Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The day of Pentecost was the day, when the Old Testament theocracy which began on Sinai and ruled the people through the written law, the law of slavery and of death, was replaced by the New Testament law, where the people are led by the Spirit of God, the spirit of adoption and freedom (Rom. 8). Thus, as the Pascha of Christ abolished the Old Testament Pascha, the New Testament Pentecost replaces the Old Testament one, from which life under the law began.
Old Russian monasticism was a clear manifestation of the morality of Russian secular society: the yearning for departure from the secular world was growing along with the rise of moral standards and not because of increasing calamities. It means that Russian monasticism was renouncing the world for the sake of ideals too high for it, and not for the sake of principles hostile to it. —V. Klyuchevsky
Rating: 8,6|Votes: 9
The Church calls us to keep this fast according to the example of the holy Apostles, who, having received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, prepared themselves to preach the Gospels to the whole world.
Rating: 10|Votes: 4
"The argument that each nation, only because it is different from another nation, should have an autocephalous Church is unsupported. At the same time, the argument is unsupported which says that a mature local Church cannot be self-governed only because it does not have a different nationality from one that already has autocephaly. National affiliation cannot and must not be the only criterion for independence. The Church measures according to the criterion of maturity in love and service, and according to pastoral needs, and not according to those who ask for autocephaly on the basis of the separateness of the nation and the state."
We thank the Lord that, this far from our Homeland, He yet gives us strength to reject any “foreign gods,” to preserve our recognition and vibrant understanding that without standing firm in the Orthodox Church, the Russian person is nothing, and his life becomes a toy in the hands of the “ancient slayer of man,” or, at best, he becomes empty, and, wandering off into political or social activity, becomes as a “tinkling cymbal,” that is, he becomes nothing but noise.
