Priest Gleb Grozovsky
Rating: 8,2|Votes: 12
Oh, how important it is to submit the body to the spirit in order to escape a family break-up. Today in Russia over fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce [and America is not far behind]; every second union of loving couples falls apart. Is this really love? The causes of this may be various, but the meaning is the same.
Rating: 10|Votes: 5
We have not written this in order to reproach them, but may not the fools glory in their folly, saying, "We have delivered the Russian land by our weapons", but may they give glory to God and His Most Pure Mother the Theotokos, for He has saved us; and may they reject this folly, and do battle after battle, and bravery after bravery for the sake of Orthodox Christianity against the [works of] infidels.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Today's feast was instituted in 1918, at a time when the terrible persecution of the Church had begun in Russia. It was considered that the people under the Soviet yoke had, as never before, to turn to the saints for intercession, protection, indeed, mere survival. As we now know, the number of martyrs of the Soviet yoke probably exceeds the number of martyrs throughout the world in the first three centuries of persecution of the Orthodox Christian faith. The whole country became the battleground of good against evil, spiritually, the centre of the world.
Archimandrite John (Krestiankin)
The historical flow of Russian life has been varied: there were times of thunderous activity, there were lulls, and even complete halts. The river of Russian national life that gave birth to saints flowed in the given direction; this flow, however, was sometimes rapid and fruitful, sometimes slow, and sometimes so quiet that it was hard to tell whether it was flowing forward or backward. And now, 1,000 years later, we can mark the main periods of Russian religious history from the time of St. Vladimir to the present day.
St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)
Rating: 8,2|Votes: 5
Confession requires decisive self-denial. It must be triumphant. It must be made as if in the open arena, before all mankind, before angels, saints, and fallen angels, before the gaze of earth and heaven. For we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men (1 Cor. 4:9), as the Apostle Paul says of himself and the rest of the Holy Apostles.
