| There are different traditions regarding how strictly to follow the Fast. In most Orthodox traditions, the fast is not as severe as that during Great Lent. Fish, wine and oil are permitted on all days except Wednesday and Friday, which are strict fast-days throughout the year except immediately following the Great Feasts of the Lord. In other traditions, fish, wine and oil are permitted on Saturdays and Sundays during the Fast of the Apostles. For faithful Orthodox today, the Fast of the Apostles can be an occasion for reflection upon the lives and example of the Holy Apostles. On the Sunday of All Saints, we remember and celebrate the lives of all those who have gone before us in the faith: our fathers, forefathers, the apostles, preachers, evangelists, teachers, hierarchs and martyrs. The readings which are appointed for that day (Hebrews 11:33-40, 12:1-2, and Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38, 19:27-30) remind us that countless worshippers of God have sacrificed their lives for the faith which we have inherited. Following Jesus’ admonition recorded by St. Matthew, the Apostles left behind their parents, their children, and their possessions in order to bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to people who did not know Him. Christian missionaries around the world are still doing this today. During the Fast of the Apostles we are reminded to pray for them all, and for Orthodox mission everywhere. The Fast is also an occasion to remember that in Christ, we have a unity that goes far beyond our personal opinions, likes or dislikes. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that the Apostles themselves recognized this very early. The occasion was an argument which took place regarding whether the followers of Christ needed to continue to observe the Law of Moses. At first, Peter and Paul took different sides in the discussion. Both Peter and Paul were Jews, but their personalities and backgrounds were very different. Peter, who was formerly a fisherman, was among the first of the disciples to follow Jesus. Presumably he was uneducated and probably spoke only Aramaic in the local Galilean dialect. Paul, on the other hand, was very well educated under Gamaliel, the most famous rabbi (teacher) of his time, and spoke several languages. |
| Syria went through a difficult period of war, when the very existence of the state was in question. Thanks to the involvement of the Russian State and the Russian army, the country is emerging fr om armed conflict, but serious tensions remain in many parts of Syria today. Nevertheless, together with the Embassy of the Russian Federation, we are endeavouring to unite our Russian-speaking Orthodox community, whose members live throughout Syria. For the past two years we have been implementing a new programme of pilgrimage trips for members of the Russian-speaking Orthodox community in Syria to Damascus to participate in services at the Church of the Holy Martyr Ignatius of Antioch at the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church. Five such pilgrimage trips to Damascus fr om Latakia, Tartus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs and other cities in Syria have been organised over the past year and a half. That is, we are currently organising internal pilgrimage trips to Syria, but we hope for the resumption of pilgrimage trips from Russia in the foreseeable future. Practically, this idea could be implemented with the assistance of the Pilgrimage Centre of the Moscow Patriarchate. I also hope that the reconstruction of destroyed cities, economies and civilian infrastructure will begin soon. Following this, we can expect the restoration of ancient pilgrimage routes to Syria " s world-famous Christian shrines. - What sites are interesting for pilgrimage in Syria and Lebanon? Wh ere are they, what is their condition, do they need restoration, is the Church involved? - I remember my first visit to Syria in 2010 with pilgrims fr om the Church of St Catherine the Great in Rome, wh ere I was ministering at the time. It was right before the armed conflict. We travelled through Syria fr om Aleppo to Damascus, and the impression of that pilgrimage stayed with me and our Roman parishioners for the rest of our lives. Syria is an amazing country in its beauty, antiquity and importance for the whole Christian world. Let us remember that the city of Damascus is historically linked to the names of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The first bishop of the Church of Antioch was placed by the holy Apostle Peter. It is he who stands at the foundation of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, although usually, when speaking of the Apostle Peter, we are reminded of the Roman Church. On the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, the Saviour appeared to Saul (later Apostle Paul), a persecutor of Christians. On this place, in the village of Tal Kawkab near Damascus, the active Patriarchal Monastery of St Paul the Apostle of Antioch of the Antiochian Orthodox Church is now located. |
| SAINT SWITHUN, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 92. SAINT THEODORE, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY 93. SAINTWALSTAN OF TAVERHAM 94. SAINTWENDREDA, HERMITESS OFMARCH 95. SAINTWERBURGA, ABBESS OF CHESTER 96. SAINTWISTAN, MARTYR-KING OF MERCIA 97. SAINT WITHBURGA, HERMITESS OF EAST DEREHAM 98. SAINT WULFHILDA, ABBESS OF BARKING 99. SAINT WULSIN, BISHOP OF SHERBORNE 100. SAINT IVO, BISHOP OF ST. IVE’S Introduction It is often asserted, especially by Roman Catholics, that the earliest form of Christianity in the British Isles was Roman Catholicism. However, this is not true. Until the middle of the eleventh century, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Western Roman Church were united and confessed essentially the same faith – Orthodox Christianity. Thus the characteristically Roman Catholic doctrines of the infallibility of the pope, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, purgatory, indulgences and created grace, only became established in the West after the western schism of 1054. It follows that the Church that existed in the British Isles until the schism was the Orthodox Church. The history of the Orthodox Church in the British Isles up to the Western schism can be roughly divided into five periods: A. The Apostolic Period (1st century). B. The Roman Period (to the departure of the Roman legions in 410). C. The Celtic Period (5th to 7th centuries). D. The Early Anglo-Saxon Period (7th to 9th centuries). E. The Later Anglo-Saxon Period (9th to 11th centuries). A. The Apostolic Period. Little is known about the apostolic period in British Church history. Various traditions that are difficult to confirm relate that the Apostles Peter, Paul and Simon the Zealot came to the British Isles. A stronger tradition exists that the Apostle of the Seventy Aristobulus, the brother of St. Barnabas, was sent to Britain by St. Paul and became the first Orthodox bishop in the islands. According to the Greek Synaxarion, he was martyred by «savage Britons». There is also a strong tradition that St. Joseph of Arimathaea came to England via the Balearic Isles and settled in what is now the town of Glastonbury, where he founded a small monastic community and built the first church dedicated to the Mother of God in the whole of the West. This church, built of wood and wattles, survived for over a thousand years until it was burned down in the 12th century. St. Joseph is also reported as having brought with him an icon of the Mother of God which was destroyed in the Protestant Reformation, and a staff which, when planted in the ground, grew into a tree. This was cut down at the Reformation, but cuttings from it were re-planted, and continue to flower this day on Old Calendar Christmas Day (December 25/January 7). St. Joseph died in about 82, bringing the apostolic period to an end. |
| Also concelebrating with the primates were: the secretary to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia for the city of Moscow protopresbyter Vladimir Divakov; the sacristan of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral archpriest Mikhail Ryazantsev; personal secretary to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia archimandrite Alexei (Turikov); the secretary to the Patriarch of Serbia archpriest George Stoislavlevic; the representative of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia to the Patriarchal Throne of Moscow archimandrite Seraphim (Shemyatovsky); the brother of bishop Anthony and cleric of the Šabac diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church archpriest Milan Pantelic; the representative of the Orthodox Church in America in Moscow archpriest Daniel Andrejuk; advisor to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia archpriest Nikolai Balashov; cleric of the metochion of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Moscow the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul by the Yauza Gates archimandrite Alexander (Kotov); deputy chairman of the DECR archpriest Nikolai Lischenyuk; deputy chairman of the DECR and rector of the Church of the Resurrection at Saint Daniel’s Estate archpriest Igor Yakimchuk; priests and deacons of the delegation of the Serbian Orthodox Church and clergy from the city of Moscow. Attending the service in the church were: the chairman of the State Duma Federal Assembly committee for property and land ownership S. A. Gavrilov; the Serbian ambassador to Russia Momcilo Babic; the Serbian minister for labour and social welfare Nikola Selakovic; chairman of the Peoples’ Party of Serbia Nenad Popovic; and the president of the International Foundation for the Spiritual Unity of Peoples professor V. A. Alexeyev. Praying at the service were the relatives and friends of the late bishop, including his mother, sister and niece who had arrived from Serbia. The hymns for the Divine Liturgy were sung by the Patriarchal Choir of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral under the direction of I. B. Tolkachev. The liturgical exclamations were given in both Church Slavonic and Serbian. |
| Refusing to abide by his suspension, he instead fled to GOARCH without a canonical release from ROCOR. He was defrocked by ROCOR in February 2020 , and thus is canonically only a lay monk. Belya even sued Met. Hilarion and a number of other ROCOR hierarchs and clerics in the secular court system. The case is ongoing. Read the full text of the letter to Abp. Elpidophoros: Your Eminence, Beloved Brother in Christ, We greet you with our prayers and best wishes in anticipation of the Feast of the holy Chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. We, presiding hierarchs of member jurisdictions of our Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the United States of America, write to you, as Chairman of the Assembly, to express our grave concern for the precious unity of the Holy Orthodox Church in this land. It was with pain of heart and great dismay that we learned from Your Eminence of the decision to proceed with the episcopal consecration of Alexander Belya, a former cleric of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, whose canonical discipline and ultimate deposition is accepted and recognized as a canonical action by us all. In addition to our canonical concerns, we have serious questions about his character based on past direct and indirect interactions with him and his family. We feel duty bound as your brothers and concelebrants at the Holy Altar to plead with you and your Patriarchate to reconsider this decision for the sake of our common devotion to Orthodox unity and canonical order. While we wholeheartedly respect and uphold Your Eminence’s right, as the Archbishop of the Greek Archdiocese, to make decisions about the internal order of your jurisdiction, and we fully appreciate the role of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in choosing candidates whom they deem appropriate for the episcopacy, we ask Your Eminence to consider the wider effect this action will have on the rest of Orthodoxy in the United States. The reality of our overlapping jurisdictions (which is only exacerbated by the proliferation of ethnic vicariates in your Archdiocese) necessarily means that we are all living in the same proverbial pond, and when we make decisions such as these, there are ripple effects that go well beyond our perceived boundaries. Moreover, this action threatens to further erode our Assembly of Bishops and its blessed mission “to safeguard and contribute to the unity of the Orthodox Church” in this land, as expressed in the Article 5.1a of the Rules of the Episcopal Assemblies in the Orthodox Diaspora. As one with a unique responsibility to bring this body together and facilitate its mission, you must feel the weight and seriousness of this threat most acutely. |
| Eanswythe became the first English nun in the country’s history. According to some sources, before founding Folkestone St. Eanswythe had travelled to Gaul to the convent at Faremoutiers to prepare for the monastic life. Her convent at Folkestone was dedicated (most probably by St. Honorius, the then Archbishop of Canterbury) to the Apostles Peter and Paul—a very common dedication in England of that age. From that time and until her death Eanswythe never left this convent, leading an exemplary holy life in it. With time she probably became the abbess of Folkestone though there is not enough evidence to prove this. The community consisted partly of English nuns and partly of nuns from Gaul who were more experienced and at first helped Eanswythe and her sisters with advice. Apart from everyday monastic labors and obediences at the nunnery, the favorite practices of Folkestone nuns were repentance, perpetual prayer and praising the Lord for His mercy, especially on account of the growth and development of the Orthodox faith in the English land. The saint prayed in the church and in her cell, read the Holy Scriptures and other spiritual books and did manual labor. The holy maiden together with her sisters cared for the sick, poor, homeless and needy. Most probably they also copied and bound various manuscripts which was a custom in many English monasteries. St. Eanswythe gained fame as a wonderworker. There are several cases of her miracles which are known: firstly, she returned sight to a blind woman by her prayers; secondly, she restored the mental health of a mad man; thirdly, a holy spring with healing properties gushed forth at her intercessions which provided fresh water to her community and the saint even commanded it to flow upstream from a mile away (unfortunately, the spring disappeared when the sea subsequently eroded the area); fourthly, she forbad birds to steal corn from the convent fields and they obeyed her. St. Eanswythe reposed in the Lord at the very young age of twenty-six, on August 31 (September 13 according to the new calendar), 640; her father, King Eadbald, died in the same year. After the death of Eanswythe life in her community continued to prosper until the ninth century. Interestingly, it was her holy aunt, St. Ethelburgh, who established (most likely) the second convent for women in England in the neighboring Lyminge, only some three years after Eanswythe had founded Folkestone. This county of Kent situated in the south-eastern corner of England indeed produced very many (no fewer than forty!) saints alone, and it had a number of important Orthodox monastic communities in the early period, such as Canterbury, Reculver, Minster-in-Thanet , Minster-in-Sheppey, Lyminge and Folkestone. |
| “On January 22, 1995, I married Iulia Mikhailovna Brykina. The Mystery of Marriage was celebrated in the Church of St. John the Theologian by Priest Dionisii Pozdniaev. In the same year my first daughter, Justina, was born. “On May 13, 1995, His Eminence, Bishop Evgenii of Verey, ordained me a deacon. I graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary at the top of the class on June 14, 1995, and enrolled in the correspondence course of the Moscow Theological Academy, from which I graduated in 2000. On June 9, 2000, the council of the Moscow Theological Academy Council approved my candidate’s thesis, ‘Anthropology and Analysis of the Seventh Day Adventists and the Watchtower Society.’ “ After graduation from the Seminary, by Patriarchal decree, I was appointed a clergyman in the church of the Dormition of the All-Holy Mother of God in Gonchary, the Bulgarian Metochian. “From September 1995, I taught the Law of God in the senior classes of the ’Iasenevo’ Orthodox Classical Gymnasium. On May 24, 2000, I was awarded a Letter of Commendation for my teaching by the Department of Religious Education and Catechesis. “From August 1996, with the blessing of His All-Holiness, the Patriarch, I held missionary Biblical conversations in the Kriutitsy Patriarchal Metochian with people who had suffered from the influence of sects and occultists. I began my work at the Rehabilitation Center of St. John of Kronstadt, directed by Hieromonk Anatoly (Berestov), after its creation. “In 1999, with the blessing of His All-Holiness, the Patriarch, my book The Chronicle of the Beginning, dedicated to the defense of the patristic doctrine of creation, was published by the Publishing House of Sretensky Monastery. “In 2000 I graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy as a Candidate of Theology. In 2001 I was ordained a priest. In the same year my second daughter, Dorofeya, was born. “I served in the Church of Saint Apostles Peter and Paul in Yasenevo in Moscow. I was secretary of the ’Shestodnev’ missionary-educational center and a member of the rehabilitation centre for victims of totalitarian cults and pseudo-religious movements in the name of Saint J ohn of Kronstadt. I am the author of the book The Chronicle of the Beginning (Moscow, 1999), editor of the anthology Hexaemeron Against Evolution (Moscow, 2000) and the anthology Divine Revelation and Contemporary Science. I have published over a dozen articles on creation and anti-sectarian issues. ” |
| The symbolic leader of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christians, the successor to the Apostle Andrew, had earlier invited Francis, the successor to the Apostle Peter, to join him in Jerusalem to mark the 50th anniversary of the breakthrough meeting between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I. Their embrace ended 900-plus years of mutual excommunication in the wake of the Great Schism of 1054. So why wasn’t this gathering newsworthy? Why was it missing from the vast majority (kudos to the Associated Press for being a major exception) of the mainstream reports about this trip? Even in the fine AP report, the truly historic ecumenical prayer rite at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher was referred to as the “spiritual” highlight of the pilgrimage. In the GetReligion post on that I asked: Ah, there we have it. This was the “spiritual” highlight of the pilgrimage. As opposed to? The political highlight? The real highlight? The news highlight? Yes, there we have it again, the same old, same old. When the pope travels it is a big news event. Big news is, by definition, primarily about politics. Thus, the most important events in a papal tour must, by their very nature, be political. The religion stuff? That’s nice for photographs, unless the pope stops at an Israeli security wall and there is (validly so in this case) a spectacular photo with political implications. Got that? Politics are real. Religion is not so real. At best it is “spiritual.” Now, in the case of yesterday’s bombshell/media blind spot, The Huffington Post did offer a short report that spotted the news hook: Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Barthlomew I prayed together in Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in a beautiful act of unity. Now, they’re taking a further step to heal the centuries-old schism between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches by holding a gathering together to commemorate the Council of Nicaea, which took place in 325. Seventeen centuries later, Francis and Bartholomew will come together in 2025 to celebrate the historic meeting, reports Vatican Insider. |
| Yes, this is an issue about which I’ve posted repeatedly on this blog site, so let me drill down into some specific issues, questions, and suggestions. I'd like to have a conversation with Orthodox Christians and the Church (my shorthand for all Orthodox Churches, of every jurisdiction, in the United States), about how to respond to the calamitous conditions faced by Christians in the places where Christianity was born. Preempting the critics, I should clarify that my focus on Christians and my chat with Orthodox Christians is not a function of sectarian navel-gazing, religious parochialism, or lack of concern with other pressing matters in our world (after all, climate change, natural resource deprivation, and new forms of slavery are but a few of the tribulations that deserve our attention, since they endanger humankind and the planet). Rather, I return to the issue of suffering Christians in the Middle East for two reasons. First, there are the facts on the ground. Most recently, the declaration of a new Islamic Caliphate whose initial footprint is the swath of territory captured by the extremist-jihadi group called the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now renamed, simply, The Islamic State, is a gruesome climax to the decade-plus ordeal that has confronted Christians in those states with a dilemma: for some Christians, the perilous flight from their ancestral lands to the uncertainties and degradation of refugee status in Jordan and Lebanon; and, for those Christians unwilling or unable to flee, the daily privations of being kidnapped, facing slow-death starvation, or struggling to pay the jizya , the protection tax imposed on Christians as dhimmi . There was an ominous symbolism in the fact that the ISIS's terror tactics had emptied Mosul of its ancient Christian population, so that there was not a single liturgical celebration in Mosul's churches on June 29th, the Feastday of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the same day that ISIS chief Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed the new caliphate. The Christian drama is a harbinger of things to come, for Christians, other non-Muslim minorities, and for Muslims uninterested in living under a militant caliphate (their penalty for failing to pledge fealty to the caliphate concept is displayed in the gruesome photos of public crucifixions of Muslims in Syria by ISIS forces). |
| The stubborn persecutor of Christianity becomes an indefatigable preacher of the Gospels. The life, deeds, words, and epistles of Paul all witness to him as a chosen vessel of God's grace. Neither afflictions, nor want, nor persecution, nor hunger, nor nakedness, nor danger, nor sword, nor death could weaken the love in Paul's heart for God. He travelled continually in various countries in order to preach the Gospels to the Jews, and especially to the pagans. These travels were accompanied by amazingly powerful preaching, miracles, tireless labor, inexhaustible patience, and very holy life. The labors of Paul's apostolic service were incomparable. He said of himself, I laboured more abundantly than they all (1 Cor. 15:10). The Apostle endured countless sorrows for his labors. In A.D. 67, on June 29, he received a martyr's death in Rome, at the same time as the Apostle Peter's death. As a Roman citizen, he was beheaded by the sword. The Orthodox Church honors the Apostles Peter and Paul as having enlightened the darkness of the West; the Church glorifies Peter's steadfastness and Paul's wisdom, and sees in them an image of ones who sinned and corrected themselves: in the Apostle Peter—as one who denied the Lord and then repented; in the Apostle Paul—as one who resisted the preaching of the Lord, and then believed. 11 июля 2011 г. скрыть способы оплаты скрыть способы оплаты Комментарии Natasha 10 сентября 2017, 04:55 Awesome article! I enjoyed every word! Continue sharing the Gospel of Jesus with the world! Somie 13 мая 2017, 14:11 Dear Brother Sister, Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ I am Somie from Pakistan. Urdu and Punjabi are the biggest languages of this country. I visited your website (www.pravoslavie.ru) and impressed by your work. I have one suggestion regarding booklets, sermon, tracks, and Bible studies and recording, it would be good, if these will be available in our native languages in Urdu and Punjabi. Reaching out to the people in their own languages is very helpful, effective and fruitful. If your ministry is interested and willing to reach the not reached and untold in Pakistan with the materials in these languages, I can arrange to translate for messages, bible studies, biblical tracks, books and also Urdu page on your ministry website. We can also arrange to reach people who do not have access to the internet and live in distant areas in Pakistan with your precious translated material in shape of hard copies. Our all services will be provided with reasonable rates and whatever we get we use it to spread the word of God. Looking forward to hear from you soon, With prayers, Somie Pakistan |
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