The Catalog of Good Deeds

By Fr. Andrew Chizhenko

I remember the words of Alexander Griboyedov from his play “Woe from Wit”: “Read it not like an altar server, but with passion”. For centuries, that aphorism was the reason of sarcastic mockeries about church readings in intellectual circles. In fact, they do not correlate with the truth and ancient thousand year rules of reading in church. Thus, people who demand for the reader to read with passion do not know about the church life and the laws of church readings.

Genres mean a lot in art, and it is important not to confuse them. To put it simply, genre is a particular style in which the work is written. It has its own goal and the means which help to reach this goal. Basically, the goals in art are the following: to scare, to make someone laugh and to make someone cry. Consequently, the artistic means of expression are chosen according to the purpose of the specific work. Together with the talent and the work of an author all of these create a particular piece written in this or that style. The same concerns the oratorical art.

Everything is different if we speak about church reading. Its goal is not to scare or make someone cry or laugh, but to ease a person's path to God: “As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, saying: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; Make His paths straight. Every valley shall be filled And every mountain and hill brought low; The crooked places shall be made straight And the rough ways smooth; And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:4-6).

This is why when it comes to the pure sound of the word of God, there must be a definitive sound clarity, properly articulated pronunciation, where the words are pronounced lucidly. Therefore, a reader must not impose his emotions unto people, who are praying in church. He must be just a timbrel and psalter, which play Divine melodies. Theatrical manner of reading or singing in church always makes it hard to listen to. What is more, it serves as a distraction from from what is most important, which is sincere listening of God’s word. It is the word which will be necessary to perform the sacrament in one’s soul and will purify one’s heart.

At the time, in the Old Testament Church a certain form of reading was developed in the Jewish tradition. It was called cantillation (lat. “sing quietly”). Michael Skabalanovich, a professor from the Spiritual Academy of Kiev, wrote about this form in his book “The Explanatory Typicon” (Толковый Типикон): “…The introduction in synagogues of so-called cantillation, which is something between reading and singing; it is a load reading in which certain syllables are lengthened more or less.” It is a practical experience of the Church, which achieved harmony in combination with lucidity, clarity of sound and emotional detachment. This form is used in church services up to the present.

However, it does not change the fact that a reader must develop himself in his art. First of all, he should live a pious Christian life and be meticulous about sacral texts. Secondly, he should constantly educate himself because he need to know the Holy Scripture and church history, the Psalter and other prayers. Thirdly, a reader must thoroughly study the Church Slavonic language, so that he understand what he is reading. Finally, it is advisable that he does some exercise for his tongue, face and mouth muscles and vocal cords so that his voice has a pure sound, and his words are pronounced clearly for everyone in church.

Of course, during the service one should keep the rule of the golden middle concerning the tempo. On the one hand, a reader should not sing or read too slowly (because in this case the service becomes onerous for the people who are praying). On the other hand, he should not hurry, because the words or singing should not merge into one unclear and monotonous noise.

Readers, singers, chanters, deacons and priests should live with the words of prayer and spirit, so that the arrow of prayer released from their hearts reached our hearts. It is important that we should not pass our personal emotions to other people. At the same time, we need to learn with God’s help the essence of these sacred words, which perform the mystery of the union of a man with God.

Translated from: http://pravlife.org/content/pochemu-cerkovnoe-chtenie-dolzhno-byt-neemocionalnym

An interview with the librarian of the Monastery of St Catherine, Mount Sinai, Archimandrite Justin Sinaites, on the history and mission of the monastery, the Ladder of St John, and the fear of death.

Priest Antoniy Borisov: Father, thank you very much for agreeing to give us this interview. I’d like to start with a question about your presentation. You started your paper with some ideas about the Ladder of Saint John, hegumen of Sinai Monastery. This book for centuries has helped many Christians. How can Christians – how can we – understand it in the right way? And can you tell us about some special tradition of reading, of learning the Ladder in your Monastery?

Archimandrite Justin Sinaites: Saint John came to Sinai when he was only 16 years old. When he was 19, he was tonsured a monk at the peak of Sinai. When his elder passed away, he lived in a cave, and we know the location of the cave to this day. He lived there for 40 years, and then he became an abbot of Sinai when he was already an old man. So here is someone who had passed his whole life at Sinai.

There are many important books written at Sinai that have been the inspiration of Christians, but the most important is the Ladder. It came at a critical time; because it was in the following century that the Sinai passed outside of the Byzantine Empire, and became part of the world of Islam. The Ladder is a summary of all of the wisdom of the Desert Fathers up to that time.

St. John says about one passage, “I didn’t want to put it this way, but I was forced to,” and so it showed that it was not just his work, but that it was a collaboration with others as well, who sometimes overruled his own opinion. The genius of the work is that it is born from practical experience and practical observations. So even though it was written for monks in community – and I would say it’s still the paramount guide for monks living in community – it has been read and treasured by married Christians with families from the time it was written until our own day. It is read in every Orthodox monastery during the holy Fast in preparation for Holy Week and Pascha, and that is why in many monasteries it is depicted on the walls of the trapeza.

Human nature never changes. Technology changes quite rapidly, but human nature doesn’t change. So the advice he gave in the 6th and 7th centuries for humility, for peace with others, for love for God – all of these are as important today as they were in the 6th century.

A.B.: Your monastery, Sinai Monastery, is one of the most famous in the Orthodox world. What is the modern situation of your monastery? How many monks are there now? And what is the nationality of these monks who live now in Sinai monastery?

J.S.: We call St Catherine’s Monastery the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world. We can trace a Christian and a monastic presence there to the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th centuries, and for 1700 years it has never been destroyed, it has never been abandoned.

It was the poor monastery at the edge of the inhabitable world. The great monasteries in Constantinople were imperial foundations with splendid treasures, many monks, and many monks who reached great heights of sanctity. Sinai was always remote. It was the most difficult to reach of all the pilgrim shrines. Up until the 18th-19th century it took 10 days on a camel to reach the monastery from Suez, the nearest port. So it was a remarkable feat to say “I have been to Sinai”. That meant that you had tremendous zeal, you had resources, you had time, you had patience to make such an arduous trek. With the advent of automobiles it became possible to travel there in 1 or 2 days. And then the present highways were built in the late 60s and early 70s. But you have to remember how recent all of these changes are. Sinai only became accessible 40 years ago. So when you go there today and you see the highways, the hotels, the restaurants and shops which were built to support the visitors who come there – that is a very recent development.

In ancient times it was difficult to find food and water to support life. But given that, you were living in isolation, in vast silence, and the monks there reached very great spiritual heights. Today it is not a question of finding food or water for the day, because transportation is so easy now. The challenge facing the monastery is keeping the ancient heritage, the spiritual heritage we have, as a living tradition, when so much around the monastery has now changed.

There are 23 monks in the community. It is a small community, compared to the great monasteries of Athens, compared to the great monasteries here in Russia. But it has always been the small monastery at the edge of the world. Twenty-three is not very many, but 40 years ago there were only seven monks there. The famous Greek author Kazantzakis visited Sinai. He said: “These seven old men are going to die; that’s going to be the end of all these centuries of heritage”. But we have more monks now that we did then.

There is a rule that you must be of Greek descent to join the monastery, because it was a part of the Greek-speaking world going back to the 4th century, and the monks there were very very eager to preserve the Greek heritage. But although it has been predominantly Greek throughout its history, there also have been monks from other nations and other peoples throughout its history as well. By exception to that rule there is a monk from England, and myself.

It has been a place of pilgrimage for Christians from all around the world, and I think it has a special relationship to Russia. We have a remarkable collection of manuscripts in Slavonic, even in Glagolitic, so these are witness to Christian pilgrims coming from Russia centuries ago. We have a silver reliquary for the relics of St Catherine given by Sofia, the sister of Peter the Great. We have a candelabra given by the empress Elizaveta. We have many gifts from Russian sovereigns, from Russian hierarchs, from the pilgrims.

Today it is Russians who are the predominant ethnic group visiting Sinai, because now there are direct flights from Moscow to Sharm-el-Sheikh, and Russians go there for vacations. But as a result, especially in winter we have 300 to 400, sometimes 500 Russians coming there every single day. The monastery has many publications in Russian, and the Bedouin in the area are learning Russian to be able to sell their things to the visitors. So it has a special relationship with Russia today, and with Russian pilgrims. Many come not knowing anything about the monastery, and then they see the donations that have been given by Russian pilgrims and Russian benefactors through the years and they become enthused that this is a part of their heritage, and then we say they arrive as tourists and they leave as pilgrims.

A.B.: What is the regime, the timetable of a monk of Sinai Monastery? How does a monk of your monastery live from day to day?

J.S.: It says in the Psalms, ‘Seven times a day have I prayed unto Thee’, and because of that, the full canonical office is seven services plus the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. But at Sinai we group the services together. At 4 o’clock in the morning we have the midnight service, the morning service and the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, which ends at about 7:30 on a weekday, and at 8:30 or 9 on feast days and Sundays. When you go to church at 4 o’clock in the morning all the stars are out, and by the end of the service the sun is up. So we experience the transition from dark to light in the course of the services. At noon we have the reading of the third hour and the sixth hour, and then at 4 in the afternoon we have the celebration of the ninth hour, vespers and compline. So in these three time periods we have the full canonical office.

The monastery is open to visitors from 9 until 12, and anyone who comes can visit the church, can visit the adjacent museum, can see the place with the burning bush. In the wintertime sometimes a thousand people a day come and see the Church during that time, so it can be very very crowded. Summer is, by comparison, the peaceful time. After the noon service we have the one meal where everyone sits down together and we have the readings from of the Lives of the Saints and from the writings of the Fathers. Then there is a quiet time in the afternoon in anticipation of vespers. There is again a work period after the evening service and again quiet time in the evening and the night in preparation for the morning service. So it is an alternation between private prayer, common prayer and also between times of work and times of rest.

A.B.: Nowadays your monastery is situated on a territory with a very difficult political situation, and your monastery is surrounded by Muslims. How can the monks and your monastery live in this situation? Does this conflict have any influence on the monastery?

J.S.: Before the 7th century the whole peninsular was Christian, and that is why there is a Bishop of Sinai. The Bishop of Sinai was the signator of some of the early Church Councils. With the coming of Islam the Christians there either left or converted to Islam. So there was the end of the Christians’ presence at Sinai from the 7th and 8th centuries except for the monastery and the churches and chapels connected with the monastery.

From the 7th century, with the coming of Islam, the monastery became a place for the resident monks and for pilgrims, but it was no longer a centre for large numbers of Christians who dwelt in the area. The Bedouin who work for the monastery and live in the area trace their descent to the soldiers who built the monastery in the 6th century, so they have been affiliated with the monastery since that time. We have been told by anthropologists that they are the oldest separate ethnic group in the Middle East, second only to the Samaritans, so they have a remarkable history of their own. They are called the Jebaliyya, from the Arabic word “jebel”, – ‘mountain’ – which is ‘the people of the mountain’, in reference to Mount Sinai.

In ancient times there were just a few monks living in the monastery, and a few Bedouin in the area, and they supported each other. The Bedouin would help the monastery in their many tasks, and the monks would bake bread for the Bedouin in the area and support them in turn. It was a remarkable symbiosis between the monks and the Bedouin that is especially remarkable today, because the monks are Christians, Greek-speaking monastics, and Bedouin in the area are Muslims, Arabic-speaking with families, so we differ by culture, by language, by religion, by all the things that make for conflicts. But instead of having conflict we had and still have a remarkable relationship of peace and support. The Archbishop has said that one of the great problems facing the whole world today is the tension between the world of Islam and the Christian world, the world of the West. Sinai is the emblem of fervent Christians and fervent Muslims who yet have found a way to live in harmony and respect, and it is the emblem of the peace that is possible and that becomes our hope for the world at large.

A.B.: In your paper you talked about the strong connection between prayer and the fear of death. But there is a question. If a man is afraid of death, and this fear is so strong that he forgets about salvation, this fear is like a wall, and the man cannot see paradise because of this wall. How can modern Christianity explain to a man that this fear can be a servant on the way to salvation?

J.S.: St John has a Step in the Ladder, Step Six, ‘On the Rumours of Death’, and he says something that is very striking, and that puzzled me. He said: ‘Christ fears death, but he does not tremble at death’, to show that he is of two natures. Many times St. John says something, but he doesn’t expand it, he doesn’t explain it. He was writing for people who lived in close contact with each other, who shared the same foundations. He only needed to make the brief gestures, as it were, and people would understand. But many of these things are confusing and they need to be explained. So I myself begin to read the writings of other Fathers to try to understand this more clearly, because how can it say that Christ feared death?

It is St Maximus who provides such beautiful insights into this passage. He mentioned that Christ had a perfect Divine nature, but he also had a perfect human nature. He feared death in that he had taken upon himself the fullness of our human nature, and he experienced within himself all of the temptations, all of the conflicts and all of the fears that we experience as human beings, but without sin. But having triumphed over these, then he gives us hope and consolation. So the fear of death, that is an inherit part of our human nature, is no longer something to be feared, because Christ has conquered death. Death for the Christian is a time of sleep, and it is a passing from the world of temptations and tribulations into the hope of eternal life. So it is become a passage now from death into life.

A.B.: Christian history, the history of the Christian Church, shows us that sometimes theological discussions have become the reason for some conflicts. Sometimes modern theologians don’t feel responsible for their books, for their theological views. How can modern theologians feel this responsibility for what they say? And can some theological ideas and views nowadays become a reason for social or political conflicts?

J.S.: I grew up in the West, and I know the West as one who grew up there. In the West, especially today, you find academics who are familiar with the Scriptures, with the early texts. They can speak about the early texts with great authority, but they have no faith commitment themselves. Sometimes they even despise people who have a faith commitment, even though they are so proficient in speaking about the early texts and Scriptures themselves. That is a divide that the Orthodox Church has avoided. I was very impressed at the opening of the conference, when Patriarch Kyrill spoke about this very dilemma, that when theologians write their monographs on the history and the analysis and the observations about the Fathers, the early texts of the Church, the Scriptures themselves, they must have a responsibility for these in the Christian life so that they do not diverge as they have in the West. The theologians should be, par excellence, the ones who reflect the life of prayer and the life of dedication for Christians at large. I am very pleased to see that this is the case here in Russia, where it is not only a cerebral academic activity, but becomes a manifestation of a dedicated life.

A.B.: Our Holy Fathers very often tell us that every Christian, theologian or not, needs to be on the King’s Way, on the golden mean. But sometimes we want to be liberal, and sometimes we want to be conservative. What is the main problem for modern theology, for modern theologians, to stay on this golden mean? How can we stay there and not go to the right or to the left?

J.S.: The study of theology has a very very important place. So we should not disparage this as an academic field. But the theologian, par excellence, is one who prays, one who knows God and above all one who has experienced God. We should never think of this as a purely academic exercise, but remember the heritage that we have from the Fathers and our need, not only to become familiar with these in an academic sense, but to be the very embodiment of these texts. I think that is especially important in our days.

We had one visitor to the monastery and he said: “Anyone can read a book; I want to see the living example”. That was remainder for us that we not only live in such a special place, and we have an opportunity to attend the services and to know the lives of the saints, but that we must become the example of this heritage in a living sense.

It is not the statements of doctrine only, or the arguments about doctrine only that attract people to Christianity. It is lives that have been transformed and that become luminous examples of Christian piety that reflect Christ into the world. This is something we can never forget in our own dedication as Christians, that we must become not only familiar with the texts, but we must become luminous examples of the sanctification that these texts present us.

A.B.: The last question. Many theologians and scientists today speak about the crisis in the world. Many of them tell us about a religious crisis. This crisis is a part of secular society that is very strong nowadays. In these conditions what can the Orthodox Church offer to the society which doesn’t know who God is, and which sometimes doesn’t need God at all?

J.S.: The hallmark of our times is secularism, consumerism and the pursuit of personal goals and personal enjoyment without regard for other people. This is an age of information technology when it is so easy to connect with people around the world. But instead of this becoming a means of sympathy for other people, many times the internet is an isolating experience, and we become more removed from the people at a distance and even from the people around us, compared to previous generations.

Many people do not have a hostility to the Church, but they see the Church as something that is irrelevant to their needs. But there is planted in us a remembrance of God, and a longing for God, that is part of our human nature. We can find substitutes and gratifications in many other ways, but we cannot find profound peace and true enjoyment until we come to know God, and God gives the peace that passes all understanding.

It is a temptation for the Church to accommodate itself to the world in a way that compromises its own heritage. Certainly we need to communicate with the world, to reach out to the world, but the world expects the Church to retain its integrity and its witness and it is because of that integrity and that witness that they return to the Church. And this becomes the answer to the challenges of the modern world, that the Church does not change; it retains the same witness it had over the centuries, and as it gave people hope, consolation and profound joy in past centuries, so can it do so even today.

A.B.: Father, thank you very much for this interview. Your ideas were really great and very important for us. Thank you very much.

J.S.: Thank you.

An interview by Priest Antoniy Borisov

Source: http://www.bogoslov.ru/en/text/2361333.html

Many people consider attending Divine services and praying for a long time to be a big waste of time. How can we explain why do Orthodox Christians need all these bows, fasts and long services? How is prayer combined with the aspects of everyday life such as work, studying, household chores, family life and secular celebrations? Priest Peter Patskan, Ludmila Stanislavenko, a public person, and Phares Nofal, a theologian, will answer these questions.

Archpriest Peter Patskan, the lector of the church in honor of St. Prince Alexander Nevsky in Mogilev-Podolsky

- Is there any norm of prayers, which an Orthodox person should read everyday, on Sundays or certain church feasts and during lent, and especially during the Great Lent?

- The Savior Himself was the One Who showed us the norm of praying and fasting. “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred” (Matthew 4:1-2). An Orthodox Christian should imitate our Savior and Teacher Who showed us how to pray.

Another question is how much to pray. The norm for each person is defined individually. The thing is, a person should feel the need for prayer with the call of his soul and conscience.

It is impossible to limit a faithful person with a particular prayer – some of them need more, while the others need less. A person comes to the church and no one states for how much hours, minutes and seconds he has to pray. The Church serves according to the statute and canons, while a layman is a voluntary listener and participant, who is standing during the service, but at the same time can leave the church. No one will punish him for this because no one forces him to pray.

Prayer is a voluntary sacrifice to God.

No one can make a person to come to the church and no one can expel him out of there. In the past during the Liturgy of the Catechumens unbaptized and non-Orthodox people would leave the church or go out to the porch. Still one has a right to be a participant of the service – he prays himself and participates in the common prayer.

- Time for prayer depends not only on a person’s desire but also on how much work and responsibilities someone has. Some people also have to care for their ill relatives and so on. How does the necessity for prayers correlate with real abilities of people?

- If a person does deeds of mercy and works for his neighbor’s benefit – cares for an ill person or does another similar work – then this work amounts to prayer because it is a sacrifice to God as well. The sacrifice of our time, soul and heart can be reflected not only in our prayer but also in physical works and worries. However, just like a bird has two wings, a person needs fast and pray work and prayer. Everything should be within the limits of our abilities.

We must not diminish the meaning of prayer because it is a specific feat and spiritual food for our soul. Without it, the soul becomes weak.

- Many people work for 10-12 hours and there is no feat in this – they just have such a schedule. A person who works every day also needs time to cook for the whole family several times a day. There is nothing special in this, but this work takes up a lot of time. It seems that in such cases there is no time for prayer.

- One can pray during any work. Then there will be less idle thoughts and unnecessary talks.

- What if a person has no time for a full morning prayer or reading a chapter from the Gospel or a kathisma from the Psalter?

- As a last resort, one can follow the prayer rule of St. Seraphim: to repeat the Lord’s prayer, pray to the Mother of God or read the Jesus’ prayer. If a person cannot focus on the Jesus’ prayer, then he should constantly repeat “Lord, have mercy on me”.

- What to do if a person cannot attend important services during the great Lent for various reasons?

- Every Orthodox Christian must attend Sunday services. If it is the Great lent, then one should attend the Great Canon by St. Andrew of Crete and the Marian Vespers. If there is no possibility to come for some reason, then a person should try to read the canon at home. If a person is ill when the service is held in the church, he can pray at home as well.

Ludmila Stanislavenko, a member of the regional council of Vinnitsa, the mother of two children.

- The time of prayer is the most precious time for me, no matter whether I spend only ten minutes for this or try to focus all my forces on prayer just like during the first week of the Great Lent, when I attend the most mysterious and deep services. Nevertheless, it is the time when I am alone with myself and God. These are the moments, which help me to move forward and do all the necessary work; the moments, which help to live.

Some people also have different means with the help of which they find themselves, recover and gain strength. Some people visit psychologists, while other people meet with their friends. Sometimes it helps them, but sometimes it does not… At the same time, it is much easier for a person who has God in his soul, for we know that we find strengths to live mostly in these moments of union with God. Such moments come for me when I attend special services where I can unite with God with my soul and heart.

- How can we explain to people who do not go to church why do we need to play for so long? Why does a service last for 4-5 hours?

- It is great if a person who is standing at the service for 4-5 hours can be with God at least for 20 minutes. I cannot stay focused on prayer for the whole service, because different thoughts distract me from this, and I begin to think about various secular things. This is why sometimes I need such long services just to find these precious 20 minutes when I can be with God.

What is more, we all spend so much time for unnecessary things that the time that we devote to prayer is not a waste of time, but the least what we can do for God. Quite often, it happens so that this time becomes valuable for us as well.

I know many people who think about God only if something special happened to them… They come to a church, light a candle, sometimes they order a moleben and just leave. They think that now God owes them, because they have visited the church. They do not understand that we do so many bad things, that we need to make a lot of effort if we want to recieve something from God. All the time and strength we spend on prayers, services, fasts and deeds of mercy reveal our sacrifices to God.

Everything is very individual. For example, people make bows just as they can – some people cannot make bows because of physical illness, they can even sit during the service, but at the same time, they can pray wholeheartedly. Every person chooses the extent of his feat on his own. There is no common rule for everyone, for example, to stand for five hours, to read five chapters from the Gospel and to make a hundred bows without any alternatives.

If we speak about me personally, I can say that my spiritual father helps me to estimate my own extent. I know that sometimes a 10-minute-long prayer can be so sincere that you feel God hears you at this moment. On the other hand, sometimes we can automatically do certain usual things, while mentally we are not here at all.

- How can you combine your need for prayer with all the work, public activities, and secular family celebrations?

- We can say again that everyone has their own extent. Public life and events take much time and energy – this is truth. I refill my energy when I communicate with God, with my family, close and loved ones, when I hug my children. If there is free time, I try to read spiritual literature, which fills me and helps me to restore a certain level of purity. Of course, I also try not to miss Sunday and feastal services and to teach my own children to do so through my own example.

- However, there are spiritual feats, which are considered obligatory for an Orthodox Christian – morning and evening prayers, Gosper and Psalter readings, akathists…

- Unfortunately, I cannot do everything as prescribed. I just cannot keep up with it. Individual approach, once again. I cannot leave my house without the Lord ’s Prayer and other simple prayers. If there is enough time, I read more. If there is no time, I read my own minimal amount of prayers.

If I manage to read the whole Rule, it is a joy for me; but if I do not, then it makes me feel guilt. Among others, I also have a small prayerbook of the Intercession of the Mother of God “For protection from worries and troubles on the ways of life”, which I love very much. I try to read prayers for my children and family welfare, which are in this prayerbook too. I will worry a lot, if I do not do this.

Phares Nofal, a Syrian, an Orthodox Christian, a theologian, an expert on Islamic studies

- Once Vladimir Bibikhin gave a great description to the word around us: the being which “speaks”. Perhaps, that was the most important discovery of the 20^th century: dealing with the problems of language and communication, the modern and post-modern philosophes found out that we are always and everywhere surrounded with speech.

It turns out that with diverse speech, “speaking”, we can even say voluntary multiloquence lies in the foundation of any culture and life. Anyone can see it for himself: two or three short ideas can often turn into long novels or poems, into long-lasting conversations or talks about feelings. Everything is "speaking" all the time, and this is why everything lives.

Today our services are not so long as they were three or four centuries ago, but still they remain equally necessary and important for our salvation. During a service, the Church tries to bring a person to a single simple thought, to one deep idea, to one slight rustle in his soul – how can it be achieved without “speaking”?

To let the sincere declaration of love be born in us, we try to speak to each other in the church with the help of different languages: verbal, musical and sacral-esthetic. And quite often it helps. It happens so that after the 4-hour-long Great Lent services we feel “so bright, as if a poetry was born in our heart” as one modern classic said. The service which seems so long is if fact the greatest school of language and the feeling behind it.

Translated from: http://www.pravmir.ru/pochemu-pravoslavnyie-tak-dolgo-molyatsya/

By Fr. Andrew Lemeshonok

We are tied to a wardrobe full of clothes, to the plate of borscht, to our wallet with the money that wither away, to the weather that cannot warm up our hearts. We are addicted to all those things. This is our weakness, a reason for our current woeful condition, because we are tied to wrong relationships with one another, to offences, to divisions and separations, too. Unfortunately, we cannot do without these relationships. This is why words about eternity and the absence of death may sound comforting to us, of course, but we do not feel them in the same way as the people who were free from all that vanity from the start. We need lots of props in order to really enter into the life where Christ is risen.

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We are grateful to God for being in the Orthodox Church, for having the intercessors like the Theotokos and the saints who pray for us, and even though we have harsh hearts, we still can feel it sometimes. There comes a moment when we finally break through and the new life touches us. This is when we understand that we live not only on the earth: we have our share in Heavens, too. I would like this share to grow bigger and bigger. (Sermon after Vespers on April 24, 2017)

By Fr. Alexander Pashkovsky

Every one of us has a cross to carry. For some, it is their family. For others, it is an illness, a sorrow of any kind, work-related problems, etc. We shouldn’t be seeking easier paths. What we should be looking for is God’s will. Most often, we already know it because we know the Ten Commandments and we know we must not trespass them because there is no justification for sins like these. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on June 24, 2017)

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It is vital to learn to see godlike goodness in one’s neighbour. We must remember that goodness does not disappear. It is us who change: today we are kind and calm, and tomorrow we can change. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on June 25, 2017)

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Sometimes we say Doubting Thomas, and mean it in the negative sense. However, a true believer must test everything. A believer must not trust himself. He must search for the truth, like St Thomas who did not believe initially but then looked for God and found the faith. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on April 22, 2017)

By Fr. Priest Valery Zakharov

If we pay attention during prayer, we will hear what the Lord wants to tell us. (Sermon after an Akathist in the Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on June 23, 2017)

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We often think that it is something inside us — a proper mood, agility, or hard work — that makes miracles happen. We forget that miracles come from God, and we can only petition God for them. God grants us our petitions precisely when we realise whom we are asking and who we are. This repentance gives God the chance to act. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy in the Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on July 1, 2017)

***

Teach us to love… I think this is what God wants to accomplish. If He rebukes us for some reason, it is not meant as a way to disparage or offend us. He does it to make us holy, no less. (Sermon Before the Confession in the Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on April 21, 2017)

By Fr. George Glinsky

We often try to substitute God with an idol that we model in our own image and likeness based not only on our own needs and requirements but even on political, social, or other interests. However, if we refuse to make the idol in our image and likeness; if we finally acknowledge that we are the image and likeness of the invisible God; if we recall what God calls us for, our lives will change. If we stop pleading with God to let us do what we want, if we stop perverting the Gospel every time we need it, we will discover the fulness of the Divine Revelation on the pages of the Holy Scripture. In spite of our total depravity, the abomination of our life, our spiritual deformity, Apostle Paul says that the Lord is always true to his promise: He came to save all people who turn to him with repentance, willing to transform their lives and redefine them in the light of the Gospel. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on June 27, 2017)

***

We must work hard every day to demonstrate that Christ did indeed rise for our sake; that we remain faithful to him, even as we have heard about him long long ago; that our lives do change if we try to remember him; that He really transformed our lives and this transformation is irreversible. It is only in this case that the Good News of the Gospel — the news of the Resurrection of Christ — will take roots in our hearts and bring the fruit of salvation not only for us but also for the people who are looking for the truth. (Sermon after the Vespers on April 26, 2017)

By Fr. Sergius Nezhbort

May the Lord help us to stay firm in what we are called to do: in our duties and the circumstances of our lives. May He teach us not to scuttle back and forth, not to panic, but make attempts at moving forward. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on June 26, 2017)

By Fr. Sergius Khrapitsky

Independence isn’t an Orthodox word because every human depends on God. It’s impossible to be independent of God. The devil’s poison spreads around the contemporary world and penetrates deep into human conscience. People can’t even comprehend that these are the actions of the foe of the human race.

Almost the entire world is under the devil’s rule nowadays. Only those people who pray, fast, and go to church, demonstrate that they are free from his cobwebs. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on July 3, 2017)

August 14, 2017

St. Elisabeth Convent

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