Sergei Bulgakov
Rating: 7.3|Votes: 7
Struck by the speech of the High Priest, as though by the awesome verdict of the judgment of God Himself, the righteous man had no time even to withdraw from the altar, as a new heavier insult struck his hearing. One of the Israelites bringing his gifts, pushed him away, said, “Depart from here, did you not hear that you are unworthy to bring gifts to God together with us, because you have not left offspring for Israel?” With deep humility Joachim accepted this accusation as if it were from the mouth of the very God, and with deep sadness left the temple.
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.
Alexei Ilyich Osipov
Rating: 8.1|Votes: 7
If a person is already convinced that God exists, then an even more difficult problem arises. There are many religions, but which one of them is true? What should he become? Should he become a Christian, or why not a Moslem, or a Buddhist, or a hare Krishna?
Bishop Alexander (Mileant)
Rating: 10|Votes: 4
Halloween undermines the very basis of the Church, which was founded on the blood of martyrs who had refused, by giving up their lives, to partake in any form of idolatry. The holy Church must take a firm stand in counteracting any such (pagan) events. Christ taught us that God is the judge in all our actions and beliefs and that we are either FOR GOD or AGAINST GOD. There is no neutral or middle of the road approach.
Rating: 9.6|Votes: 26
The methodical development of imagination is based in the experience of one of the pillars of Catholic mysticism, the founder of the order of Jesuits and great Catholic saint Ignatius of Loyola (sixteenth century). His book Spiritual Exercises enjoys great authority in Catholicism. Ignatius himself said of his book that if one reads it, it could replace the Gospels. He tells the reader to imagine the crucified Christ, to attempt to penetrate the world of Christ’s feelings and sufferings, to mentally converse with the Crucified One, etc. All this contradicts in principle the basics of spiritual ascetic labor as it has been given to us in the lives of the saints of the Universal Church.