February 27, 7534
Every year, some poor soul of unsound mind, calling himself an Old Believer, starts acting foolish in public. Either he wanders off into the taiga, or buries himself in the ground… Those lying scare-stories, once invented to oppose the schism, are eagerly reproduced by some modern writers who portray Old Believers as half-crazy religious fanatics….
Anonymous lecture on the words “A strong soul amid temptations” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Discourse 105). When I was in prison, I constantly had to move among worldly people with a psychology foreign to me: I was surrounded by people with different worldviews, people of other faiths—Nikonians, Baptists, Jews, Muslims, or outright unbelievers. The mood…
(Printing House of the I. D. Sytin Partnership, Pyatnitskaya Street, own house. Moscow, 1907) I. The First Stage The title of the article may seem pretentious. It recalls Herr’s pamphlet How I Became a Social Democrat. We confess: we deliberately repeated the title of the German Christian socialist who became a social democrat, believing that…
By Yury Isaev Historian of Old Belief in the Moscow Region On January 31, 2020, a roundtable was held in Moscow titled “Constitutional Reform in the Russian Federation,” in which representatives of the Old Believer community participated—historians, legal scholars, and experts. The occasion for the roundtable was the constitutional reform underway in the Russian Federation….
By George Neminuschy About fifteen years ago, I ended up in the hospital. It happens! Not the most pleasant thing, of course, but sometimes it proves to be instructive — in a spiritual sense, naturally. You come into what one might call a “state institution,” with your belongings, a spoon and a cup, and other…
By Kiril Mikhailov “One must try everything in life!” This slogan is repeated, as if by the hypnotized, by nearly everyone. Television has ingrained this in us, and we no longer even think—we simply try, as long as the opportunity is there and no punishment follows. Moral and internal restraints are gone. After all, television teaches…
(A sermon by Fr. Vasily Andronikov) The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?(Psalm 26:1) Lately, the whole world has been confronted with a new trial — the struggle against a strange and unprecedented disease! From nearly every…
We have now come to a very important and intriguing topic: the miracles of Christ. These miracles should not be a cause of doubt for anyone, for they were performed by the Lord Himself. And they were many. As the Apostle John the Theologian says, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the…
In Orthodoxy, there is no strict dichotomy between the soul and the body, nor any teaching that all physical things are sinful and corrupt, with the soul’s ultimate goal being to escape the “filthy” body. Orthodox Christianity teaches that the body and soul together form a single human being and that Christians living on earth,…
The surrounding world changes, but “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). God’s commandments, which people must follow, also remain unchanged. The values and virtues that we should strive for are constant. The methods for achieving virtues and fighting sin have been described once and for all. Human nature itself does not…