Fr. Stephen Freeman
Rating: 2|Votes: 1
In our voluntary union with Christ and His Cross, we bear a little shame, and bring the cycle of shame and violence into the silence and healing of paradise.
St. Seraphim (Sobolev)
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.
Hieromartyr Thaddeus (Uspensky)
The holy Church wants to prick our souls with the spectacle at which the angelic powers marvel with trepidation: as the Master Who “rules the ungovernable waters of the heavens… is embraced by the flowing waters,” as He Who adorns the heavens with clouds is adorned Himself with the waters of Jordan, as the Creator of man Himself is stripped bare to cover the nakedness of Adam, to vest him anew in the light garments of spiritual rebirth, and to warm by these garments the fallen human soul cooled from the winter of passions.
Archbishop Amvrosy (Ermakov), Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Rating: 3,5|Votes: 2
Is the holy water blessed on Theophany still Theophany water all week? Is there any difference between the water blessed on the Eve of the Theophany and the water blessed on the day of the Theophany? When should we get the water to take home? Was St. John the Baptist baptized? Does it matter whether a wooden cross or some metal cross was used to sanctify the waters?
At twenty years of age he secretly left his parents’ home and settled in the Abgar monastery.
