| His Holiness venerating the relics of Sts. Sergius and Herman Through the inner activity performed along the path of self-knowledge we can also find the gift of the Holy Spirit, about which we heard today in the Epistle to the Galatians: the gift of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22-23). Indeed, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are the result of the life of God Himself, of His grace, within us. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we acquire His gifts and escape condemnation. Condemnation is upon those who live in subordination to the law. If he breaks the law, he is subject to punishment. But where there is no law, but only the gifts of the Holy Spirit, there is no condemnation, either: “he shall not come into condemnation, but will pass from death to life,” as the Holy Gospel says (cf. John 5:24). May the Lord help this monastery – and you, Vladyka Abbot, brethren, and pilgrims – when coming into contact with this holy place to acquire the habit of self-knowledge and of a deep analysis of your spiritual life, while simultaneously acquiring the habit of love, good deeds, and holiness. We believe that it is no accident that our monasteries, having risen from ashes following the terrible years of persecution, now shine forth with their gilded domes. This is because our people, and our contemporaries in general, need monasteries. May God grant that everyone living in this monastery, who labors and prays here, might recognize his great responsibility before God for himself and for the world, which by coming into contact with holy places will be able to start out on the path of self-knowledge – and thereby on the path of acquiring the gifts of the Holy Spirit! Amen. Translated from the Russian Tweet Donate Share Code for blog Self-Knowledge as a Path to God: On Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia |
| Holy Synod establishes a joint feast day of Sts. Dmitry Donskoy and Eudoxia of Moscow Moscow, July 14, 2015 The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church at its meeting on July 13, 2015 in St. Petersburg established (Minutes no. 49) a joint feast day for the Holy Right-Believing Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy (1350-1389) and his wife Holy Right-Believing Grand Duchess Eudoxia (in monasticism, Euphrosyne: c. 1353-1407) of Moscow on June 1 (May 19 according to the old calendar), reports Patriarchia.ru . Sts. Dmitry and Eudoxia were parents of twelve children, and their marriage, according to the chronicles of that time, was a true example of fidelity and consent. It should be mentioned that many saints who showed a genuine example of a Christian marriage have joint feast days (among them are Sts. Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Mother of God; Adrian and Natalia; Cyril and Maria of Radonezh, the parents of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh; Peter and Fevronia of Murom). The Holy Right-Believing Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy is commemorated on June 1/May 19. This date coincides with the International Day for Protection of Children. 16 июля 2015 г. Смотри также Комментарии Мы в соцсетях Подпишитесь на нашу рассылку |
| Love the Church of God: On the Sunday of All Saints of Russia Christianity is not a doctrine, but life in the Holy Spirit, Who is the Giver of this life. He gives people a new spiritual birth, filling the entire human person with His grace: his soul, his mind, and his body. Therefore, the Holy Church glorifies the saints not for their teaching, but for their spiritual life. “Giver of life, come and dwell in us.” Today the Russian Orthodox Church continues its celebration of the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as today we are commemorating all the saints who have shown forth by the Holy Spirit in the Russian land. We prayerfully honor our Russian saints, who acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit while still living on earth. Christianity is not a doctrine, but life in the Holy Spirit, Who is the Giver of this life. He gives people a new spiritual birth, filling the entire human person with His grace: his soul, his mind, and his body. Therefore, the Holy Church glorifies the saints not for their teaching, but for their spiritual life. The majority of Russians who came before us – our grandfathers and great-grandfathers – were unlettered. They did not study, say, the geography and history of Russia. But they did know Kiev, for instance, through Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves; they knew the Trinity Lavra (Sergiev Posad) and Moscow through St. Sergius and the Holy Hierarchs of Moscow. They heard of Solovki in connection with Sts. Zosima and Savvaty; for them the Siberian lands were connected with the names of Sts. Symeon of Verkhotursk and Innocent of Irktusk. From year to year, and from century to century, our ancestors visited the holy places that had been glorified by the ascetic struggles of God’s saints; and here, in these holy places, the multitude of miracles about which Christ speaks in the Gospel was performed: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached (Luke 7:22). Our holy God-pleasers taught people not by words, but by their God-pleasing lives and by the acquisition of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This, in the words of St. Seraphim of Sarov, is the meaning and purpose of the Christian life: “Acquire the Holy Spirit and your entire life will become renewed and holy.” Elder Silouan, the Athonite ascetic, writes that the saints live in a different world, where they see God’s glory and the beauty of God’s face by the Holy Spirit. They see our lives and deeds, too, in that same Holy Spirit. They know our sorrows, hear our fervent prayers, and help us by their love. They see and know how we are worn out from sorrows, how our interior lives have withered, and how despondency has gripped our souls – and they intercede for us before God. They regret that people live without mutual love, since people do not know that, if only they would love one other, the earth would be freed from sin and filled to overflowing with the joy and gladness of the Holy Spirit. |
| On Feb. 11, rebel fighters from the Islamist Jih adist " al-Nusra Front " - designated by the USA, UN, Australia and UK as a terrorist organization - took control of the city and its strategic hydroelectric dam, the largest of its kind in the country. They also seized control of the three quarters that housed dam workers and in which, of course, stood the Orthodox Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, and in which most of the Christians were settled. AINA said Christian eyewitnesses who fled al-Thawrah, now displaced in other parts of Syria, as well as in Lebanon and Turkey, tell of religious discrimination by the rebels, as well as forced confiscation of Christian possessions and properties, with many items being sold on the black market in order to purchase weapons and ammunition. Even the churches weren " t spared. " The " Free Syrian Army " demolished the (Sts. Sergius and Bacchus) church, " one refugee said sadly. " They tore up the sanctuary curtains, Bibles and other holy books, and broke all the crosses, chairs and icons of Jesus and the saints. They stole ele ctrical appliances like fans, chandeliers and lights. They took whatever was in the church, and sold it all. There is nothing there now. " However, AINA said, there is no hope, for the Christians to return and rebuild even if the conflict subsides. They were once considered better off than their relatives and friends who still lived in the villages they had migrated from. But now they " re destitute, having lost everything - their homes, businesses, and even personal belongings. " Even though I have left, " recounted another Assyrian refugee, " the terrorists still call and text me from there, on my cell phone, to bother me. They recently called and told me, " If you attempt to return to al-Tabqah we will cut off your head and display it on the mosque so that all the Muslims there can see it and be proud of it. " They say other things too, but what they say is so disturbing, that I keep my phone switched off unless I really need to use it. " |
| Photos: www.orthodoxartsjournal.org In a part of America that is rich with historic Orthodox churches, a new one, faithful to the local architectural tradition, is now under construction. In the spring of 2018 I travelled to Spruce Island, where St. Herman of Alaska lived from 1808 until his death in 1837. I had come to design a new chapel for Saint Michael’s Skete. This small monastic brotherhood (a dependency of the monastery at Platina in California) occupies a remote site high up a mountainside. Founded in 1983, the skete has several monastic buildings able to host a handful of monks and summer visitors, but only a tiny house chapel. Fr. Andrew (Wermuth), the superior, felt that the time had come to build a large freestanding chapel. The main house at St. Michael’s Skete The house chapel This project presented two challenges for me, which I do not normally encounter when designing Orthodox churches in America. One is the difficulty of access for construction. Materials can be brought in only by boat, and then hauled up the mountainside with great difficulty. So the church would have to be built entirely of wood (even the foundation), and most of the wood would need to be milled on site from the abundant spruce trees. The other difficulty was how to connect with the local history and traditions of Russian church building, while also differentiating it from any of the nearby historic churches. The historic churches of Alaska are a great cultural treasure, and provide a wonderful basis for design. But many of them are quite similar looking, and the monks were keen to have their new church be recognizable – something a bit different from the others. There are two historic churches on Spruce Island: the Church of Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam, built in 1895, over the grave of St. Herman; and the Church of the Nativity of Christ, in Ouzinkie Native Village, built in 1906. Both are simple in form, fairly plain, but refined and elegant in their details and craftsmanship. In this they stand out from more recently built structures on the island, which tend to be ramshackle and utilitarian. Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam Chapel, Spruce Island. Built 1895. Church of the Nativity of Our Lord, Ouzinkie Village, Spruce Island. Built 1906. |
| THE CROSS OF THE NORTH RTE: How did you begin to write about St. Andrew in particular? GEORGE: If you had told me a year ago that I would be writing a book on St. Andrew, I would have said you were crazy. I never imagined that I would do such a thing. But when I had some serious problems, I went to New Valaamo Monastery in Finland where I was given the extremely kind hospitality of the monks and Igumen Sergei. It was like entering the doors of paradise. You can imagine; it was cold, quiet, silent, and the only things I had to face were God, nature, and myself. At the time I wanted to write a book about the Kalash, the descendants of Alexander the Great on the northwest border of Pakistan, who are still pagan. Their religion is still very connected with ancient Greek paganism, and I feel an urgency to preserve their mythology and legends because this is an endangered culture and there are only two thousand of them left. I had planned to begin this work in Finland, but I understood that the monastery was not exactly a proper place to write about pagans… so instead I began writing about the Karelian Orthodox saints. I was impressed that many Greek monks from Mt. Athos had gone to Karelia and that Karelian monks had gone to Mt. Athos and later returned to the Russian north – like St. Arseny of Konevits. One of our Greeks who went to Karelia was Monk Eliezar, and we have had a continual stream of Greek monks, hermits and ascetics in Karelia. Tradition says of Sts. Sergius and Herman, the founders of Valaam Monastery in Russia, that one was a Greek from Mt. Athos and the other a local Karelian. (Others say they were both Greeks from Kiev, and a third version holds that one was Greek and the other a pagan priest, but the fact remains that in each variant they had Greek influence and ideas.) I am fascinated by what I call “The Cross of the North.” This is a geographical cross that you can trace on a map. The vertical bar links the far north of Russia to Greek Orthodoxy in the south. The crossbar connects Finnish, Russian and American Orthodoxy, from Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam, through the deserts of the “Northern Thebaid” to St. Herman of Alaska on Spruce Island. |
| The Kaluga Icon of the Mother of God Chapel indicates the place where the saint’s cell was. The icon to which this chapel is dedicated was painted by monks in the monastic republic of Athos in Greece. The Virgin Mary is depicted here reading the prophecy of Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Is. 7:14). The path continues to the St. Herman’s spring—the source of drinking water for Fr. Herman and the place where he kept a small garden. After his death a number of miraculous healings were reported by those who drank the water of this spring. Many pilgrims often take some water back home as a blessing from St. Herman. Walking deeper in the forest, one comes to the Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam Chapel. Built in 1894 (to commemorate the centennial of the arrival of Valaam monastic mission), it is erected over the grave of St. Herman. This chapel is home to several notable icons: the icon of Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam (painted on canvas and brought from Valaam in Russia); the seventeenth-century icon of the Mother of God (also known as the “Spruce Island Icon of the Mother of God”) that existed from St. Herman’s time; the icon of Christ Enthroned; and the icon of the Mother of God, “Abbess of Mount Athos,” that was painted by monastics on Mount Athos. Beneath the chapel is the former grave of St. Herman. In 1935 the foundation of the chapel was restored, and the relics of St. Herman were unearthed and placed in a new coffin in the church. In 1970, after the canonization of St. Herman, the relics were transferred to the Holy Resurrection Church on Kodiak Island. Nevertheless, the pilgrims still crawl to the saint’s original grave beneath the chapel to pray there and to ask for direction and help in their lives. The main, official pilgrimage to St. Herman’s hermitage in Monk’s Lagoon is held each year around August 9, the date of his canonization, but hundreds of visitors also come to this place individually throughout the year (provided that weather permits crossing the strait between Kodiak and Spruce Islands). |
| But what are the service of the priest and the superior compared to the service of the bishop, who faces daily dying for the whole Church? Knowing the impossibility of combining the double podvig iii of a bishop’s own salvation (in the Great Schema) and the obligations of governing the Church, the holy fathers made a statute that a bishop cannot be a schema-monk. The life of a schema-monk and the life of a bishop are completely different. And if a bishop wishes to take the Schema, it means that he also wishes to resign as bishop. St. Sergius refusing the episcopal rank “If any man desireth the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work” (I Tim. 3:1), says the Apostle Paul. However, in practice, we see that few people desire the episcopate itself—few holy people. St. Sergius of Radonezh categorically refused the request of Metropolitan Alexis of Moscow to become his successor. He refused, and after Metropolitan Alexis’s death, the time of strife “between the bishops” began. Well known is the story of the “self proclaimed” holiness of Mityai, and the troubles and woes of Sts. Cyprian and Dionysius. It would have been right for St. Sergius to agree to Metropolitan Alexis’s offer—then all of that wouldn’t have happened. But the saint considered the well-being of his soul to be a greater thing than the dubious well-being of the episcopate. In a similar situation, St. Theodore the Sykeote did give way to requests, but spent only a couple of years in the rank of bishop, and then retired into silence. St. Ignatius (Branchaninov), St. Theophan the Recluse, and many other saints also retired from the bishopric. At times the bishopric and one’s personal salvation enter into such conflict that some holy bishops have fled from the cathedra as from a house on fire. St. John (commemorated on December 3 O.S.) was bishop of Colonia in Armenia for about 10 years. Out of the necessity of his episcopal duty he was forced to investigate some political issues. And, as it says in his life, “seeing the vanity and rebellion of the world,” he resolved to leave the episcopate. One day after liturgy he dismissed his clergy, secretly set off for the coast, and sailed to Jerusalem. God showed him the place of his salvation in the Lavra of St. Savvas the Sanctified. John came to the Lavra as a simple novice. At that time the Father Superior of the Lavra was the God-bearing Savvas himself; about 140 brothers labored in spiritual struggles under his direction. Savvas was already a famed father and had the gift of clairvoyance, but, remarkably, the Lord hid John’s rank from him. |
| St. Cornelius of Komel. St. Cornelius of Komel. Several more kilometers up the Nurma River, we find ourselves in the monastery of St. Cornelius of Komel (1455-1537), one of the most distinguished successors of the cause of St. Sergius of Radonezh—the cause of the spread of high spirituality in Russian monasteries. Like Abba Sergius, St. Cornelius came from the Rostov aristocracy. Having resigned from his service at the court of the Moscow Prince he made up his mind to follow the words of the Savior:If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow Me. (Mt. 19:21). Soon he took his monastic vows in the Monastery of St. Cyril of White Lake (Beloe Ozero)a true monastic “academy” of that time. There St. Cornelius labored at copying church books, an occupation which he never gave up for the rest of his life. The copying of books was for St. Cornelius not just an obedience, but his work for the benefit of the monastery. With joy he became absorbed in the spiritual depths of the Holy Scripture, thinking over every written word. Having come to St. Cyril’s Monastery together with his uncle Lukian, Monk Cornelius several years later persuaded his brother Acinthius to settle in the monastery as well. As time went by, however, a well-ordered life within a circle of people related to him by blood and spirit became a burden to Monk Cornelius. He felt he was strong enough for more severe asceticism. Having left White Lake, the zealot wandered about Russia in search of true sanctity. He lived in the lands of Novgorod and of Tver, and lived as a recluse in hermitages deep in the woods. A well-known ascetic, Archbishop Gennadius of Novgorod, became inspired with brotherly love for Monk Cornelius and offered to ordain him priest. However, the humble monk considered himself unworthy of the offer, although he was ordained many years later by Metropolitan Simon. In around 1497, Monk Cornelius returned to Vologda and settled in the boundless and uninhabited Komel Forest, which spread to the south of Vologda. The forest was named after the Komel River. His first home was a wooden hut left by brigands. With time, news spread of the zealot living in the woods, and monks yearning for a lofty spiritual life under the guidance of a wise elder began to come to that place. In 1501, a wooden Church of the Entrance of the Blessed Virgin into the Temple was consecrated in the hermitage where Monk Cornelius sought salvation. The dedication of the church was not a chance one: all the disciples of Sts. Sergius and Cyril had a special veneration for the Most Holy Mother of God. |
| Abp. Averky On still another occasion, following Vladika " s return to Sofia, the cell-attendants came to the cottage to collect his things. They were surrounded by some of the neighboring summer residents who were bewildered by what they had witnessed there the previous night. " What went on at your bishop " s place last night?” “... Nothing, " they replied. " Vladika left the day before and no one remained at the cottage. " " That couldn " t be, " the Bulgarian exclaimed dumbfounded. " All night the windows were brightly lit and it could be seen that many people had gathered and were having some sort of party, dancing ... " Later, one of the cell-attendants approached Vladika about this incident. The bishop smiled and said humbly, " Such things happen with monks. " The ceil-attendant understood, however, that it did not happen with all monks, but only with those genuine monks such as Vladika Theophan. (One of these ceil-attendants was Alexander Taushev, the future Archbishop Averky , Abbot of Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville.) Archbishop Theophan was uncompromising with regard to the teaching of the Holy Orthodox Church. He was deeply pained by the movements of the " renovationists " and " living church " adherents, which disrupted the Church in Russia in the years after the Revolution. Equally strong was his opposition to the teachings of liberal Church thinkers such as Soloviev and Bulgakov, popular among the Russian émigré intelligentsia. He saw that any attempt to modernize or to make concessions to the spirit of the times could only result in undermining the faith, in robbing the " salt " of its savor. Even the modernists, however, could not but respect such a spiritual giant of Orthodoxy. During the Russian Council of 1917-1918, some of them approached him respectfully: " The waves of the times flow swiftly, changing everything, changing us; one must give in to them. You, too, must give in, Vladika, to the raging waves ... Otherwise with whom will you be left? You will be left alone. " " With whom will I be left? " Vladika meekly answered them. " I will be with St. Vladimir the enlightener of Russia, with Sts. Anthony and Theodosius the Wonderworkers of the Kiev Caves Monastery, with the holy Hierarchs and Wonderworkers of Moscow, with Sts. Sergius and Seraphim and with all the holy martyrs, God-pleasing monks and wonderworkers who have gloriously shone forth on Russian soil. But you, dear brothers, with whom will you be left if even with your great numbers you give over to the will of the waves of the times? " |
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