Often independence is the sign of maturity that we have grown up, the captain of our own ship. Yet we are growing, crashing, burning, and getting up, throughout our past childhood and this new childhood.
Olga Vasilieva
Rating: 9|Votes: 7
The year of the "Great Purge" and the following year 1938 were the hardest for the clergy and laymen—200 000 repressed and 100 000 executed. Each second priest was shot. But the Orthodox Church put up a strong resistance to the totalitarian regime. And if it comes to glorifying all Russian martyrs of the 20th century, the Russian Orthodox Church will become the Church of the Russian New Martyrs.
Although temperatures had dipped into the 20s and a bone-chilling wind blew over the Susquehanna River on Jan. 15, the Rev. Stephen Vernak and other Orthodox clergymen barely shivered as they stood by the riverbank.
Rating: 10|Votes: 3
Then novice Igor Brus walked up and told me conspiratorially, “Don’t sleep tonight, or you’ll sleep through the whole Kingdom of Heaven! Come at midnight to the well. We’ll look at the bottom and see if the Lord will give us a sign—if it will “boil” as it is blessed. Tomorrow is the “Jordan”
St. John of Kronstadt
What is there to wash away in Thee, Who art more pure than the sun; or to enlighten in Thee, the Sun of Righteousness? -- But is it for us sinful and short-sighted ones, deprived of far-sightedness, to gainsay the Lord Himself, Who created all tthings and Who wisely does much that is beyond word and reason?
