In the early morning hours of 20 November around 5:30 a two-day drama ended in which a group of about forty rebel monks, followers of the former Bishop Artemije, with the help of a group of civilians who came with them, attempted to carry out a coup in the Diocese of Raska and Prizren and by forcible occupation of monasteries to place under the control of Bishop Artemije monasteries in the north of Kosovo and the Raska region. This was a unique event, unprecedented in the history of the Serbian Orthodox Church because it was not a proclamation of schism by an active diocesan bishop, but the forcible usurpation of a Diocese by a retired Bishop who additionally has been banned by the SOC Holy Synod from conducting religious services.
Fr. Jonathan Hemmings
Father Stephen Georgeson Hatherley was such a man with a mission. He was an Englishman who converted to Orthodoxy in the late 19th century when it was difficult to do so. Such a move invited scorn and persecution from the prevailing intolerance of the establishment.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Rating: 10|Votes: 1
The word ‘angel’ comes from the Greek ‘angelos’, which means ‘a messenger’. As far as we are concerned, in the way in which we are related to the angels, they enter into our life as messengers of God. This does not mean that there is not in the angels an essence of their own, their own essential being, and that they are nothing but messengers. They are related as messengers to us; they are related to God as his own creatures which have already attained a measure of perfection and which grow eternally, endlessly into a deeper and more perfect communion with their Maker.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
Currently the Church of England is racked by division concerning the ordination of homosexual clergy and female bishops. There are now Anglicans who have already left or who are planning to leave the Church of England because they cannot square such ‘modernisation’ with their consciences.
Fr. Ian Page
I must confess that I met the idea of preaching upon today’s Gospel with a certain degree of trepidation. For several reasons, we modern people find ourselves particularly disconcerted by accounts of demonic possession and exorcism.