The persecutors of the Orthodox Church awarded one another, visiting the US, Ukrainian Orthodox sources (the Union of the Orthodox Journalists) report.

The recent official Appeal of Metrpolitan Theodosius, found in English.

🌟☦️ The suffering Church, the only canonical body, Russian Orthodox in Ukraine, appeals to Bartholomew again, and is being ignored again, and meanwhile the godless regime is holding a court session to ban the canonical Orthodox from the country. Same bolsheviks literally.

“O Lord, grant that I may meet all that this coming day brings to me with spiritual tranquility. Grant that I may fully surrender myself to Thy holy Will.”

from the Optina elders prayer

☦️🕯️"Do not be saddened if people remember you only when they need you. Feel the privilege of being like a candle that comes to their mind in their darkest moments."🕯️☦️

♰ Saint Nectarios of Aegina ♰

🙏 One of the earliest frescoes: Christ, walking to resurrect Lazarus.

☦️🌟 Logic, rational knowledge are human. The central element of Christianity is direct perception: 🌟☦️

We cannot use our intelligence to think about God at the same time as we experience Him, or have an intellection of Him while we are perceiving Him directly. By "think about God" I mean speculate about Him on the basis of an analogy between Him and created beings. By 'perceiving Him directly" I mean experiencing divine or supernatural realities through participation. By 'an intellection of Him" I mean the simple and unitary knowledge of God which is derived from created beings... in general, our experience of a thing puts a stop to our thinking about it, and our direct perception of it supersedes our intellection of it... Perhaps this is what St Paul mystically teaches when he says, 'as for speaking in tongues, this will cease; as for knowledge, it too will vanish" (1Cor 13:8).. referring here to the knowledge gained through thought and intellection.
St Maximos the Confessor

☦️🕯️“If people were in the state of purity from paradise, they would not wait for God to raise the dead, multiply bread, or fill their nets with fish to exclaim, “What a miracle!”

Instead, they would utter this word at the sight of every creature, every event, and with every breath of their lives. But because sin has taken root in people, each of God’s countless miracles has become to them like an ordinary thing.

So that humanity does not become entirely wild, dulled, numb, and insensitive, God, in His mercy toward afflicted mankind, continues to work miracles to awaken people, to rouse them from the gloomy, soul-destroying habit of overlooking the wonder in His divine miracles.”🕯️☦️

♰ Saint Nicholas Velimirovich ♰

“All at once my heart understood, it understood that what is essential above all is God’s mercy. I understood this not with the intel lect but with my heart. And from that time I began to pay attention to this thought, to live by it, to pray by it, to pray that the Lord would not take it away but would develop it within my heart.”
Abbot Nikon Vorobiev
From the Letters to Spiritual Children

☦️🕯️“The person who loves God cannot help loving every man as himself, even though he is grieved by the passions of those who are not yet purified. But when they amend their lives, his delight is indescribable and knows no bounds.”🕯️☦️

♰ St. Maximos the Confessor ♰

“Much effort and labor is needed, for a man to be changed and to be the good tree that brings forth good fruit. Strive, then, for nothing else but to change, renew, and correct yourself. And pray for this...”
St. Tikhon of Zadonsk
Spiritual life in Orthodox understanding is not about getting some high emotions. Based on the Holy Scriptures, the Patristing interpretations and Holy Tradition, we know that Orthodox spirituality is expressed through prayer, worship, Sacraments, and grows through hardships….. for “narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.” (Mt,7,14)

🌟 The Mother of God is one flesh and blood, and one spirit with the Saviour, as His Mother. So infinitely great was Her merit by the grace of God that she became the Mother of God Himself, giving Him most pure and most sacred flesh, nourishing Him with Her milk, carrying Him in Her arms... O Lord, who can describe the greatness of the God-bearing Virgin?
St. John of Kronstadt

Constantinople's hierarch Dumenko is not even a baptized Orthodox Christian, it's fact that he was neither baptized in a canonical jurisdiction, nor received to any such the proper way. And this picture is a photofact of robbery, this chalice is a property of the canonical Metrpolitan Theodosius, in the recent official appeal he stated that the holy vessel was stolen by the schismatics.

☦️ Teaching incomprehensible knowledge about the Holy Trinity you were a champion of the confession of the Orthodox faith with the holy fathers in Nicea. For you confessed the Son equal to the Father, co-eternal and co-enthroned, and you convicted the foolish Arius. Therefore, you have taught the faithful to sing to you:
Rejoice, great pillar of holiness;
Rejoice, city of refuge for the faithful;
Rejoice, firm stronghold of Orthodoxy.
Rejoice, venerable vessel and praise of the Holy Trinity;
Rejoice, preacher of the Son equal in honor with the Father;
Rejoice, expeller the bedeviled Arius from the council of the saints...

Metropolitan Anthony, one of the firmly Orthodox hierarchs of the suffering peripheral land of Rus, is doing strict fasting these days, and called the faithful to do this too. The godless regime is going to ban the canonical Orthodoxy in that territory in favor of Bartholomew's schismatics.

We sin, we sin repeatedly, and the Lord forgives us; this, too, is a gift of God. What do we have of ourselves? Nothing. And this realization should penetrate our hearts. We must understand it not simply with our minds but with our hearts.
Abbot Nikon Vorobiev
From the Letters to Spiritual Children

The San Francisco Cathedral. A classic set of Orthodox icons, Sts. Cyrill and Methodius, Equal to the Apostles, on the left, the Savior in the center, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker below Him, the Holy Trinity above the shrine, and St. John Maximovitch. To name some.

O Lord, grant me the strength to endure the fatigue of the coming day and all the events that take place during it. Direct my will and teach me to pray, to believe, to hope, to be patient, to forgive, and to love. Amen.

🌟☦️ In one of the settlements of the ancient Gardarika. There are several cities called Pereyaslavl, one near Kiev, and another one near Moscow. The right-believing Prince Yuri, the 7th son Vladimir Monomakh, founded it.

“If a man does not humble himself, he will never become a monk. God will not reveal himself to him, as the Lord, as He Who Is what He Is, and not as in books and stories of other people, but through personal revelation and experience. Without humility, years and decades will be wasted...”
Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov)

This is highly important to remember not only for monks but for every Christian. Humility is foundation. Without it one is blind.
From “Everyday Saints and Other Stories”