Truth and Spirit (Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov)

Do not be deceived by the conceit and teachings of those deceived by conceit, who, disregarding the truth of the Church and Divine Revelation, assert that truth can speak within you without the sound of words, and instruct you by itself, through some vague and unclear action. This is the teaching of lies and their confidants .

The hallmarks of a false doctrine are obscurity, vagueness, opinion 21 , and the dreamy, bloody, and nervous pleasure it engenders. It is achieved through the subtle effects of vanity and lust.

Fallen humanity approaches holy truth by faith; there is no other way to it. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" ( Rom. 10:17 ), the Apostle teaches us.

The word of God is truth ( John 17:17 ); the commandments of the Gospel are truth ( Psalm 119:86 ); every man is a liar ( Psalm 116:2 ). All this is attested to by Divine Scripture. How then can you expect to hear the voice of holy truth from one who is a liar?

Life of Saint Leo Bishop of Catania, Sicily (+789)

Saint Leo, the saint of God, the son of noble and pious parents, hailed from the region of Ravenna. For his pure life and intellect, he was honored with all the sacred orders in due order, and upon the death of Blessed Sabinus, Bishop of Catana, he was elevated to the episcopal throne by God's election. The city of Catana is located on the island of Sicily, not far from Mount Etna, which still spews fiery lava. Upon accepting the episcopal throne, Saint Leo also assumed all the labors befitting his new rank. He cared for orphans, the poor, widows, the sick, and the straitened, feeding and clothing them at the expense of church property, and healed their ailments with his prayers. He was a merciful father to his children and a faithful shepherd of his flock, but to demons and their servants he was as terrifying as a lion to wolves. In his days there was a certain sorcerer in Catania, named Heliodorus; he was the son of pious parents who believed in Christ, and had himself been enlightened by holy baptism, but later secretly renounced Christ and began to serve demons, having learned sorcery from a Jew. Thus he was considered a Christian, but in fact he was a pagan, a servant of demons and a great sorcerer, no better than that ancient sorcerer Simon, whom the holy chief apostles Peter and Paul put to death by their prayers. Heliodorus was like him in all things: performing astonishing magical miracles, he, through his suggestion, caused people to imagine that rivers were flowing on dry ground, on roads and in the streets, so that citizens of both sexes, naked, crossed through the middle of the city, as it seemed to them, a river; he turned stones into gold, but only for a short time; In the markets he caused great losses to the merchants with his sorcery; he so aroused noble maidens, the daughters of honest and dignified citizens, to carnal sin with his magic that, forgetting shame, they left their homes and parents and ran to various places for the sake of fornication. When the hegemon Lucius reported him to the kings Leo and his son Constantine Porphyrogenitus, the kings sent a command to arrest him; but Heliodorus himself gave himself up to the people who were looking for him; he boarded a ship with them in Catania and landed that same day at Constantinople, having sailed in one hour a distance that only people sailing from the West - from Sicily to the East - to Thrace can imagine. Appearing before the kings, he was condemned by them to death, but immediately before the kings' eyes he became invisible and again appeared in Catania; Having been summoned a second time to Constantinople and condemned to beheading by the sword, the sorcerer again became invisible at the very moment when the warrior, raising the sword above his head, swung it with such force that the sword struck only the air; and again this sorcerer found himself in Catania.

Advice to contemporaries

Dear brother in Christ,

I am glad to greet you in the Lord, and thank you for your letter. I understand how serious these questions are, and I will try to answer you with the same seriousness.

First of all, I must tell you this: judging by everything, there are no truly God-bearing elders in our day —like, for example, the Optina elders who once guided people by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and not by their own understanding or the interpretation of the Holy Fathers. This path of spiritual guidance is not given to our time—and, frankly, with our sins, weaknesses, and spiritual corruption, we do not deserve it .

On Zealotry (Saint Seraphim Rose)

Letter 218 (excerpt). Apodosis of Ascension, 1976 [May 29/June 11, 1976] Dear Daniel,

…Before going ahead, we must stop and find out where we are. We wish to be

zealots for true Orthodoxy, and our Church leaders have indicated clearly that we must have no contact with the Moscow Patriarchate and similarly enslaved Churches; must refrain from participating in ecumenist activities and must be aware that ecumenism is eating away the very Orthodox fiber of most of the Orthodox Churches, beginning with Constantinople; and must be zealously pursuing a path of true Orthodoxy ourselves, not only in outward acts but especially in spiritual life,  but without falling into false zealotry “not according to knowledge”—a point that Vlad. Averky especially emphasized. About the latter danger we have been learning much of late from the situation of the Old Calendarists in Greece, which can help us to avoid some mistakes “on the right side.”

Orthodox teaching on atonement and original sin

The following is the complete, extracted text of the two chapters from Acquiring the Mind of Christ: Embracing the Vision of the Orthodox Church by Archimandrite Sergius (Bowyer). These chapters are presented together because they form a unified Orthodox presentation of atonement (salvation).

Criticism of the new disgusting Kremlin propaganda: April 19, the so-called "Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Soviet People."

 

Criticism of the new disgusting Kremlin propaganda: April 19, the so-called "Day of Remembrance of the Genocide of the Soviet People."

Критика новой отвратительной кремлевской пропаганды: 19 апреля, так называемый «День памяти о геноциде советского народа».

(https://paodkb.org/events/19-aprelya-den-pamyati-o-genotside)

Homily for Thomas Sunday (Saint Alexei Mechev)

 

After completing the Forty Days of Great Lent, we have entered a new Forty Days, yet of a completely different nature. There, we mourned our sins, confessed our weaknesses, humbled ourselves through fasting and abstinence – we were in every respect as guilty ones seeking mercy and forgiveness of sins.

The new Forty Days, beginning with the glorious Resurrection of Jesus Christ, has placed us in a new and radiant state as Christians, liberated from condemnation, resurrected for a new holy life, confident in the eternal blessedness of the immortality bestowed upon us.

There we saw an example for ourselves in our Lord, how He, entering into the work of saving humankind, spent forty days in the strictest fasting, in solitary prayer, and in struggle against the unseen enemy.

Here we see the same Lord, who for forty days appeared to His disciples, but we see Him glorified, victorious, triumphant over all His enemies. How comforting are these repeated appearances of the Lord to His disciples following His Resurrection. All of them testify to the greatest love of the Lord for those who believe in Him.

Here is the first assurance of the goodwill of the Lord, bestowed upon Christians: He, the risen one, appeared only to His own, only to His closest disciples, only to those who believed in Him. It seems, why would the Lord not appear again in Jerusalem before the faces of His treacherous enemies, the high priests, scribes, and Pharisees? What confusion, shame, and defeat He would have brought upon them before the people, before those whom they taught to oppose the Lord.

So it seems to us, brethren, due to our vanity and love for power: it is we who enjoy witnessing the humiliation of our enemies, it is we who boast of victory over our opponents. It is gratifying for us to trample upon those who intended to do us harm.

Our Lord is loving; He spares His enemies. He allows them to realize their guilt, to acknowledge their crimes, and to willingly come to the Lord.

Would there have been any benefit had He appeared in glory to His enemies? For a moment they might be struck down – but then what?

If the very disciples of the Lord did not suddenly meet Him with faith, but considered Him joyfully as a dream, a premonition, or merely an appearance of the spirit – then even more so would His adversaries, blinded by passions and malice, have encountered Him with doubt, disbelief, and an even greater surge of malice and hatred.

Yes, even if they were to convert – would it be for long?

We observe among ourselves how thoughtful individuals refuse to acknowledge the manifest truth, but stubbornly reject it, spurred by pride and the desire to glorify themselves.

It seemed that they had lost faith in His Resurrection; yet in an instant, when He was among them, when He still sat with them, spoke His wondrous familiar words, even ate and drank with them, showed them His wounds and scars – in that moment, this sorrow, this doubt transformed into joy, into certainty, into such devotion for which they were ready to go to the marketplace, endure suffering, and accept a painful death. And behold, how diverse were the manifestations of the Lord! He appears to women first, to reward them for the courage with which they stood by Him until His last breath; He appears to Peter, who had denied Him three times, to encourage him and restore his title as Apostle; He appears to two disciples on the way, so that two witnesses could more firmly assure the Apostles; and finally, when all the Apostles were prepared, in an eager expectation, already tormented by impatience – then He stood among them to bless them for the great task that awaited them after Him. He appeared to all the faithful to assure them of His Divinity.

The Lord has demonstrated a renewed assurance of love for Christians in that He has shown, through His appearances, His care for all the needs of His disciples. The Lord appears to all the disciples and also to one or two alone. This signifies that the Lord cares for both the entire Church and for each individual believer.

The Lord has appeared not once, nor twice, but many times. This means that regardless of our state or circumstances, He is always present with us. The Lord, through His manifestations, has always brought some joy, help, or consolation: here is Mary standing by the tomb of the Lord and weeping – and He is there to comfort the grieving. Here are two disciples on their way to Emmaus, expressing their emotional sorrows and shattered hopes – and the Lord is right there to dispel their doubts. The Apostles locked their doors, Thomas does not believe until he touches His wounds, and the Lord satisfies them all.

Is it not reassuring for us, Christians! Christ has promised to be with us forever: what, then, shall we fear?

Source: https://www.mystagogyresourcecenter.com/2025/04/homily-on-sunday-of-thomas-righteous.html

The Fundamental Difference Between the "East" and "West" (Professor John Romanides)

What follows is a heavily excerpted and slightly edited transcript of three lectures given by the great Orthodox scholar John S. Romanides in 1981 at Holy Cross Seminary in the Patriarch Athenagoras Memorial Lecture series. This article deals with the fundamental difference between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity, mainly Roman Catholicism. Readers will be surprised to learn that the division between "East" and "West" was actually more of a political division, caused by the ambitions of the Franks and other Germanic tribes, than a "Theological" question. Professor John Romanides of the University of Thessalonike challenges the common views regarding the causes for the Schism of the Church in the "Roman world," and offers his own provocative interpretation of the historical background of this tragedy in the history of the Christian Church. Far from seeing basic differences in the "Roman world," which led to alienation between the East and West, Romanides argues for the existence of "national, cultural and even linguistic unity between East (Byzantine) and West Romans"; that is, until the intrusion and takeover of the West Romans (the Roman Catholics) by the Franks (German tribes).

Works of Fr John Romanides are available here:

1. Patristic Theology

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UnmLj3DSpkIK_n-M2_pjHLgDpHhVhfwT/view?usp=drive_link

2. In Thy Light Shall We See Light: A Defense of the Theology of Father John Romanides

https://phospublications.com/2024/10/02/in-thy-light-shall-we-see-light-a-defense-of-the-theology-of-father-john-romanides/

3. FRANKS, ROMANS, FEUDALISM, AND DOCTRINE

https://www.romanity.org/htm/rom.03.en.franks_romans_feudalism_and_doctrine.01.htm

Converts - Chapter 88 from Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works

A truth-seeker," Fr. Herman used to say, "when he finds the truth in Orthodoxy, must then stop his searching. His path to Orthodoxy, which is on a horizontal plane, has ended, and now he must go 'vertically,' deeper into Orthodoxy. If he continues to progress on the horizontal level, perpetually seeking how to be externally right, it is often the case that he will keep progressing right out of the Church."

On Relaxation After Great Lent (Igumen Tikhon Nevidimov)

.
"After Easter, be doubly careful: demons do not sleep, and they easily seize those celebrating."
St. Paisios the Athonite
+
Christ is Risen!
When someone asks about relaxation—about laziness, idle words, the sudden heaviness that overtakes them after the great strain of Lent—I want to answer not in a bookish way, without reproaching, but rather by standing beside them, as a fellow Christian in the same struggle, in the same fatigue.

In essence, relaxation after Lent is not a betrayal of the path, not a fall into the abyss. It is a moment of truth, when external supports are removed and it becomes clear what our hearts truly rest upon. While a strict regimen is in effect—services, prayers, ascetic labors—we seem to walk, supported by the rhythm of the Church's common prayer. But when Easter arrives and external austerity gives way to joy, it becomes clear: where do we stand? By grace—or by habit?