Orthodoxy for all

Prayer 1 God, enlighten us with Your Holy Spirit, so that we may all understand Your love. Prayer 2 For those who ask my prayers, I tearfully beseech the Lord: "Lord, give them Your Holy Spirit, that they may know You through the Holy Spirit. Merciful Lord , teach us all by Your Holy Spirit to live according to Your will, so that we all in Your Light may know You, the true God, for without Your Light we cannot understand the fullness of Your love. Enlighten us with Your grace, and it will warm our hearts to love You." O Most Merciful Lord, grant us a humble spirit, that our souls may find peace in You. Prayer 3 Most Holy Mother of the Lord, O Merciful One, ask for a humble spirit for us. All saints, you live in heaven and behold the glory of the Lord, and your spirit rejoices—pray that we too may be with you. My soul longs to see the Lord and yearns for Him in humility, as one unworthy of such a blessing. Merciful Lord, by the Holy Spirit teach us Your humility. Lord , correc...

History and description The Icon of the Mother of God known as “The Enlightener of Mind,” “Addition of Mind,” “Giver of Reason,” or “Key of Intelligence” (Russian: Прибавление ума, Подательница ума, or Ключ разума) is a distinctive and relatively late iconographic type venerated in the Russian Orthodox Church. Its feast is observed on the first Sunday after the Dormition of the Theotokos (or, in some calendars, associated with August 15/28). The image is invoked especially for the enlightenment of the mind, aid in studies, clarity of thought, healing of mental afflictions, and protection from spiritual confusion. The composition is highly unusual within the Orthodox tradition. The Theotokos and the Christ Child are depicted standing or half-length, both enveloped together in a single ornate phelonion (the liturgical vestment typically worn by priests), as if swaddled or jointly clothed. Both wear royal crowns or diadems. The Child holds an orb (the symbol of sovereignty) in His left ha...

With her entire being, the Most Pure Virgin yearned for heaven. The closer she came to the longed-for passage to other worlds, the more focused her always silent and introspective soul became. Prayer served the Mother of God as a means of constant communion with Her Son. Her entire life was filled with unceasing prayer. She spent entire days, entire nights, praying in the vineyard of Gethsemane, and who can tell what insights illuminated Her great soul during these hours of prayer, what message the heart of Christ imparted to the heart of Mary, meekly languishing in separation from Her Divine Son? One can guess what the Mother of God's prayer was about. She likely prayed for the flourishing of Christianity, for those churches of believers who, under the influence of the apostles' preaching as they traveled the world, were founded in various countries. But most likely, She prayed most of all to be quickly freed from the bonds of the flesh and ascend to the sweet vision and etern...

If you ask people a very simple question: who spent the longest time in the Gulag during Soviet times, how many years exactly, and for what? – I'm sure very few would be able to answer. That man was Mikhail Vasilyevich Yershov. A man of unbending will, a kind of unattainable courage that drove his persecutors and tormentors into uncontrollable rage.

When, my beloved, the Lord descended from Mount Tabor with three of His disciples, James, John, and Peter, He came to where the other nine disciples were, surrounded by a large crowd of people and Pharisees. With them was a distressed father who had brought his possessed son to the apostles for healing, but they were unable to help him. He approached the Savior and addressed Him: “Lord, have mercy on my son… I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not heal him” (Matthew 17:15). Then Christ sighed and said: “ O faithless and perverse generation! How long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? ” He asked that the child be brought closer to Him, and He freed him from the demon. When He was alone with His disciples, the apostles asked: “Why could we not cast out the demon?” The Lord answered: “Because of your unbelief” (Matthew 17:20). The question arises: is it possible that we, baptized Christians, like the disciples who followed the Lord, live close to Christ, receive...

At the royal court Reverend Vandregizil Once upon a time there lived a man named Vandregizil, also known as Vandon, whose life was illuminated by divine light. He was born in the region of Verdun [4] and, of noble birth, further ennobled himself by his monastic life. Until his youth, he lived with his parents, who provided him with the education appropriate for his time, and then assigned him to an important and high service. During these years, Vandregizil, although leading the life of an honorable secular man, always fulfilling all entrusted to him with impeccability, strove in his soul to follow the commandments of Christ, so that the ascetic applied to himself the words of Christ from the Gospel: "Render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21) [5] . Vandregisil was still a young man when his parents decided to marry him. Obedient to his parents' wishes, he became engaged to a girl from a goo...

Elder Joseph, known in the world as Francis Kottis, was born in Lefkes on the island of Paros on the 12th of February 1897. His parents, George and Maria, were ordinary but righteous people. He was destined even from his mother’s womb to follow in the footsteps of Christ and become His aide in the deliverance of men. When his mother gave birth to him, she had a vision where an angel was trying to take the baby away from her. When she protested, the angel showed her a note in which it was written that he must take the baby away.

Written by Archimandrite Tikhon Nevidimov "Human nature is corrupted, and man alone cannot be saved. But in Christ we find all things, if only we deny ourselves and follow Him." — Saint Seraphim (Rose) of Platina + Modern man is captivated by his mind, bound to his body, limited by his time. He builds worlds within himself, prides himself on his achievements, convinced that with the help of science, philosophy, or even religious practices, he can comprehend the truth and overcome himself. But the Holy Fathers tell us that without God, man is only a shadow of what he was created to be. Human limitation is not simply a weakness, not simply an imperfection, but a deep wound, a gap between what God intended for him and what he became after the Fall. Man himself, without realizing it, falls into the trap of his limitations. He believes he is free, that he thinks, creates, and seeks truth, but in reality, he is bound by his own mind, in the prison of his own ego. Like a child who h...

                                                               Blessed Saint Vasilii (Basil), Moscow Wonderworker, was born in December 1468 on the portico of the Elokhovsk church in honour of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God, outside Moscow. His parents were common folk and sent their son for training in the cobbler's (shoemaker's) craft. During the time of teaching his apprentice the master happened to be a witness to a certain remarkable occurrence, wherein he perceived, that his student was no ordinary man. A certain merchant had brought grain to Moscow on a barge and then went to order boots, specifying to make them such and so, since he would not pick them up for a year. Blessed Vasilii uttered weeping: "I would thee leave them such, since thou will not wear them out". To the perplexed questioning of the mas...

  When the impious Maximian reigned, a cruel tormentor of Christians, and when almost the entire universe was covered with the darkness of idolatrous impiety, a great persecution was raised against believers in Christ everywhere, and many confessors of the most holy name of Jesus Christ died as martyrs. Then the holy great martyr Panteleimon suffered for Christ in the Bithynia region in the city of Nicomedia.

The First Sorrowful Epistle The Holy Fathers and Doctors of the Church have exhorted us to keep the Truth of Orthodoxy as the apple of our eye. And Our Lord Jesus Christ, teaching His Disciples to maintain every jot and title of the Divine Law intact said, "Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. v. 19). He sent His disciples to teach the doctrines He gave them to all nations in a pure and unadulterated form, and that duty then devolved upon each of us Bishops, as the successors to the Apostles. We are also taught to do this by the dogmatic definition of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which says: "We keep unchanged all the ecclesiastical traditions handed down to us, whether in writing or by word of mouth." And the Holy Fathers of that Council added, in their first Canon: "The pattern for those who have received the sacerdotal dignity is found in the ...

It should not surprise us that in our time a search for paths to unification has awakened within fragmented Christianity. Before our eyes is an open and direct campaign against Christianity in communist countries; but in a more outwardly mild form, this campaign against Christianity has also engulfed the countries of the so-called free world. A struggle lies ahead, and it demands the unity of people faithful to Christ and a firm stand in the truth. Enemies are already ready to bury Christianity. In vain! The Lord's words have been spoken: " Be of good cheer! I have overcome the world ." They must be inscribed in our hearts in letters of fire. But the struggle ahead will be long and severe. And who—a believer—will not regret that in these terrible historical hours such masses of Christians remain behind the walls of the Church created by the Lord? Who—a believer—would not rejoice at the unification of all Christianity, scattered and dispersed, in one holy, catholic, aposto...

As we begin to recount the life of Saint Elijah, the God-Seer and glorious zealot for God, the rebuker of lawless kings, the chastiser of those who fell away from God, the punisher of false prophets, the wondrous miracle-worker to whom the elements obeyed and whom heaven itself heeded, the great favorite of God who remains in the flesh even to this day and is destined to come to earth before the second coming of Christ—for a clearer and stronger demonstration of the zeal with which he contended for the Lord God—we shall first briefly set forth the events that took place before him.

Your Holiness, We have inherited a legacy from the Holy Fathers that everything in the Church should be done in a legal way, unanimously, and conforming to ancient Traditions. If any of the bishops and even primates of one of the autocephalous churches does something which is not in agreement with the teaching of the whole Church, every member of the Church may protest against it. The 15th Canon of the First and Second Council of Constantinople of the year 861 describes as "worthy to enjoy the honour which befits them among Orthodox Christians" those bishops and clergymen who secede from communion even with their patriarch if he publicly preaches heresy and openly teaches it in church. In that way we are all guardians of the truth of the Church, which was always protected through the care that nothing of general importance for the Church would be done without the consent of all.

FROM SOME TIME PAST I had purposed to write to Your All Holiness because of Your hasty and unhesitating dealing toward a union of the Orthodox Eastern Church with the evil-doctrined Papacy. I did not write to You, because illustrious hierarchs, elect clerics, most pious professors and theologians, virtuous monks, learned, informed laymen have written clearly against this false union pursued in so hasty and servile a manner. [1]

An open letter written in 1965 by Archimandrite Epiphanios Theodoropoulos to Patriarch Athenagoras of Constantinople, criticizing ecumenical overtures to Rome and defending Orthodox tradition. Originally published in 'The Three Hierarchs' and later in 'The Orthodox Word' by St. Seraphim and Herman of Platina. “Your All-Holiness: For some years now the body of the Orthodox Church, the consciously religious body, stands as an anxious spectator before the Faith-endangering acrobatics of the First Bishop of Orthodoxy. In short, in order that we might avoid another kind of acrobatics, the behavior of you and some of your representatives toward the Pope and Papism casts the truly Orthodox children of the Church not only into unspeakable sorrow, but also into terrible spiritual trial. You correspond with the Pope on every ecclesiastical matter as if we lived in the fifth century after Christ. You subject yourself to the distresses of long journeys to meet him. You exchange wit...