Priest Leonid Bartkov
A candle is not a “payment” for the fulfillment of a wish. It is a visible sign of the invisible movement of the soul.
Metropolitan Luke (Kovalenko)
Finally, never forget whose you are. We have been purchased at a great price—the Blood of the Crucified God.
Heaven bowed before us that day. God breathed eternity into your soul and called you by name. And this love has no statute of limitations.
We must always remember that God Himself is here, close beside us, extending His invisible hand to help us.
Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
This is a tragic description of the fall of the great city of Babylon, which achieved such great glory, but glory anchored in sin and fornication, in apostasy from God.
Whatever you have, whoever you are, wherever you are, all this can come crumbling down in an instant, which is why the human soul can’t be comforted by temporary, human, perishable, transitory things.
We’re reading chapter 18 of Revelation and with God’s help, we’ll try to look at what’s said there.
Priest Tarasiy Borozenets
“The Witch,” “The Nightmare,” and “The Cossack” are three different stories with three different main characters. However, each story revolves around a person who has not fostered love in his heart.
Priest Konstantin Parkhomenko
The Holy Fathers wrote that someone without Christ is in the dark, like a blind kitten; he understands nothing. And when Christ enters his life, He, as the Sun of Righteousness, illuminates all objects, phenomena and events.
Viktor Luzhkov
For a believer, prayer and participation in the sacraments of the Church become powerful resources that remind the soul, quietly but surely, of the following: You are not alone, because God is always with you.
Alexandra Kalinovskaya
Since time immemorial, the teachings of Abba Dorotheos have been an ABC on spiritual life for monastics and pious laypeople alike.
Rev. Dr. Oliver Subotic
Every sin is usually preceded by a simple thought, depending on a person’s particular weakness. If there is no habit of cutting off such thoughts, they gradually grow and develop, eventually enslaving the person.
As the great spiritual father of our time, Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), observes, all the wartime “slaughters” of biblical Israel depicted in the Old Testament are but a prefiguration of the mental annihilation of sinful thoughts, so that no trace of them remains.
Bishop Veniamin (Milov)
The saints of Russia shine like bright stars in the Church’s firmament. They shine upon us with the light of their spiritual feats, their moods, their holy words and deeds, inspiring us to imitate them.
It makes no difference whether a man carries in his bag a single stone weighing one hundred kilograms, or a thousand pebbles weighing one hundred grams each: on his back he will be carrying the same weight.
Here the analogy with medicine is almost complete, with the priest being only a servant of the True Physician of soul and body—the Lord Jesus Christ. It is therefore very important to find a priest who is spiritually experienced, so that he may adequately treat the wounds of our soul.
Repentance is not merely a matter of feeling sorry for having committed a sin. True repentance is precisely what the original word signifies—a change of mind—meaning the acquisition of an entirely new way of thinking and acting.
The saints’ victory does not consist in never having fallen, but in steadfastly pressing toward the goal set before them—the Kingdom of Heaven—and remaining faithful to God until the end.
Ekaterina Silinskaya
From an Orthodox point of view, it’s important to see that behind these external outbursts, there’s almost always internal disorder in the soul.
The key issue is our encounter with God in eternity—those whose souls are healthy will experience that encounter as eternal light, while those whose souls are sick will experience it as eternal darkness.
