The road leading to the monastery of Saint Andreas has been abandoned to the elements since the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus. In the middle of the road, sheep from herds block your passage, making it impossible for a car to get by - images one rarely meets elsewhere. They graze in the nearby dry fields, on the left and on the right of the road. The rain has not come yet to quench the earth.
Sophia Kishkovsky
To mark the fifth anniversary of that reunification and to promote an English translation of his book, titled “Everyday Saints,” Father Tikhon toured the United States in October with the Sretensky Monastery Choir. His book runs 640 pages and has sold over 1.1 million copies in Russian. Millions more have been downloaded electronically, Father Tikhon said. OLMA Media Group, which published the book in 2011, announced in August that it was the country’s biggest best seller since the Soviet era. The profits are going back into the Sretensky Monastery, Father Tikhon said, to build a cathedral honoring those killed there for their religious faith in Soviet times.
In America, people speak openly and eagerly about religion. This is a special characteristic of the American people. That doesn’t necessarily mean serious, profound discussions of matters of faith. People walking to the grocery store, or taking a walk, are genuinely interested in what church their friends go, what their faith is about, which religion they confess, etc. The overwhelming majority of Americans consider themselves religious, even if they don’t attend church. This allows us to talk to them freely about our Orthodox Faith.
Rowan Atkinson, one of Britain’s most popular film and television comedy stars, has told the government that the hate speech provisions of the Public Order Act must be repealed to uphold the country’s ancient traditions of freedom of speech. He said he wanted to counter “the Outrage Industry: self-appointed arbiters of the public good, encouraging media-stoked outrage, to which the police feel under terrible pressure to react.”
The apocalyptic visions begin just inside the doors of the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum and many of them lead into the Book of Revelation. The final pages of Christian scripture are full of angels, trumpets, flames, thunder, lighting, earthquakes and catastrophes that shake heaven and earth.
