St. Macarius the Great
Rating: 7,8|Votes: 4
Great Lent is wonderful time for increased, concentrated spiritual reading. We are spending less time planning and preparing culinary feasts, we try to distance ourselves more from the empty clatter of television programs and popular movies, and attend more church services. All of this together with the lightness of our Lenten diet aids us in focusing on our spiritual life.
Sergei Khudiev
Is beauty—the beauty of God’s world and the beauty created by pious people—a witness to God, or is it something unnecessary and empty?
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Rating: 8,7|Votes: 6
Why don’t we observe the Wednesday and Friday fast during the week of the Publican and the Pharisee? Christ tells the parable of the Pharisee and the publican in the temple. The Pharisee says that he does this and that, including that he fasts two days out of the week. Tell me, please, what days of the week were these, and why were they fast days? Who are the Pharisees?
On this first Sunday of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Church of Christ celebrates the restoration of the holy and venerable icons by the Emperor Michael, the holy and blessed Empress Theodora and the Holy Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople.
Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin
Having cast out the unclean spirit from the demon-possessed youth, the Lord said to His disciples who had tried before Him to heal the unfortunate one but couldn’t: This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting (Mt. 17:21), by this setting forth fasting as a means of spiritual warfare on the same level as prayer.