The Orthodox Church approaches the Great Lent which will start on March 15th according to the Julian calendar. In order to prepare for the Lenten journey, the Church gives us four pre-lenten weeks to help us understand why we fast.
The Sunday of the Prodigal Son is the second Sunday of pre-Lent, the weeks of preparation preceding Great Lent. In this video, our sisters and laity will speak about their personal experience and will answer questions connected with the Sunday of the Prodigal Son.
The chant Cherubic Hymn is performed by St Elisabeth Convent's Monastic Choir. The Cherubic Hymn is the song of the angels, sung during every Divine Liturgy of the year with the exception of the liturgies of the Presanctified Gifts and those of Holy Thursday and…
Father Andrey Lemeshonok gives a sermon on the day of commemoration of New Martyrs. "We commemorate New Martyrs and all others who laid down their lives for Christ. Due to them we're in this church today. But we don't know what will happen to us in future."
On this first Sunday of the Triodion’s pre-Lenten period, our lay sisters will answer questions about the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican on the spot. Our lay brother Nicholas came up with some interesting questions to the sisters about their own experience.
We have two windows on the world - our minds and our hearts. Our eyes and ears tend to see or hear what we want them to. Therefore, we are all learning to pray so we can connect our minds with our hearts.
We ought to work towards becoming rich in the Lord. We should reflect, weigh our every action and check if it conforms to God's will. We must ask ourselves, "Where am I going to gain and lose? What is good and bad in it for me?"
We should have a purpose to our lives, and do all we can to live up to it. Yet some lives look more like an abandoned corner of a field overgrown with weed. People seem to be living them without a sense of purpose, and some may have given up looking for it.
If only Adam could have said, while still in the Garden of Eden: "Forgive your indocile and disorderly servant, O Lord, for not listening to you". Sin acts on us subtly and covertly. We transgress once, and we cannot stop.
Resentment is like a thorn in one’s soul. If you don’t pull it out, it’ll fester, and your soul will suffer. Why do we choose to let it stay inside our souls? You’ve got to pull it out. When we pull a thorn out, it may be painful. We have to…
...I immediately bought a big Bible and started reading it from the Old Testament. I didn’t understand anything at all but I could feel that this book was special because it was written by God, and not a human being...
They say on TV that after a person lists his sins in confession, the priest should talk to the person and see if he understands his sins, why they happened, etc. There are so many questions and a spiritual father is vital to guide you.
There are popular videos on YouTube propagating "special mindfulness methods", which you need to listen to for several days in a row, twice a day. I tried listening to the mantras several times, and then I wondered if I was allowed to listen…
We interviewed Nun Juliania (Denisova), the precentor of the Festive Choir, and ask her to tell our readers about the choir’s new songs, about creativity, about choir singing, and about music in general.
When I was 8, I suddenly realised that God existed. I can’t explain how exactly. It wasn’t a vision or something. There wasn’t anything mysterious about it. All of a sudden, it dawned on me that God was real.