Rating: 9,5|Votes: 2

Sermon on the Epiphany

Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)

The time has come when mankind has been consumed with activities which displease God, in which the Enemy of mankind reigns, and, as they said in old days, this Enemy makes everyone dance to his flute. This fuss and bother, which envelops our daily lives, is distasteful to God, and God is absent from it, and the Enemy of God is master and ruler of it. If we gave the promise to renounce Satan and all his works, then we must fulfill it, and try not to crush our souls with daily cares, remembering what the Church teaches: “there is one thing needful,” only one thing necessary—to remember that we must unite ourselves with Christ, that is, not only fulfill His commandments but to try to unite with Him.

Rating: 10|Votes: 4

Discourse On the Day of the Baptism of Christ

St. John Chrysostom

There is not one Theophany, but two: the one actual, which already has occurred, and the second in future, which will happen with glory at the end of the world. About this one and about the other you will hear today from Paul, who in conversing with Titus, speaks thus about the present: "The grace of God hath revealed itself, having saved all mankind, decreeing, that we reject iniquity and worldly desires, and dwell in the present age in prudence and in righteousness and piety"—and about the future: "awaiting the blessed hope and glorious appearance of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ"

Rating: 10|Votes: 9

Fragments of Orthodoxy in English Popular Tradition

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

If we take a human lifetime as the Biblical threescore years and ten, only fourteen lifetimes ago the English Church was an integral part of the Orthodox family, belonging to the Universal Church of Christ. For nearly five centuries the English were in communion with the rest of Christendom. There were close contacts with Eastern Christendom. One of England's sainted Archbishops, Theodore of Tarsus, was a Greek; Greek monks and a bishop lived in England at the end of the 10th century, and Gytha, the daughter of the Old English King, Harold II, married in Kiev. It is clear that during such a long period, a half-millennium, the Christian faith impregnated the way of life of the people and the Old English monarchy. It is clear that traces of the Faith of the first five centuries of English Christianity, a Faith that was Orthodox though not Byzantine, must have remained after the 11th century.

Rating: 10|Votes: 6

From the Life of St. Seraphim of Sarov

Elena Kontsevitch

Two and a half miles from the monastery, on the shore of the Sarovka River, in a dense pine forest, there stood a wooden one-room cell with a porch and a small wing—this was the Saint’s hermitage. He had a small garden where he grew potatoes, cabbage, onions, beets, etc. He lived there nearly sixteen years. “Having tasted of God’s sweetness, one longs for silence,” said St. John of the Well, “in order to partake of it tirelessly without impediment.” The holy Elder’s soul lived in a state of prayer that had long since become ceaseless.

Homily on the Circumcision of the Lord

Igumen Nikon (Vorobiev)

According to the Law of Moses, the law given by the Lord Himself to Abraham, anyone who wanted to be a member of the Israelite nation, the chosen people of God, had to subject himself to a particularly bloody operation. This applied to anyone of the male sex. They were given what was called circumcision. This sign of circumcision remained with them for the rest of their lives. It was a reminder that this man is a member of the Israelite nation. But almost everything that took place in the Old Testament was but a shadow prefiguring the subject that was just about to come.