Orthodox Wisdom

A memorable word by one of the greatest men of the 20th century: St. Paisios the Athonite (+1994). Here he exhibits his pain of heart for his fellow man, his boldness in speaking the truth in love, his spiritual illumination on things to come. “We have to witness our faith with boldness, because if we continue to be silent we’ll have to answer in the end. In these difficult days each must do what’...

Written in 1914, this treatise by St. Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop in Russia martyred by the Soviet Communists, is especially helpful in our days when there is so much misunderstanding regarding the place of Holy Scripture in Christian life and the nature of the Church that wrote, taught, and preserved these Scriptures. St. Hilarion shows in various ways the approach that non-Orthodox, especial...

Written in 1914, this treatise by St. Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop in Russia martyred by the Soviet Communists, is especially helpful in our days when there is so much misunderstanding regarding the place of Holy Scripture in Christian life and the nature of the Church that wrote, taught, and preserved these Scriptures. St. Hilarion shows in various ways the approach that non-Orthodox, especial...

Written in 1914, this treatise by St. Hilarion (Troitsky), Archbishop in Russia martyred by the Soviet Communists, is especially helpful in our days when there is so much misunderstanding regarding the place of Holy Scripture in Christian life and the nature of the Church that wrote, taught, and preserved these Scriptures. St. Hilarion shows in various ways the approach that non-Orthodox, especial...

Reader’s Note: As you listen to this Appeal written in 1968 to then Patriarch of Constantinople, His All-Holiness Athenagoras, notice how few words would need correction or updating in order to apply to our own day, now in the year 2021.“What do You think You have achieved by Your unique, but wholly uncanonical and unprecedented meeting with the Bishop of Rome? Most simply, You strengthened the La...

“In many different places and many different ways, people today are searching and finding the roots of Christianity in Orthodoxy. Things which we take for granted are astonishing discoveries for them: the splendor of our Divine services, coming down from ancient times and so suited to the need of the human soul to worship God in spirit and in truth; the depth of the spiritual teaching contained in...

“If we think that we are something superior to Judas—that he was some kind of a ‘kook’ and we are not—we are quite mistaken. Like Judas, everyone of us has passions in his heart. Let us therefore look at them…. each one of us is potentially a Judas. Therefore, when the opportunity comes—when the passion begins to operate in us and logically begins to develop from a passion into betrayal—we should...

St. Paisius writes, “…having eaten, one should be a little hungry so that the body will be submissive to the spirit and capable of labors and sensitive to mental movements, and so the bodily passions will be conquered.”“A moderate and sensible fast is the foundation and chief of all virtues. One should fight evil as one fights a lion and a fierce serpent—in the infirmity of the body and spiritual...

Three separate texts from St. Justin Popovic are brought together in this reading. I pray you can feel in your bones, nay, in the spiritual marrow of your soul the depth of the truth and beauty of his God-inspired teachings. Note: the word theanthropic is a combination of “Theos” = God and “Anthropos” = man“The New Testament can be summed up in one, this one comprehensive truth: the God-man is the...

“Now then, my child, if His divine will is in accordance to our desire, certainly you will get well. But if He foresees something that we do not know—since as God He sees and judges differently from above—then you will not get well. Nevertheless, we do not lose our reward: it is stored up in His kingdom. So be patient and struggle.”“And you, my child, write to me about whatever happens to you, and...

I strongly encourage you to listen to the end. What St. Damascene says may be words you find yourself, as I have, reflecting on many times over. Please listen all the way through this short recording. Of all the writings of the New Martyrs that have come down to us, this excerpt from St. Damascene of Glukhov is one of the most inspiring and hopeful. In the very midst of the height of uncertainty,...

“Now you become angry and fainthearted and grieved, thinking that the heavenly Father is slow in answering. But I tell you that this will also happen as you desire—it will definitely happen—but first it takes prayer with all your soul, and then you must wait. And when you have forgotten your request and have ceased asking for it, it will come to you as a reward for your patience and endurance. Whe...

St. Peter Zverev, Archbishop of Voronezh (+1929), New Martyr and Confessor under the Soviet antichrists, offers here a homily on the 1910 Cholera pandemic. Are his words anachronistic? Or do they speak to us today, us who suffer not only from a virus that attacks the body, but from the virus of impiety and lack of love according to truth and sacrifice? “There are still reports being received from...

In this short article by I. M. Andreyev, we gain a deeper understanding of the true Christian social ethic through the lens of a true and most heinous act of a mother murdering her young child, and the great evil, yet triumph, of the crucifixion of Christ. This co-suffering and self-identification with the evil in the world kills the rationalism and individualism that plagues all of us, especially...

“To place the hope of one's health in the hands of the doctor is the act of an irrational animal. This, nevertheless, is what we observe in the case of certain unhappy persons who do not hesitate to call their doctors their saviors. Yet, to reject entirely the benefits to be derived from this art is the sign of a pettish nature.”“The fact, also, that chronic illnesses persist over a long period an...

This timely treatise addresses current issues in the Orthodox Church, including Coronavirus, closure of churches, methods of receiving the Mystery of Holy Communion, the inability of disease to pass to the recipient of Holy Communion, and the Church's weakness and need to repent and be strengthened before the coming of Antichrist. I recorded this because I believe it will stand the test of time an...

Part II/II - This short treatise clearly and powerfully explains the true purpose of each and every human being: union with God, or Theosis. Fr. George (Kapsanis), former Abbot of the St. Gregorios Monastery on Mount Athos who reposed in the Lord on Pentecost 2014, presents the Orthodox understanding of Theosis and the essential path towards receiving this divine gift. In part II, he focuses on th...

Part I/II - This short treatise clearly and powerfully explains the true purpose of each and every human being: union with God, or Theosis. Fr. George (Kapsanis), former Abbot of the St. Gregorios Monastery on Mount Athos who reposed in the Lord on Pentecost 2014, presents the Orthodox understanding of Theosis and the essential path towards receiving this divine gift of God. In part I, he explains...

“What is love? Immortalizing those whom you love, giving the divine and immortal to your beloved ones, giving eternal life to your beloved ones. That means giving the eternal Divine Truth, Divine Justice, Divine Love, Divine Eternity, and the rest of the Divine perfections to your beloved ones. This is true and divine eternal love.” -St. Justin Popović, Commentary on 1 John 3:16-17 “Man, in actual...

“The statements of Metropolitan Joseph, it is true, are extremely outspoken, absolutely uncompromising in principle, and unsparing of persons. But those who find ‘pride’ in such words are perhaps simply unaware of the critical urgency of the issues involved. When the Church is being betrayed and the faithful led astray, it is no time for compliments and polite ‘dialogues,’ not for placing ‘sympath...

I. M. Andreyev (+1976) was an “outstanding churchman and statesman, doctor of psychiatry, pedagogue, lecturer, publicist and author of a series of theological textbooks” as was stated in the Memoriam in the publication “Orthodox Life.” As a member of the Catacomb Church he suffered five years at the Solovki Monastery, which in the 1920s operated a concentration camp, before being released and comi...

One prayer from a collection of prayers by St. Silouan and St. Soprony the Athonites: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80krK...Our Lord prayed, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in th...

“Do you think that Christ our God, the ocean of compassion and mercy, is incapable of lifting the weight of one sinful soul? What is a handful of sand when thrown in the ocean? It is nothing; it disappears. Does even a single grain remain visible on the surface of the water? Not at all. This is precisely what happens with all the sins of humanity. They are nothing in comparison to the abyss of God...

Gathered by eyewitnesses, principally his own brother and sister, we see here the beginnings of a young man who would become a Saint of universal significance: St. John Maximovitch, Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco. As a boy, Michael Maximovitch was kind, obedient to his parents, and especially loved reading the lives of the Saints. It’s not difficult to see how his consumption of the li...

“I am deeply troubled,” a woman wrote Fr. Seraphim, “as to how Orthodoxy views what the world would call Western Christians, i.e., Protestants and Roman Catholics. I have read many articles by many Orthodox writers, and a few use words like ‘Papists,’ etc., which I find deeply disturbing and quite offensive. I find them offensive because as a person of a race (the woman writing is black) which has...