With each year the Church testifies through this Paschal exclamation to the event of universal significance which happened almost two thousand years ago. It was then that early in the morning the myrrh-bearing women came to the burial site of their Teacher and saw that the tomb was empty. The divine power of Christ had triumphed over the law of death. He had risen, testifying to all of humanity that death was not the end of life, that death was overcome by the power of God.
Hieromonk Vasily (Roslyakov)
Rating: 10|Votes: 8
Expectation and presentiment of joy fixes everyone’s limbs, and only their eyes look toward the holy doors. Now, quiet singing can be heard from the altar, and as if with an unbelievable effort, the curtain is pulled aside, the holy doors open, and a flood of light and sound streams out of the altar into the church, from the church into the nocturnal darkness, then spreads out commandingly over all the earth. Fr. Archimandrite and clergy proceed from the altar in gleaming festal garments that multiply the Paschal rays, and following the marked path, go forth from the church.
Dear Parishioners of Sretensky Monastery, Readers of Pravoslavie.ru/Orthodox Christianity Brothers and Sisters!
Hieromonk Job (Gumerov)
Rating: 8,4|Votes: 19
The skeptics gather “witnesses” in order to cast doubt on the miracle of descending the Holy Fire, they once again display incompetence in basic methods of scholarly and scientific research. Unbelief and skepticism are barren, infertile. “As someone withdrawing from the light does not in the least do harm to the light, but does very great harm to himself, becoming immersed in darkness, so also one accustomed to scorning the power of the Almighty does not in the least do harm to it [His power], but upon himself brings extreme harm” (John Chrysostom).
Deacon Giorgi Maximov
Rating: 7,2|Votes: 16
Last time in the Russian-language Internet, a whole campaign was conducted to discredit the miracle of the Holy Fire. The fundamental idea of these “exposés” is that purportedly there are Orthodox who themselves deny the genuineness of this miracle but at the same time continue to “dupe simple, ingenuous people.” What arguments are offered to support this idea of duping and conscious deceit?
