St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost (Lk. 19:10) Beloved brethren! These merciful words that we hear today in the Gospel are spoken by God become man about the sinner whom God’s righteous judgment had pronounced lost, but who was sought out by the power and grace of redemption, and numbered by it among the saved.
Kathryn Wehr
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
A few months ago I witnessed my first “Churching”—a liturgy said for a new mother when she returns to church, usually 40 days after the birth of her child. Often it is done just before the child’s baptism. The mother waited with her infant daughter at the back door of the church, facing the iconostasis. The priest came and read the Churching prayers and then led them and their friends and family forward to the baptismal font set in front of the royal doors. Churching follows a long tradition of purification prayers for new mothers used in both the Christian East and West, but they have fallen out of use in some places because people are ambivalent about what these prayers mean, particularly references to the woman’s uncleanness and sin.
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
The meeting of God and man, which first took place in the Jerusalem Temple, must become a personal event for every individual. The path of salvation must begin for each person by a meeting with Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. Until this meeting takes place, one remains sitting in darkness … and the shadow of death (cf. Mt. 4:16).
Rating: 2|Votes: 2
Priest Georgiy Kochetkov is the leader of a heretical movement within the Russian Orthodox Church. His activities have lead to a considerable disturbance among the Orthodox, and his community is in conflict with the rest of the Orthodox community in Russia. Even more alarming is that it he is not content to confine his activity to Russia, but is attempting to spread it in other countries among people new to the Church, who do not know better. Biblical scholar and hieromonk of Sretensky Monastery Fr. Job (Gumerov) explains why Fr. Georgiy Kochetkov’s teachings are heretical in the extreme.
Rating: 10|Votes: 5
A few months later the God-hating communists came to power and began dragging the Church to her Golgotha. It was a time of choice—between a martyric confession and the kiss of Judas. Inspired by that master deceiver and father of lies, the communists tried to conceal their base intent. They were reluctant to make known their militantly antireligious policy, and publicized their actions as assisting the good of the majority, twisting opposing religious conviction into censurable political dissent. But they were hard pressed to catch in their nets Petrograd's chief hierarch
