| On the Life, Glorification, and Incorrupt Relics of St. Mardarije of Libertyville St. Mardarije, being led by the hand by St. Sava to offer the monastery in Libertyville to the Lord. Photo: miloje.org At the May 29, 2015 session of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the names of Archimandrite Sebastian (Dabovich) and Bishop Mardarije (Uskokovic), clergymen and preachers of the Gospel, God-pleasing servants of holy life, and inspirers of many missionaries, were added to the calendar of saints of the Orthodox Church. The annual commemorations of St. Mardarije of Libertyville, Bishop of America and Canada, and St. Sebastian of San Francisco and Jackson are observed on November 29/December 12 and November 17/30 respectively. The glorification celebration of St. Sebastian occurred on Saturday, September 5, 2015 at St. Stephen's Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, Alhambra, California. Now the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of New Gracanica and Midwestern America invites all to participate in the Pan-Orthodox glorification of St. Mardarije of Libertyville and All-America, to be celebrated at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Libertyville, IL, from Friday July 14-Sunday July 16, by His Holiness Patriarch Irinej of Serbia. In preparation for his glorification ceremony, St. Mardarije’s relics were recently opened and found to be incorrupt from the knees up, with skin and hair still intact, bearing witness to the sanctity of this holy God-pleaser, already confirmed by his inclusion among the ranks of the saints. St. Mardarije joins the ranks of St. John Maximovitch and St. Alexis Toth, whose incorrupt relics are already treasures for Orthodox Christians in America. Life of St. Mardarije Photo: orthodoxtacoma.com St. Mardarije was born Ivan Uskokovic in Podgoritsa, Montenegro, in 1889. In 1907, he embraced monasticism at the Studenitsa Monastery and then relocated to Russia to study at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy. After graduation, he was ordained by the Russian Orthodox Church and sent as a missionary to America. |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy The Primates of the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches head the Divine Liturgy and take the funeral for the bishop of Moravica Anthony at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow DECR Communication service, 16.03.2024. On 16th March 2024 on the day of all the venerable fathers who have shone forth, a moveable feast celebrated on the Saturday of Cheese-Fare Week, at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and His Holiness the Patriarch of Serbia Profirije headed the Divine Liturgy and tool the funeral service for the newly-departed bishop of Moravica Anthony, the auxiliary of the Patriarch of Serbia, representative of the Patriarch of Serbia to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, and dean of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul at the Yauza Gates in Moscow, which also serves as the representation church (metochion) of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Moscow. The bishop of Moravica Anthony reposed in the Lord on 11th March 2024 after and long and grave illness. Up until 15th March the body of the newly-reposed bishop lay in its coffin at the Serbian metochion in Moscow at the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul by the Yauza Gates. In the morning of 16th March the coffin with the body of the newly-departed bishop was transported to the Christ the Saviour Cathedral and placed in the centre of the church. Wreaths were placed of the steps of the solea fr om the Patriarch of Moscow and the Patriarch of Serbia. Concelebrating with the primates of the Russian and Serbian Orthodox Churches were: the chancellor the Moscow Patriarchy and first auxiliary bishop of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia for the city of Moscow the metropolitan of Voskresensk Gregory; the chairman of the Department for External Church Relations the metropolitan of Volokolamsk Anthony; the metropolitan of Kazan and Tatarstan Kirill; the director of the administrative secretariat of the Moscow Patriarchy the archbishop of Odintsovo Thomas; the archbishop of Yegorievsk Matthew; the bishop of Zheleznogorsk and Lgov Paisius; the bishops of the delegation of the Serbian Orthodox Church - the bishop of Baka Irinej; the bishop of Upper Karlovac Gerasim; the bishop of Valjevo Isihije; the bishop of Remesiana Stefan; the bishop of Jegra Nektarije and the bishop of Toplica Petr. |
| Saints, Myths and Mineshafts The ancient Christian tradition of long processions has been revived in Russia in recent years, and the night-long marches from Yekaterinburg to Ganina Yama and from Alapayevsk to the scene of Elizabeth’s murder are by no means the longest. Some take several days. The procession is often associated with repentance. 07/23/2010 The Scenes of the Royal Murders Have Become Places of Pilgrimage, but the Church still Does not Recognize the Recovered Remains of the Romanovs, and Archaeologists are Fearful for the Future of the Historic Site Alapayevsk, Sverdlovsk Region – It’s 4.20 a.m. last Sunday, the Divine Liturgy in the Holy Trinity Cathedral of this old industrial town has just finished, and several hundred people, most of them women, but quite a few men and children as well, are stepping into the pre-dawn twilight to begin a 12-kilometer procession. “O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us, sinners,” sing the believers in time with their rather fast pace. The Alapayevsk procession is one of the annual events which mark what are known here as the “Royal Days.” In the early hours of July 17, 1918, the deposed Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their five children and four servants were shot in the mining engineer Ipatyev’s house in Yekaterinburg. The following night, in Alapayevsk, 150 kilometers north-east of Yektaterinburg, the empress’ sister and founder of the famous Convent of Martha and Mary in Moscow, Grand Duchess Elizabeth, her closest aide, Sister Varvara, and five dukes imprisoned with them, were thrown alive down an abandoned mineshaft. Today these dates are remembered with a host of church services and processions, and a “festival of Orthodox culture” including exhibitions, concerts and conferences. The fifth International Festival of Orthodox Christian Documentaries is also on the agenda. According to local police estimates, about 20,000 people walked in the early hours of Saturday morning from the imposing Church-on-the-Blood, which is built on the site of Ipatyev’s house, to the monastery at Ganina Yama 20 kilometers away. It was here that the Bolsheviks and Chekists attempted to destroy the bodies of the royal family in an abandoned mine. And although their remains have since been discovered about two kilometers away from Ganina Yama, in a place known as “Porosyonkov Log,” the vast majority of believers do not recognize this discovery, while Ganina Yama has over the past decade become one of the main holy sites in the region. |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy Communities of the Russian Orthodox Church in different countries of the world pray for victims of terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall DECR Communication Service, 24.03.2024. Prayers for those killed in terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Krasnogorsk near Moscow and for the health of the injured are offered up at the Representations of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Local Orthodox Churches and in the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate located in foreign countries on different continents. On Saturday, March 23, archimandrite Philip (Vasiltsev), representative of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus " to the Patriarchal Throne of Antioch, celebrated the Divine Liturgy and the memorial service in the church of St. Ignatius the God-Bearer – the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church in Damascus, Syria. On March 24, parishioners of the Metochion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Lebanon prayed during Matins and the Liturgy at the church of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary in Jal el Dib. Archimandrite Philip celebrated the office sung on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy and the memorial service for all the victims of the terrorist attack. Attending the services was Mr. Rodrigue El-Khoury, a representative of the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. On March 23, archimandrite Vassian (Zmeyev), head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, Israel, celebrated the litany for the innocent victims of the terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall on March 22. Concelebrating with him at the mission church of St. Elijah in Haifa were archpriest Miroslav Vitiv, a sacristan, and hieromonk Tikhon (Proyaev) and deacon Makary Petukhov, clergymen of the Mission. On March 23, parishioners gathered at the church of the Holy Trinity – the Metochion of the Russian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, Serbia, to pray for those who had lost their lives at the hands of the terrorists at a concert hall in the Moscow region. The requiem service was celebrated by archpriest Vitaly Tarasjev, rector of the church and representative of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus " to the Patriarch of Serbia. Archpriest Vitaly called all the worshippers to pray for the killed and injured innocent people. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Australasia, Orthodox Church in JOHN CHRYSSAVGIS While Australia counts among the most expansive countries in the world, comprising the fifth continent and being only slightly smaller in geographical territory than the USA, it is nonetheless sparsely populated, mostly barren desert (albeit extraordinarily attractive red-sand wilderness), and settled primarily in the few state capitals scattered on the coastline. The largest Christian denomination is the Roman Catholic Church, with the Anglican Church being the most dominant in the early years, the Uniting Church constituting the principal Protestant group, and Orthodox Christians forming a significant fraction of the overall population of 20 million (with numbers ranging from just over half to three-quarters of a million, predominantly Greeks). While there were probably no Orthodox Christians among the penal colonies or even the crew and passengers of the First Fleet, the earliest mention of Greeks dates to around 1818, probably referring to immigrants transported from Greece for misdemeanors related to piracy during the period of British hegemony. Earliest records indicate that the Russian wife of a British military officer arrived in Australia in 1810, possibly the first Orthodox resident in the country’s history; however, there are no explicit indications of her religious background. Around 1820 a Russian Antarctic expedition from St. Petersburg to Alaska landed in Sydney, where a Hieromonk Dionisii celebrated liturgy at Kirribilli Point (to this day called “Russian Point”) only days after Orthodox Easter, possibly on the Saturday of Thomas. Documents attest to another Russian naval vessel, whose chaplain was a Fr. Jerome, landing in Melbourne in 1862. By 1868 a certain Fr. Christophoros Arsenios had reportedly settled in Queensland, though no records survive of any liturgical services conducted. By the middle of the 19th century, Greek immigrants began arriving in Australia and the first regular celebration of liturgical services occurred around 1895. Although precise details remain unclear or unknown, the first resident Orthodox priest was a Greek named Archimandrite Dorotheos Bakaliaros, who served communities in both Melbourne and Sydney. The foundations of the first Greek Orthodox parish were laid on May 29, 1898, for the Church of the Holy Trinity in Surry Hills, Sydney, and, two years later, in 1900, for the Church of the Annunciation in East Melbourne. |
| John Anthony McGuckin Soteriology STEPHEN THOMAS The ecumenical councils of the Orthodox Church do not give a soteriology or doctrine of salvation, but offer rather a rich and exhaustive Christology. Nevertheless, there is a profound soteriology underlying the Christology which the fathers used to support it. The main idea of salvation found in the eastern fathers, as well as western fathers such as Pope St. Leo the Great of Rome, concerns the victory over death which Christ won, and the victory over all the morbid limitations which humanity has acquired though sin, the alienation from God. Orthodox soteriology is extremely hopeful because it thinks of salvation as a victory over the malicious powers exercised by the demons (Heb. 11.35). It has two elements, which complement one another: salvation is, firstly, therapy, and, secondly, deification or divinization. The victory motif dominates Orthodox liturgical texts, especially in the paschal liturgy. Continually repeated during the paschal season is the following poem: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the graves, bestowing life” (Pentekostarion 1990: 27). In Orthodox soteriology sin and death are personified as forces which belong to the sphere of the Devil and the demons, who, through divine respect to their freewill, are still active until the judgment. Christ’s voluntary sacrifice on the cross brought the depths of suffering into intimate contact with the divine light, so that suffering could be transfigured and conquered. The victorious Christ descended to Hades, conquered the power of the Devil, and brought out the souls imprisoned there. While this idea is found in medieval Catholicism, in the form of the harrowing of hell, it is not as prominent as it is in the Orthodox services which accord to Holy Saturday an essential role in the process by which Christ saves humankind: “He quenched Death by being subdued by Death. He who came down into Hades despoiled Hades; And Hades was embittered when he tasted of Christ’s flesh” (Pentekostarion 1990: 37). |
| Mother Maria: Love Without End Photo: www.pinterest.ru/Dawn Maclaughlin “No amount of thought will ever result in any greater formulation than the three words, ‘Love one another,’ so long as it is love to the end and without exceptions.” –Mother Maria of Paris, Letters Today will mark the 74th anniversary of her death in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. In case you needed a short reminder, Mother Maria was rounded up by the Nazis in Paris after they uncovered a letter addressed implicating her son, Yuri, and Father Dimittir Kelpinin in a scheme forging false baptismal certificates for the Jews in the poor neighborhood around Rue Roumel. By the start of the WW2, Mother Maria was managing a home for the destitute, the mentally and physically handicapped, a sanctuary for the many refugee Russian emigres who had fled the revolution. Had they have gotten word about how she had orchestrated a rescue plan along with the sanitation workers that involved hiding Jewish children in garbage cans and then transferring them to her house in darkness where they eventually would get transported via bakery trucks and other commercial vehicles to the South of France, they would have rounded her up sooner. (An illustrated children’s book tells this story Silent as a Stone ). Their involvement in the Resistance eventually did them in. While her son Yuri and Fr. Dimitri Kelpinin perished in Buchenwald camp within two years of arriving there, Mother Maria who had been used to hard labor and difficult living conditions, managed to survive for several more. Eventually her health started failing her as she was used to giving away the meager portions of bread to her other prisoners. Her other workmates remembered how she was always joyful. As an idealist with deep sensitivity, she had a way of seeing the beauty even in monstrosity. On the 30 th of March, it so happened that Good Friday fell on that day in the year 1945, Maria Skobotska even though she was not chosen, asked to stand in the place of another woman prisoner. The following day, Holy Saturday, she was led into the gas chambers and surrendered her soul. The liberation would occur only several months later. |
| Souroti, Greece—Legend has it that nearly three decades ago, a bearded Orthodox Christian mystic visiting here made an unsettling prediction: Greece in the future would experience a " great disruption and confusion, " followed by hunger and political turmoil. Believers say this grim vision of Elder Paisios, an ascetic monk who died in 1994, was actually a prescient glimpse of the upheaval now gripping this debt-racked country—helping fuel a surge of interest in the Orthodox holy man by Greeks struggling to make sense of a brutal financial crisis. Elder Paisios, who spent much of his adult life as a hermit on the monastic peninsula of Mount Athos in northeastern Greece, has become a popular sensation—with tales of his prognostications and miracles he is said to have performed posted online and recounted in popular books. On Saturdays, hundreds of pilgrims line up at Elder Paisios's gravesite here, waiting their turn to kneel, pray and kiss the wooden cross that marks his final resting place. They ask for help finding jobs, paying bills and surviving a downturn that has upended their lives. " Paisios predicted many things, and his prophecies are now coming true, " said Costas Katsaounis, a 41-year-old military officer on a visit to the shrine. " He foresaw the crisis. But he also said it would get better, that we will overcome and prosperity will return. He's helped a lot of people. " Elder Paisios's fame in some ways echoes that of Michel de Notredame, better known as Nostradamus , a 16th-century French apothecary who believers say foretold everything from the rise of Hitler to the terror attacks of Sept. 11. " Figures like Paisios represent the shaman, the magician of the tribe, " said Alexandra Koronaiou, a sociologist at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences in Athens. " They are the incarnation of a transcendental, invisible power. " With Greece's economy in the fifth year of a grinding recession that is expected to deepen further in 2013, unemployment above 25% and even middle-class families struggling to feed their children, many Greeks feel like their society is teetering on the brink of collapse, and they are seeking solace. |
| The 75th Anniversary of the Establishment of the ROC Representation Celebrated in Beirut Source: DECR Photo: mospat.ru On November 6-9, 2021, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Beirut Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church is celebrated in Beirut. On November 6, the St. Demetrius Parental Saturday, Patriarchal Exarch for Western Europe and head of the Moscow Patriarchate office for the institutions abroad Metropolitan Anthony of Chersonesus and Western Europe celebrated the Liturgy for the Repose of the Souls of the Dead in the church of St. John the Baptist in Beirut. He was assisted by Bishop Anthony of Moravici, representative of the Patriarch of Serbia to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; Archpriest Nectarios Khayrallah (Orthodox Church of Antioch); Archimandrite Seraphim (Shemyatovsky), representative of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands of Slovakia to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; and Archimandrite Philipp (Vasiltsev), rector of the Beirut Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church. Among the worshippers were Metropolitan Niphon of Philippople, representative of the Patriarch of Antioch to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia; Prof Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin, PhD, Moscow Theological Academy; and Mr. E.I. Skopenko, head of the Foundation for the Support of Christian Culture and Heritage. The liturgy was celebrated in Russian and Arabic. Liturgical commemoration was made for the deceased rectors and parishioners of the Representation. In his sermon, Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin reminded the congregation that the name of the commemoration of the dead is connected with the victory of the Holy Prince Dmitry Donskoy and his troops in the Battle of Kulikovo, noting that the Lord awaits a feat from each Christian. After the Divine Liturgy, Metropolitan Anthony of Chersonesus and Western Europe addressed the congregation, greeting the Representation community and the guests. He conveyed to participants a blessing and best wishes from His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. |
| The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. St. John’s Gospel records the story of Christ’s raising Lazarus from the dead as the last action of Christ before His entry into Jerusalem. That setting has given rise to the feast of Lazarus Saturday in the Orthodox Church – a small Pascha before Holy Week. The three synoptic gospels make no mention of these events, to which I draw no historical conclusions. The gospels include and exclude events for many reasons, historical considerations seeming to be of the least importance. Which stories, and in what order, primarily serve deeper theological concerns. For St. John, the story of Lazarus serves as the occasion for commentary and teaching on the resurrection of believers, much like the Feeding of the Five Thousand serves for commentary and teaching on the Eucharist. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” (Martha’s words) echoes the universal voice of the Church in the face of Christ’s delayed Second Coming. It is the plaintive heart of believers who wonder why God allows suffering. And some of them said, “Could not this Man, who opened the eyes of the blind, also have kept this man from dying?” (Joh 11:37) It is an obvious question, repeated in various forms by believers as well as scoffers through the centuries. The story of Lazarus, which occurs before Christ’s suffering and death, specifically addresses the heart of the Church after Christ’s suffering and death. For though we rejoice in Christ’s death and resurrection, it is our dead brother (mother, father, sister, friend) who lies heavy on our hearts. “Your brother will rise again.” These words of Christ, like a statement of Church doctrine, bring little comfort to someone stuck in their grief. It is Christ’s affirmation, “I am the resurrection and the life,” that sums up the encounter. The people do not understand, not even when Lazarus is raised from the dead. That Christ Himself is the resurrection and the life does not become clear until His own resurrection. |
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