The Polish Council of Bishops’ Exhortation to Their Priests and Monastics During the Pandemic On Tuesday, November 3, the Polish Council of Bishops met in Warsaw under the chairmanship of His Beatitude Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland. Among other matters, the hierarchs discussed the life of the Church in this extended time of […]

Bishop Irenei (Steenberg) Photo: gefter.ru     In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. My dear brothers and sisters: we are living now in a moment that demands faith — and not faith in ourselves, or in our civil structures, in governments or in the wisdom of men. We are living in […]

Priest Andrei Chizhenko A sin is confessed, but it continues to bother your conscience. What should you do? Must it be confessed a second time? Fr. Andrei Chizhenko examines the issue. Andrei Nikolaevich Mironov. Conscience The holy fathers compare sin with a weed in a garden, and the garden, accordingly, with the heart. They spoke […]

OPEN LETTER to the Honourable Gavin Newsom, Governor of California Open Letter to The Honourable Gavin Newsom, Governor of California from His Eminence Kyrill Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America  in light of the decree issued by the Governor of California  that forbids choral singing in churches. Your Excellency, I hereby express my protest against the recent prohibition […]

Commemorated on June 21 Troparion & Kontakion On the second Sunday after Pentecost, each local Orthodox Church commemorates all the saints, known and unknown, who have shone forth in its territory. Accordingly, the Orthodox Church in America remembers the saints of North America on this day. Saints of all times, and in every country are […]

THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2020 Download His Eminence’s letter June 8, 2020 Beloved Faithful in Christ, Greetings and blessings to you and your families in the Name of our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ! As we wrote in our pastoral letter for Pentecost, these holiest of days have been difficult and heartrending. We have experienced […]

Priest Dimitry Vydumkin The Ascension of the Lord. VIII-IX century. Monastery of Saint Catherine’s Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai. The event of the Ascension of the Lord is described in detail only by Luke the Evangelist. Matthew the Apostle and John the Evangelist do not mention it at all, and Mark the Evangelist describes […]

Fr. Lawrence Farley Photo: brooklyn-church.org Like many, I was more than a little surprised to see an American Orthodox archbishop of prominence suggest that inter-communion is a good idea—i.e. that an Orthodox priest should give Holy Communion to a non-Orthodox person. Admittedly he was not suggesting indiscriminate inter-communion and giving the Eucharist to anyone showing […]

Fr. Lawrence Farley The year 2020 will be remembered by Orthodox as the year without Pascha. At the beginning of the year, and even at the beginning of Great Lent, it hardly seemed possible. I remember the second Sunday of Great Lent here at St. Herman’s. We had served the Liturgy of St. Basil and […]