Rating: 10|Votes: 2
Alexander Schmorell was only 25 years old when he wrote a farewell letter to his parents from his death-row cell in Munich’s Stadelheim prison: “My dear father and mother: And so, it is not to be, Divine will has me complete my earthly life today, and to enter another, which shall never end and where we will all once again meet. May this meeting be your consolation and your hope. For you this blow, unfortunately, is heavier than for me, because I will go there knowing that I served my profound conviction and the truth. For all this I face the approaching hour of my death with a peaceful conscience.
St. Dimitry of Rostov
Rating: 7,3|Votes: 12
Many were John Chrysostom's struggles on earth, many are his crowns in heaven. He now cries out with the Apostle Paul, 'I am a sweet savour of Christ, having cleansed the whole world of the stench of error.
Often independence is the sign of maturity that we have grown up, the captain of our own ship. Yet we are growing, crashing, burning, and getting up, throughout our past childhood and this new childhood.
Olga Vasilieva
Rating: 9|Votes: 7
The year of the "Great Purge" and the following year 1938 were the hardest for the clergy and laymen—200 000 repressed and 100 000 executed. Each second priest was shot. But the Orthodox Church put up a strong resistance to the totalitarian regime. And if it comes to glorifying all Russian martyrs of the 20th century, the Russian Orthodox Church will become the Church of the Russian New Martyrs.
Although temperatures had dipped into the 20s and a bone-chilling wind blew over the Susquehanna River on Jan. 15, the Rev. Stephen Vernak and other Orthodox clergymen barely shivered as they stood by the riverbank.
