Savva Tống (Duệ Uyên)
The Orthodox Church came to me not as an idea, but as something older than words: a living tradition, a beauty that doesn’t need to be explained, and a holy presence I couldn’t ignore. And what made me surrender completely… was Her.
Maria Tobolova
Schemanun Gabriela became the successor of Fr. Alexei and Fr. Sergei. Outwardly, she lived an ordinary life in the world, but in reality it was the life of an ascetic.
Seraphima Muravyova
Years later she told her cell-attendant that at the very moment she stepped inside the enclosure she knew: This is my home—one I had never found before.
The story of her family line begins in 1835, when a beloved daughter of Emperor Nicholas I made an unusual request for her sixteenth birthday: She asked to spend her entire life in Russia.
Archpriest Nikolai Skurat
The names of many elders of the Russian Orthodox Church are associated with Optina Monastery. In the nineteenth century, a special monastic tradition arose there, at the origins of which stood St. Moses (Moisei) of Optina (1782–1862). We have talked with Archpriest Nikolai Skurat, a teacher at the Sretensky Theological Academy, on this saint’s life, his choice of the monastic path and eldership.
