Articles

Чи не вимагає від нас Бог неможливого? Чи може Він хоче, щоб ми були такі раби, які приймають всякі наруги без нарікань і не стараються нічого змінити на краще? Але ні!

Пишу це останнє роздумування, як Настоятель нашої Громади Святої Софії, Божої Премудрості, на нашій Оселі біля Сант Теодор де Чертсі. Тут вид неба вкритого блискучим раєм зір просто надзвичайний!

During an Orthodox College Fellowship retreat last spring, a college student said, "If I put Christ first, the suffering will be great and the joy will be greater."

Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. There is, of course, a difference here between different Churches: some do not admit divorce at all; some allow it reluctantly in very special cases. It is a great pity that Christians should disagree about such a question; but for an ordinary layman the thing to notice is that the Churches all agree with one another about marriage a great deal more than any of them agrees with the outside world.

I know your name, I know your family, but I don't know you. The phone call I got about you was the one I dread. "Father, so and so has passed away, and the family wants to know when you can serve the funeral"

What I have to say here may come as a shock to the great majority of Orthodox. Yet it is a self-evident fact that the parish as we understand it now, i.e., as an organization with officers, by-laws, finances, property, meetings, elections, etc., is a very recent phenomenon and exists, in fact, almost exclusively within the Orthodox "diaspora."

The stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken”(Mark 13:25) These are the first words that to my mind as I watched the footage of the Space Shuttle Columbia break apart high above the southern U.S.A. In the hours that followed, the television news channels were filled with commentary form experts and reports of recovery operations searching for the wreckage that had fallen through the states of Texas and Louisiana.

The Orthodox Church’s main hymn (troparion/apolytikion) for the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra is the general hymn for all of the Church’s holy bishops. As such, for example, it is sung the day after the feast of St. Nicholas for the celebration of St. Ambrose of Milan.

"How do we increase the number of parishioners?" "How can we engage our inactive parishioners?" "How can we bring our youth back to the Church?" Such questions are heard in Orthodox Churches all over North America.

A travelogue by Rev. Fr. Taras Udod of the visit of His Eminence Metropolitan John, accompanied by Rev. Frs. Bohdan Hladio and Taras Udod, to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, Sept. 21 – 24, 2006.