St. Philaret (Drozdov) notes: “The path of a missionary is not an easy one.”[2] The wise hierarch gave his advice to the missionary to the Altai, Archimandrite Macarius (Glukharev), that he should view the missionary work he has taken up with “a cautious eye. This is an evil age, it does not readily trust pure goodness; it greedily snatches any opportunity for complaint and slander. The sting of mockery, even if it’s unfounded, can sometimes wound and cause harm to the achievements of good endeavors”
St. Anastasius the Sinaite
Upon Mount Tabor, Jesus revealed to his disciples a heavenly mystery. While living among them he had spoken of the kingdom and of his second coming in glory, but to banish from their hearts any possible doubt concerning the kingdom and to confirm their faith in what lay in the future by its prefiguration in the present, he gave them on Mount Tabor a wonderful vision of his glory, a foreshadowing of the kingdom of heaven. It was as if he said to them:“As time goes by you may be in danger of losing your faith.
Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose)
Rating: 9,9|Votes: 20
Orthodox theology sees in the Transfiguration a prefigurement of our Lord’s Resurrection and His Second Coming, and more than this—since every event of the Church calendar has an application to the individual spiritual life—of the transformed state in which Christians shall appear at the end of the world, and in some measure even before then.
St. John of Shanghai
Rating: 9|Votes: 1
When He created the world, God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness(Gen. 1:26). God’s image manifests in man’s mental capabilities, in his authority over nature, his power, and his ability to create. God’s likeness in man consists in his moral perfection, his spiritual strivings, and in his possibility of attaining sanctity. God’s image and likeness, in which our fore-parents were created, was fully reflected in them before the fall. Sin disrupted both the former and the latter, although it did not entirely deprive man of them.
Rating: 6,9|Votes: 9
The essence of the fast is expressed in the following Church hymn: “If you fast from food, my soul, but are not purified of the passions, in vain do we comfort ourselves by not eating. For if the fast does not bring you correction, then it will be hateful to God as false, and you will be like unto the evil demons, who never eat.”
