but also the desire to realize this in our lives. Then the grace of the Holy Spirit will teach us the salvific, chaste, and holy life.
Rating: 7.3|Votes: 9
The following English translation of a theological work by the newly-canonized Saint Seraphim (Sobolev) of Boguchar was first published on the Website of the Diocese of Etna and Portland, an Old Calendar Greek jurisdiction. It is Archbishop Seraphim’s presentation at the July, 1948 Congress of Moscow, where the subject of ecumenism was discussed at length.
