| Thus, in different years past we have gone to Kolomenskoe, to the miraculous icon of the Reigning Mother of God, to the Kremlin, to the Elokovsky Cathedral [of the Theophany, where are the relics of St. Alexis of Moscow], to St. Alexei Mechev on Maroseika, and to Butovo [the shooting field, where thousands of New Martyrs are buried and a church there is dedicated to the New Martyrs of Russia]. We have also visited Moscow monasteries: the Pokrov Convent, where there are the relics of St. Matrona of Moscow, the Donskoy Monastery, with the relics of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, the Convent of the Conception… We have gone to the Holy Trinity St. Sergius Lavra and to the Chernigov Skete, to Khotkovo [where there are the relics of Sts. Kirill and Maria, the parents of St. Sergius of Radonezh], and to Radonezh… Then, having prayed, we return home at dusk. Although there are more cars on the road by then, we still zoom back, joyful, fulfilled, to feast on our Lenten trapeza (people usually have abundant leftovers from their packed lunches!), open our thermoses of hot tea, and if it’s Tuesday or Thursday, then we have pirozhki or sweet rolls… And thus we Orthodox suffer no deficit from a New Year’s Day wedged into the Nativity fast, and even receive benefit for our souls. The Lord Himself always does it that way: He tries to turn every evil into good for people. Glory to God for all things! “Service to God and thankfulness to Him are important components of a person’s life.” Archimandrite Alipy (Svetlichny). Archimandrite Alipy (Svetlichny), rector of the Church of the Apostles Peter and Paul on the Nivki in Kiev: People adapt the world around them to themselves, and create comfortable sizes and measures. Some measure in inches, others find it easier to measure in centimeters. In some places it’s more convenient to weigh in pounds, in others, in kilograms. Units of measure, just like the measure of time, are more like pleasant symbols than something unshakable and categorical. That is why in antiquity the day began with the evening (or the morning), while today it begins at night with the conditional alignment of the clock’s arms with the number 12 on the clock face. We are surrounded by conditional things; we live with symbols that we create for our own convenience—and I emphasize, for our convenience. It is really not right to contrive some special honor or attention to them, because they can begin to take up too much space in our lives and distract us from the content: the meaning of life itself. |
| When we read the Bible, the Third and Fourth Books of Kings about the amazing acts of the holy Prophet Elias, our mind is astounded by them; we are amazed at many things: his extraordinary zeal for the glory of God and his total fearlessness in the work of cultivating faith amidst a pagan people (and such were the people of Israel at that time); our mind is amazed when we read of his extraordinary miracles; and we are most of all amazed when we read about the incredible power of his prayer, for you know that he commanded the elements with it—he forbade the rain to fall upon the Palestinian land for three and a half years, and then again by his prayer brought rain down to the earth. He brought down fire from heaven, and it burned the sacrifice that had been drenched with water. It is to Prophet Elias’s prayer that I would like to direct your attention, for there is not sufficient time to speak of all the great things he did. However, I would like to talk not only about his prayer. We know that there were great ascetics of piety, great saints who also worked wondrous and magnificent miracles. But I want the thought to reach your heart that not only does this kind of prayer, which works manifest miracles seen by everyone, not only the prayer of the Prophet Ellias, and the prayers of the apostles, prophets, and martyrs work miracles. I want you to understand that any prayer will work miracles. What miracles does it work? Not those glorious and amazing miracles that the Prophet Elias wrought, no. It works miracles unknown to anyone other than the one in whose soul these miracles happen. The kind of prayer that was made by St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Sergius of Radonezh, Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev-Caves, St. Varlaam of Khutyn, St. Nilus of Sora, and many other monastic saints works unseen miracles. St. Seraphim and St. Sergius were like angels in the flesh even while still alive; their souls were filled with deep faith, pure love for God and people. They shone with faith and love. |
| 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,” lamented one refugee, “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 electrical appliances like fans, chandeliers and lights. They took whatever was in the church, and sold it all. There is nothing there now.” There is no hope, however, for the Christians to return and rebuild after the conflict subsides — that’s if it indeed subsides. They were once considered better off than their relatives and friends who still lived in the villages they had migrated from, but are now 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.” Whilst it may be easy to switch off a cell phone, and ignore such threats, it is not so easy to shake off the trauma of dispossession and loss. After spending up to 45 years in a town which became their home, many of these refugees managed to escape with nothing but the clothes on their backs. “We have lost everything,” said the head of an Assyrian household displaced from al-Thawrah, “There is nothing for us over there now, nothing to return to. We just need help to get out of here and settle in a country that’s safe.” |
| Elder Iliy (Nozdrin): “Now our duty is to pray with all our zeal so that the Lord might reconcile our lives” Valaam, September 19, 2014 Last Sunday, the visit to Valaam of Schema-Archimandrite Iliy (Nozdrin), confessor of the Optina Monastery’s brethren and an Orthodox elder famous all over Russia, came to an end. This year he has turned 82. Every morning he came for a midnight service and matins, celebrated Divine Liturgy, and then he visited Valaam sketes, reports the Transfiguration Monastery’s website. During the days elder Iliy was surrounded by numerous pilgrims and tourists, asking for his advice, his blessing or instruction in life. As far as possible, Father Iliy devoted his time to each of them, found necessary words to say. Last Sunday, after a festal Liturgy Schema-Archimandrite Iliy conversed with the monastery brethren: “I first came to Valaam in 1993, when neither the Transfiguration Cathedral nor the sketes were restored, services were celebrated only at the Church of Sts. Sergius and Herman of Valaam. And, undoubtedly, I am very pleased that much has been restored by now. I recall what the Transfiguration Church was like in 1993: all stripped, without windows or doors; and now we see how splendid it looks today. Glory be to God that so many people are coming to your monastery. It is precisely through their prayers that our Holy Rus’ lives on. “My dears, today our special duty is to pray for reconciliation, so that the plans of those who are instigating the ongoing bloody war in the Ukraine would not be fulfilled. We must pray so that the Lord would bring both parties of the conflict to their senses, that there would be no such wars in the world. We should arm ourselves with a good Christian life against the devil and his supporters; we must be active, lest our enemy should have time to sow the seeds of evil among us. “We see how the revival of the Russian Orthodox Church began over the last quarter of the century; at least it is evident from the fact that Russian citizens now have an opportunity to attend churches freely and to go on pilgrimages to Orthodox monasteries. |
| However, beyond mere names, the saints of Rus came from many nations. They came from Hungary, like the three holy brothers, St. George the Hungarian († 1015), St. Moses of the Kiev Caves († 1043) and St. Ephraim of Novotorzhok († 1053); they came from Serbia, like St. Dionysius of Rostov († 1425) and St. Savva of Krypets († 1495); they came from Italy, like St. Antony of Novgorod († 1147), St. Mercurius of Smolensk († 1238) and St. Macarius the Roman († 1550); they came from Lithuania, like St. Rimund (Elisei) of Lavrishev († c.1280), St. Charitina of Novgorod († 1281), St. Dovmont (Timothy) of Pskov († 1299) and Sts Anthony, John and Eustathius of Vilno († 1347); they came from Greece, like St. Joachim of Novgorod († 1030), St. Theodore of Rostov († c.1030), St. Theognost of Moscow († 1353), St. Sergius of Nurom († 1412), St. Patrick of Vladimir († 1430), St. Photius of Moscow († 1431), St. Cassian of Uglich († 1504), St. Lazarus of Murmansk († c. 1550) and St. Maximus the Greek († 1556); they came from Germany, like St. Procopius of Ustiug († 1303), St. Isidore of Rostov († 1474) and perhaps St. John of Rostov († 1580); they came from Bulgaria, like St. Michael of Kiev († 992) and St. Cyprian of Moscow († 1406); they came from Estonia, like St. Isidore and his 72 companions of Tartu († 1472); they were by race Tartar and Turk, like St. Peter († 1290) and St. Abraham of the Volga Bulgars († 1299). The holiness of Rus went north to Archangel with St.Barlaam of Shenkursk († 1462), by way of Solovki on the White Sea, where 300 years ago the Mother of God made the prophecy that her Son would be crucified a second time by the Soviets, and far beyond Lake Onega to Murmansk with St.Lazarus († c. 1450) on the Norwegian border and to Kola with St. Tryphon of Kola († 1583), who converted the Lapps. It went south beyond Tambov with St.Pitirim († 1698), to Kazan with St. Herman († 1568) and to Astrakhan on the shores of the Caspian with St. Joseph († 1672), as far as the militant and heretic Islamic world would allow. It went east beyond Viatka with St. Tryphon († 1612), beyond Perm with St. Stephen of Perm († 1396), who converted the Zyrians to Christ, across the Urals to Tobolsk with St. John († 1715) and St. Paul († 1770), on to Irkutsk with St. Innocent († 1731) and St. Sophronius († 1771). It went west, to the very borderlands, as far as the militant and heretic West would allow, to St. Athanasius of Brest († 1648) and St. Gabriel of Slutsk († 1690), who lived and suffered under the Polish yoke. |
| How should such love manifest itself? In our relationships with those around us. We must constantly cultivate benevolence within ourselves. We must try to be an example of a loving person. We must approach everyone with peace, able to distinguish dogmatic truths, the truth of Orthodoxy, from human relationships. Look, Orthodox Christians have to communicate with various people of other faiths. I had a Muslim neighbor, Ahmed. We always had good conversation, and I can even say we became friends. I always treated him with love. I also had many Jewish acquaintances. I loved them, but it doesn’t mean I observed the Law of Moses. Another example: there’s a Rabbi living in my building, and I treat him with love. We’ve never had any disputes. We’ve always simply sincerely treated one another like human beings. The Lord says we must love not only our neighbors as ourselves (Mt. 22:39), but even our enemies (Mt. 5:43-45), but here we have no enemies before us. Therefore, I teach all my students: let’s, as they say, share just one thing—our love, which should reveal itself throughout our entire being. And quite another matter is our conviction in the faith, which we must keep, which we must preserve despite any kind and good relations with people of other faiths or nationalities. Sts. Cyril and Maria, the parents of St. Sergius of Radonezh We can learn such a friendly, peaceful, and loving attitude towards others, for example, in soaking in the wisdom of the holy fathers and ascetics of the Church. We have wonderful spiritual literature, such as The Lausiac History, or Narrations on the Lives of the Holy and Blessed Fathers where it is shown that we are obliged to learn humility, lowliness of mind, good relationships, and “the spirit of peace” of which we spoke. This is very clearly evident in monastic writings. Monastic writings, I would say, are the focus of our whole spiritual experience. We obtain this experience, in the first place, on our personal paths, but it’s quite simply necessary to learn this experience from the holy fathers, so as not to stumble in haste and zeal. |
| It often happens that having heedlessly chosen too difficult a rule, people engaging in ascetic acts simply give up and stop praying. When this happens, and even when the rule is reduced, such a person is gripped with doubts, his soul is plunged into disorder and he becomes despondent. This feeling continues to grow, causing flabby indifference, and then the person plunges into a life of idle distraction and commits with indifference some of the worst of sins. Thus, having chosen for yourself a prayer rule in keeping with your strength and spiritual needs, try and keep this rule with all due care and constantly: this is necessary to keep up the moral strength of your soul, just like you have to take every day at certain hours a sufficient amount of healthy food to maintain your bodily strength. St. Isaac the Syrian says: It is not for abandoning Psalms that we shall be adjudged by God on His Judgment Day, not for abandoning prayer, but for the entry of demons into us which follows. When demons find the place, they come in and shut the doors of our eyes, and then they use us, as their instruments, to perform forcibly and uncleanly, with the worst of vengeance, everything forbidden by God. And because we abandon a small [rule], which grants us Christ’s intercession, we fall under the sway of demons, as one most wise abba wrote: ‘He who fails to submit his will to God, such a one shall submit unto his adversary.’ These rules may look small to you, but they shall be the walls protecting you from those who want to take you prisoner. The keeping of these rules within your cell was most wisely established by the makers of the Church rule, by a Divine revelation, in order to safeguard our life ( Homily 71). The great abbas who always remained in a state of prayer from an abundance of God’s grace did not discontinue their rules of prayer which they were used to performing at certain hours of day and night. And we see many proofs of this in their Lives : St. Anthony the Great, while observing the rule of the Ninth Hour (corresponding to three o’clock in the afternoon), was granted a Divine revelation; and when St. Sergius of Radonezh was reciting the Akathist to the Mother of God he beheld the Blessed Virgin accompanied by the Apostles Sts. Peter and John. |
| Last cleric of Beijing Mission reposes in the Lord Moscow, March 6, 2017 Photo: Facebook.com The last clergyman of the Orthodox mission in Beijing, Protodeacon Evangel Lu, passed away on March 5 in Shanghai following a long illness, reports Fr. Dionysius Pozdnyaev, a Russian priest serving at the Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Tung Chung, Hong Kong. Fr. Dionysius writes of him: Father Evangel was ordained to the diaconate in 1950 by the Head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission for China, Archbishop of Beijing Victor (Svyatin). Fr. Evangel lived in Shanghai as a retired clergyman, taking part in the divine worship of the Orthodox community, also during recent visits to China of Holiness Patriarch Kirill and Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk. In 2008, Fr. Evangel was awarded the Medal of St. Sergius of Radonezh on the occasion of the anniversary of the Chinese Autonomous Orthodox Church. The memory of the departed Protodeacon Evangel as one of the confessors of the faith will remain in the hearts of all those who knew him, the Shanghai Orthodox community and the flock of the Chinese Autonomous Orthodox Church. The Beijing Orthodox mission was founded in 1712 by the mutual agreement of Tsar Peter I and Emperor Kangxi, serving as the spiritual center of the Orthodox Church in China until the 1950s. In 1956, the Russian Orthodox Church granted autonomy to the Chinese Church, with more than 100 churches at that time. The Russian Church estimates that there are now about 13,000 Orthodox Christians in China. May God grant Protodeacon Evangel’s memory to be eternal! 6 марта 2017 г. Подпишитесь на рассылку Православие.Ru Рассылка выходит два раза в неделю: Смотри также Комментарии Мы в соцсетях Подпишитесь на нашу рассылку |
| Lessons of history also show that internecine war always engenders a threat of the Fatherland coming under subjection to external forces. In both ancient times and today, our people are faced in such situations with the danger of loosing their true sovereignty—the sovereignty that is expressed in the ability and possibility to order our life upon the foundation of those moral, spiritual, and cultural values that our ancestors accepted along with Divine grace in the Kievan font of the Baptism of Russia, and which we cultivated and assimilated throughout our many centuries of history. To all those upon whom decisions depend: I am asking you to stop the bloodshed without delay, to begin real negotiations for the restoration of peace and justice. There can be no winner in civil war, and there is no political conquest more valuable than human life. As for the Church, its weapon and shield is prayer and the Word of God, which is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword (Heb. 4:12). I call upon all the sons and daughters of the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify their prayers, and to redouble their observation of the Apostles’ fast that has just begun. I especially call upon the monastic communities: pray now to the Lord, as our pious ancestors knew how to pray during terrible times of upheaval; as our fathers of Russian monasticism, Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Kiev-Caves, prayed to the Heavenly Father during times of internecine struggles, as St. Sergius of Radonezh, the peace-maker of the Russian lands, prayed for an end to the hateful discord of this world, and as St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, and Holy Hieromartyr Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev prayed during the days of bloody chaos and civil war [the Bolshevik Revolution.—Trans.]. In all the temples of our Church, a special prayer is now ceaselessly being read for peace, and for the overcoming of internecine war, the text of which I have blessed today for use. And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 5:23). |
| Memory of the Mongol Yoke faded further and further away. The work of gathering the Russian land was completed. In 1521, in the reign of John III " s son Vasily III, the Crimean Khan Mehmet-Girei, thinking to break speedily Russia " s growing strength, advanced upon Moscow, laying lands to waste, killing and capturing people, doing evil. Having scattered the Russian forces by the River Oka, he joined forces with the Khan of Kazan and spread his tents on Vorobevy Hills. Preparing for the attack, amongst conflagrating villages and clouds of smoke, he came ever closer. With no army and no tsar, Moscow trembled and prayed. In those terrifying days, when help was slow to come from on high, a vision that several people saw revealed to Moscow the great prayerful intercessors who cared for her. A solemn cross procession began from the Florovsky gates of the Kremlin. With candles and incense, lamps, hierarchical fans, and banners, the clergy of the Church went forth carrying the miraculous icon of the Mother of God along with other icons; after them came the synaxis of Moscow hierarchs, and then a crowd of people. The higher powers had abandoned Moscow because of her sins. Then, from the marketplace of St. Elias, ran Sts. Sergius of Radonezh and Varlaam of Khutyn. With tears they fell down before the holy hierarchs, begging them not to abandon the city in its danger, and with long, tearful requests they persuaded them to serve a moleben for the softening of God " s wrath. They grieved greatly before the holy hierarchs, and finally the whole, great synaxis unanimously fell to praying, sang canons before the Vladimir Icon, and cried out to the Mother of God for Her intercession; then they returned to the city. Weiss. The Spassky Gates of the Moscow Kremlin. 1852. Moscow was saved from that terrible campaign. Twice the Khan sent many people to burn the surroundings, but they returned in horror with the news that a multitude of armed forces stood around the walls. The Khan asked one of his trusted advisors to learn the truth. The latter also returned trembling. " O Tsar, " he said, " why are you hesitating? Let us run! A numberless multitude of soldiers is advancing upon us from Moscow! " |
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