Rating: 7|Votes: 6

Orthodox Ireland. Part I

Vladimir de Beer

It is generally believed that St Patrick brought the Christian Faith to Ireland, his traditional title being Apostle of the Irish. Without wishing to diminish St Patrick’s importance in any way, it is relevant to point out that in 431 St Palladius was sent to Ireland by St Celestine I Pope of Rome, as the first bishop of the Emerald Isle, with the task of administering the sacraments ‘to the Irish who professed Christ’.

Rating: 10|Votes: 1

Christmas Message of His Holiness Patriarch KIRILL of Moscow and All Russia, to the Archpastors, Pastors, Monastics and All Faithful Children of the Russian Orthodox Church

For two thousand years Christians throughout the world have turned, with joy and hope, their mental gazes to the event which has been decisive for the history of mankind. Our contemporary reckoning of time, which begins with the Nativity and is the reckoning of time for the Christian era, testifies to the exceptional meaning of the coming of Christ the Saviour.

Nativity epistle of Hilarion, Metropolitan of New York and Eastern America, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral)

Each year the feast of the Nativity of Christ enters into our hearts with ineffable spiritual joy—the joy that came to earth when the angel of the Lord announced the birth of Christ the Savior to the simple shepherds of Bethlehem. The feast of the Nativity also fills us with radiant joy through the profound content of its divine services, which illumine our souls: the deeply edifying and divinely inspired hymnody of the Nativity and the readings taken from the prophecies.

Rating: 7|Votes: 3

Holy Scripture and the Church

New Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop of Verey

The following article was written in 1914, when St. Hilarion was an archimandrite and a professor of the Imperial Moscow Spiritual Academy. Its message is especially pertinent for our times, when there is widespread confusion and ignorance about the true nature of Christ’s Church and about the right approach to Holy Scripture. It can provide invaluable help to Orthodox Christians in understanding their Faith more deeply, and in defending and giving an account of it when confronted with heterodox — especially Protestant — claims.

Rating: 7,7|Votes: 15

May his soul dwell with the Righteous!

In memoriam of Patriarch Pavle

Yuri Maximov

He leads an ascetic life and is a living example of an evangelical pastor. He lives in Christ in the full sense of this word… As an Orthodox monk he fasts, that is, does not eat meat, and keeps a very strict fast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays… He serves the Liturgy every morning in a small chapel in the building of the patriarchate. There is no choir there, and only parishioners sing…