Metropolitan Laurus (Skurla)
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
In the reestablishment of ecclesiastical unity, the Lord "gave strength unto His people; the Lord blessed His people with peace . " This peace strengthens us in witnessing Christ, strengthens us in the service of the Church of Christ, in the preservation and dissemination of our Holy Russian ideals both in the Fatherland and beyond its borders. The main thing is to live in peace, help one another and support each other in the work of the Church, showing others the example of love, humility, patience and the good Christian life.
Rating: 8.3|Votes: 7
By the middle of the eleventh century the tension between the Churches of Constantinople and Rome, which had begun centuries earlier, had greatly increased. Among the causes for this were exaggerated claims of universal papal authority over the rest of the Churches, the insertion of the “filioque” clause into the Nicene Creed, novelties in some of Rome’s liturgical practices, and disputes over local jurisdiction in the Balkans and Southern Italy. This culminated in the Schism of 1054 and the mutual excommunications of the Byzantine and Roman Churches.
Rating: 6|Votes: 31
“The history and the spirituality of the Italo-Greek monks in Byzantine Southern Italy and Sicily is the account of a people faithful to their Orthodox Faith and their Byzantine culture in circumstances that were at times difficult and in territories that were at the extremes of the empire centered in Constantinople.
Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen)
Born to Serbian immigrants in San Francisco in 1863, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich has the distinction of being the first person born in the United States of America to be ordained as an Orthodox priest, and also the first native-born American to be tonsured as an Orthodox monk.
Priest Paul Martin
Rating: 3|Votes: 1
It takes real courage to become a Christian in India — and it takes courage to remain Christian. Converts are often rejected by family and friends, but they know that to be rejected for love of Christ is cause for rejoicing. One man told me that, when he converted and his home became a center of Christian worship, the villagers threatened him and his family with bodily harm. He remained firm, however, and now years later many in his village are Orthodox. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. And even when it does, acceptance and peace come gradually and often with pain.