by His Grace, the Right Reverend Alexei, Bishop of Sitka and Alaska Humility, chastity, and modesty are virtues that especially adorn the most Pure Virgin Mother of our God. Modesty is itself one of the fruits of the Spirit enumerated by Saint Paul. Modesty is a kindness towards one’s neighbor, a humble goodness that provokes neither envy nor desire, and love that thinks more of others than of self. When we pray in Church, we are especially called to modesty, which enables us to approach God with that humble and contrite heart that He will not despise. Our Lord Himself was modest, modest about His miracles, modest in His speech, modest in His example, modest in the washing His disciples' … [Read more...]

by Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon Perhaps among the least appreciated, and seldom thought on, descriptions of Jesus our Lord is the one given by John the Baptist: “His winnowing shovel is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor; and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12). Threshing is a violent activity. It is done by pounding the grain repeatedly on a stone floor with a shovel or a flail, in order to separate it from the husks which enclose it. The discarded husks are called chaff. When this beating of the grain has been done, the thresher uses his shovel to throw it into the air, so that the wind … [Read more...]

By Sergei V. Bulgakov The terrible word anathema, by which the Holy Church punishes those who betray the right belief, means excommunication and exile from the society of believers, cutting off from the spiritual and mystical body of Christ, deprivation of all spiritual rights which the faithful children of the Church are used to.  To be cut off from the Church means to lose everything that the Heavenly Father through the incarnation of His Only-begotten Son and that were granted to us through faith in Him, to lose the grace of baptism and adoption by God the Father, the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, by which we were signed in the Sacrament of Chrismation; to lose the most heavenly … [Read more...]