PAAAASCHA
…for today as from a bridal-chamber, Christ has shown forth from the tomb and filled the women with joy saying—“Proclaim the glad tidings to the Apostles!
The Eastern Right →
“When I left Roman Catholicism for Orthodoxy in 2006, an intellectual Catholic friend said he couldn’t understand why I was leaving a church with such a profound tradition of intellectual inquiry—Scholasticism and its descendants, he meant—for one so bound up with mysticism. The comment was unfair, in that my friend didn’t understand that the Orthodox are not Pentecostals with incense and liturgy. Orthodoxy is about far more than religious experience; its theology is extraordinarily deep.”
In all honesty I can’t understand Anglicans who are leaving for Rome, when there is Constantinople. If I ever left the CofE I’d become Orthodox. Reasons: Lossky.
LOSSKY.
Okay but really I wish Dreher would stop writing articles. This is pigeonholing and hobbyhorsing of the cheapest sort. Sometimes I wonder what kind of America this guy wants to live in. So glad Orthodoxy is here to save us from the ScArY LiBeRaLs.
OMG I just saw a translation of the title of the hymn “The Noble Joseph” as “Good-Looking Joseph.”
Orthodox friends who like to abbreviate things.
Singing along.
(Source: Spotify)
Guys that picture of Adam Lambert in that weird sweatshirt isn’t even replicating a Great Schema.
Like.
Have you ever seen a Great Schema? It looks kind of religious but there are no Orthodox crosses on that sweatshirt, and none of the words you can discern really look like words that are on a Schema. None of those symbols are symbols of Orthodox Christian monasticism.
Just so you know.
EDIT: Actually, an image of the full sweatshirt shows what would traditionally be the base of the cross, and requisite abbreviations and some symbols, at the bottom of this absurdly long sweatshirt. But still. Come on.
I feel like that old lady in Christ’s parable who keeps bothering the judge until he finally comes to bless her house. That’s how it goes, isn’t it?
— Things I say in text messages to my spiritual father
Hey, Russians
I have to make desserts for trapeza on Monday, and I have no idea what Russians will eat.
WHAT DESSERTS SHOULD I MAKE?
Saturday evening thoughts:
I can’t decide which liturgy to go to in the morning. I don’t like going to English liturgy, but probably only because I feel like I should go.
I am trawling Pintrest [shudder] for a bridesmaid dress. No, stop. Why is Pintrest a thing whyyyyyy.
I am thinking about getting rid of Tumblr. Total time-waster.
I know you can’t say “I kicked that podoben’s butt” but I totally managed to sing “O House of Ephratha” at vigil tonight and it wasn’t terrible.
They should make all seminarians Tonsured Floor Moppers for 2 years before their 4 year subdiaconate.
— Kent, again
Доброе утро, Россия мало! #nofilter #sanfrancisco #orthodox #russianorthodox
If you want to learn the irmosi of the Nativity canon is Slavonic… here you go! My friend posted a link to the site, and under the video there are also links to the PDF of the music and a thorough explanation in Russian of how to read canons at vigil.
A Miracle of St. Nicholas in our time
5. A Miracle Wrought By St. Nicholas in Kiev in the 1920’s
It was nearly half a century ago that I first heard of this miracle wrought by St. Nicholas. Never had I chanced to read anything about it in the writings of the Church. I would not want this case of the saintly bishop’s help to depart to my grave with me.
During the mid-1940s (I can’t recall the exact date), I had to spend the night in the city of Munchen [Munich] in West Germany. The city was in ruins after the war, and I would be forced to spend the night outside. Fortunately, there chanced to be a “Good Samaritan” church-house in the city, and I was provided with its address.
There were two of us in the room. Myself, and a man unknown to me, some 40-45 years of age. We introduced ourselves, each to the other. I do not remember either his name or his surname - and they probably would not have been “real” anyway. We had to sleep on wooden benches and chairs. So, in order to pass the night more quickly, we fell to talking. I can’t remember why, but my co-locutor, for some reason or other, asked me whether I was acquainted with the miracle of St. Nicholas that took place in Kiev in the 1920s. I did not know of it, and he related the following tale to me.
In Kiev, at Podol (the northern section of the city), there dwelt an elderly widow with her son and daughter. The old woman dearly loved St. Nicholas and, in all cases of difficulty, would go to his church to pray before the image [obraz] of the saintly bishop [sviatitel’], always receiving consolation and the easing of her misfortune. Her son, seemingly a student, became an officer.
The governments of the city changed frequently: Whites, Reds, a Hetman, a Directory, Poles, Germans, etc. All former officers were arrested on the spot, the old woman’s son among them. His sister rushed about from one “department” of the time to another. She ran her legs off, but achieved nothing. But the old woman ran off to St. Nicholas. Long did she pray before his icon; then she returned home, consoled—the saintly bishop will help. She sat down to have a spot of tea, while her daughter’s hands simply fell to her sides. O, woe!, her brother had vanished!
The son returned home at dawn of the following day. Famished, beaten, dirty, weary. According to him, a large group of officers under a strong convoy of guards was being led off to Pechersk. This is the hilly section of town, opposite from Podol, by the Kiev-Caves Lavra. There was a large hippodrome there, where horse races were held. Beyond it, there was a grove, and rampart-trenches which had been dug on Peter I’s day, as a defense against the Swedes. It was in that grove, by the rampart-trenches, that the shootings took place.
They had come up to the hippodrome when, suddenly, some little old man or other stepped out from around a corner. He approached the convoy-commandant and asked: “Where are you taking them?”
The commandant replied, rudely: “To Dukhonin’s H.Q.!” (which meant, in the jargon of the time, “to be shot”). “Go away, old man!” The old man left, but, in doing so, he took the old woman’s son by the hand and said: “Let him go. I know him.”
Neither the commandant nor the escort-guards replied with even so much as a single word, nor did they hinder him. The little old man led the young fellow out around the corner and, saying, “Go on home to your mother,” vanished away somewhere.
The old woman was overjoyed and immediately set off to thank St. Nicholas. The son wanted to do nothing more than to lie down and have a good, long sleep, but his mother took him along with her to the church. He had probably been there on previous occasions, but had been but little interested in anything.
The little old woman led him up to a huge image of the saintly bishop. The son turned ashen-pale and began to tremble. He could only whisper: “Mother, dear, but that’s the very same elder who led me to freedom…”
Wondrous is God in His Saints.
Many of the details of this tale were precise and animated. Who had my co-locutor been? Perhaps he had been speaking of himself? I don’t know…
— N. P. F. California 1993
(Source: johnsanidopoulos.com)
