skobtsovite retweeted
“The first time I saw Fr. Daniel on the street, he was arguing with sectarian agitators, and it struck me that he knew the Bible practically by heart. The way he used the Bible, it was clear he read it constantly,” said journalist Iliya Agafonov. “Working on some material, you could call him at any time and ask what the Holy Fathers or Russian spiritual authorities said on this or that question. He would immediately give an answer.”
Fr. Daniel was characterized by incredible erudition already in seminary. One day the inspector started scolding him for communing “too often.” “On the basis of the canons, sayings of the Holy Fathers, and liturgical texts and priestly prayers, which were generally unknown to us then, Daniel easily proved that man is called to commune at every service,” recalls Fr. Alexei Lymarev.
In the same way, as a seminarian he knew the liturgical typikon and strove to observe it exactly. “We had certain relaxations, that he really wanted to correct. For example, when he would read the canon, he always read it on six troparia, as in the typikon, not on four,” said Archpriest Mikhail Schepetkov. “We even called him the ‘Walking Typikon.’”
Fr. Daniel reread the Bible his whole life. “I’d be heading for the metro and I’d see Fr. Daniel crossing the street, reading the Bible, sometimes bumping into passersby,” said Elena Krylova, a friend of the Sysoev family.
skobtsovite retweeted
ALT Archbishop Joasaph (Skorodumov) of Buenos Aires, during his tenure as Bishop of Canada
skobtsovite retweeted
Did you know that we have a saint who survived an abortion attempt? How St. Germanus of Paris miraculously survived his mother's attempt to kill him in the womb:
"Blessed Germanus, Bishop of Paris, a native of the territory of Autun, was born of well bred and respected parents, his father Eleutherius and also his mother Eusebia. Since she had conceived him in her womb within a short space of time after another [child], his mother, moved by womanly shame, wanted to kill the infant before birth; and since she did not harm him after taking a potion to throw out an abortion, she would lie on her belly to suffocate by her weight he whom she could not harm by poison. Mother was in battle with child, but the infant was resisting from the womb; there was a fight between woman and her insides. The matron was being struck but the infant was not being harmed; the bundle was struggling so that the mother would not become a parricide. So it happened that protected he emerged safe and sound and rendered his mother innocent. Here was a prophecy of the future, to have performed a miracle before he even reached birth."
-- Chapter 1, the "Life" of St. Germanus of Paris (+576), written by St. Venantius (+609)
skobtsovite retweeted
Every Orthodox Christian whose kneejerk reaction to this is to defend Russia or blame Ukraine is a reprobate, especially clergy.
skobtsovite retweeted
"Bad brother or sister, quarrelsome brother or sister, you are still my brother or sister. You say, just as I say, 'Our Father Who art in heaven.' Why, then, are we not together in one?..."
skobtsovite retweeted
‘Unbegottenness, they [Eunomians] say, is the essence, and they likewise elevate generation to the status of essence.’
–St. Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius Bk. 1, §35
‘They [Eunomians] say: “Is Father a name of God according to essence or according to operation?” And in either case they seek to entangle us.’
–St. Gregory (Nazianzus), Orat. 29.16
The problem with Sijuwade, like so many others today, is that they refuse to simply speak like the Fathers did, ofttimes finding themselves to speak as the heretics did.
skobtsovite retweeted
Sijuwade's "Orthodox" case that Christians and Muslims don't worship the same God depends on his *defining* God's *essence* as including paternity/generation. ("'God’ refers to the Father, whose essence—whose very whatness—is to be the uncaused source (archē) of the other divine persons" (p.61).) Two problems with this that seem to me devastating: First, the Orthodox position is that we can have no knowledge of God's essence, much less give it a "real definition." Second, St. Gregory the Theologian, in Theological Oration 29.16, explicitly says that "Father is not a name either of an essence or of an action," but rather a *relation*. In other words, for St. Gregory, it is essential to understanding the Trinity properly that one NOT say paternity is part of the essence.
A message for some of my mutuals that I hold as dear brothers in the faith: Your ideological compatriots are threatening to kill Orthodox priests for placing Christ before all things as God has ordained him to do. Christianity, at its core, cannot be harmonized with these ideas.
skobtsovite retweeted
America is not nearly as “materialistic” as it often seems to many people in Europe, and it is interested not only in “business” and “atom danger” but also in “questions of the Spirit.” There is a wide field here for Orthodox “mission,” or rather “catechesis.” But unfortunately Orthodoxy, and Russian Orthodoxy especially, is interested not in this but in squabbles, intrigues, vanity and “national pride.”
- Fr. Georges Florovsky, in a letter to St. Sophrony of Essex
These people are only Christian insofar as their distortion of the religion can be used to further the interests of their race. The moment that the Gospel obstructs their goal they, admittedly, would prefer to be heretics and enemies of the truth. The only thing preventing...
"The West", "Rus", and whatever state you can list, cannot intercede on your behalf before God's throne. Countless souls are troubled at their judgement because they trusted in the baptism of their civilization, neglecting to be themselves "renewed day by day".
Guys, notice how this doesn't say that "national mysticism" brings anyone to Christ. It is "nothing other than the contact of man with the soul of their race, from the world of material interest into the outer world of race." Self-idolizing pagan garbage. Our goal is Christ.
There is no such thing as saving your nation or saving a civilization; these are only propagandistic notions that attempt to spiritually vest their audience in whatever political goal that’s being proposed. They want you to struggle against flesh and blood, not principalities.
skobtsovite retweeted
"..Our Saviour, who was sacrificed in order to appease the righteous wrath of the Infinite God for the sins of all mankind, beginning with the disobedience of Adam."
St. Sebastian Dabovich, Preaching in the Russian Church, Sermon Preached on the Third Sunday of Great Lent p. 121
skobtsovite retweeted
This gentleman was the best man at my wedding. Please if you are able anything helps. If you are not able I’d ask for your prayers for him and his family.
orthodoxcrowdfunding.com/suc…
skobtsovite retweeted
The Orthodox teaching on the Theotokos rebukes both the Roman Catholics — who claim she was immaculately conceived — and the Orthodox modernists, who claim we don’t believe in original sin.
skobtsovite retweeted
"Those (Muslims) who do evil, if they do not repent of their unbelief and cruelty, will face unquenchable fire.. taking pleasure in enslaving people, killing, robbing, and kidnapping..."
St. Gregory Palamas, Letter to His Church, §3, §8
