☦️🕯️“The man who is sorely grieved in his heart but gives rein to his senses, is like a sick man who suffers physically but who opens his mouth to every kind of harmful food. The man who is sorely grieved in his heart but gives rein to his senses is like a man with an only son, whom he slaughters with his own hands, little by little.”🕯️☦️

♰ Saint Isaac the Syrian ♰

☦️ SYMBOLISM OF THE SLANTED BAR☦️

The upward side (usually pointing to Christ’s right) symbolizes the penitent thief who was crucified beside Him and entered Paradise.

The downward side (Christ’s left) represents the unrepentant thief, symbolizing rejection of salvation.

So it’s a reminder of judgment, choice, and hope.

☦️ Metropolitan Anthony, the UOC Chancelor, explains how the modern pursuing of autocephaly is human

"Where the Church seeks the grace of the Holy Spirit, it grows in unity; where human pride and national passions prevail, division and spiritual devastation arise. This is why comparing the biblical images of Babylon and Pentecost becomes an important key for us: it helps us understand when the pursuit of autocephaly can be a blessing and when a danger.
Both biblical episodes have symbolic significance for understanding unity and division in the Church, and their comparison with autocephaly and church unity allows us to evaluate these processes in light of Scripture and patristic tradition. In Babylon, the people desired to "build themselves a city and a tower reaching to heaven" — that is, to rise above God and create an independent system.
St. John Chrysostom observes: 'Pride breeds discord, and whoever seeks to act according to his own understanding inevitably becomes scattered.'"

- Is not faith alone enough for a Christian, without love and good works ?

No; for faith without love and good works is inactive and dead, and so can not lead to eternal life.
He that loveth not his brother, abideth in death. (1 John 3. 14.) What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. (James 2. 14, 26.)

from The Longer Catechism of The Orthodox Church also known as the Catechism of St. Philaret (Drozdov) of Moscow

“In order to understand with the heart, it is necessary first of all to pray privately. This is absolutely essential! Secondly, one must live according to the Gospel and repent of one’s sins.”
Abbot Nikon Vorobiev, from Letters to Spiritual Children

Living according to the Gospel does not mean to interpret it randomly according to own views and wishes. It means to trust the Church founded by Christ and what it teaches since the beginning for centuries. This is the only way to salvation.

#truthaboutorthodoxy

For those who starts struggling with sinful thoughts, experienced men of faith give advice not dispute with these thoughts. Saint Ephraim the Syrian says that we should not argue with thoughts but better interrupt them by prayer. Instead of fighting them, we can turn away from them to God.

Saint Barsanuphius say: can we dispute with sinful thoughts? No, this is what our enemy wants us. But if we pray and trust God this problem, He can not only send them away but He can abolish them. “to root out sin and the evil that is ever with us, this can only be accomplished by the divine power” says Macarius the Great.

The wisdom of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk for everyone.
“We see the water of a river flowing uninterruptedly and passing away, and all that floats on its surface, rubbish or beams of trees, all pass by.
Christian! So does our life. . .
I was an infant, and that time has gone. I was an adolescent, and that too has passed. I was a young man, and that too is far behind me. The strong and mature man that I was is no more. My hair turns white, I succumb to age, but that too passes; I approach the end and will go the way of all flesh. I was born in order to die. I die that I may live.
Remember me, O Lord, in Thy Kingdom!”

The existence of God is implanted in us by nature, as st John Damascene says. But unfortunately we are all corrupted by sin and the Evil One helps to make up all kinds of fantasies about world existence without God.
However if we look around, we can see “even the very continuity of the creation, its preservation and government”, teach us about God’s existence. The universe is obviously supported and maintained and preserved and provided by His omnipotent power.
And there are plenty of scientists who confirm it while studying the world.

Like it was in the Early Church, the central thing in Orthodoxy is salvation, worship, not speculative doctrinal theology.

☦️🕯“No matter how absurd the idea of the toll-houses may seem to our ‘wise men,’ they will not escape passing through them.” 🕯☦️

♰ St. Theophan the Recluse ♰

🌟 Orthodox Saint Petersburg.

It's necessary to understand. The same way "sin is sin", the modern idea of equality of sins is heterodox
One commandment is higher than another; consequently one level of faith is more firmly founded than another.
The Philokalia

Two consequences of the filioque — subordination of the Holy Spirit, over-emphasis on the unity of God — have helped to bring about a distortion in the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church. Because the role of the Spirit has been neglected in the west, the Church has come to be regarded too much as an institution of this world, governed in terms of earthly power and jurisdiction.
Fr. John Whiteford

☦️🕯“Are you not afraid of death, which we shall all face in a little while? How are we to look on the fearsome angels, as they come to take us from the body? How are we to journey on that long and unending road, if we have not obtained the necessities for the journey?”🕯☦️

♰ St. Theodore the Studite ♰

☦️🕯️If anyone does not confess his belief
that our lord Jesus Christ,
Who was crucified in his human flesh,
is truly God and the Lord of glory
and one of the members of the holy Trinity:
let him be anathema.🕯️☦️

♰ Canon 10, 5th Ecumenical Council ♰

☦️🕯️“Preaching is so easy; it is like throwing stones from the top of a high tower. But practicing what you preach is so difficult; it is like carrying those same stones back up to the top of the tower from which they were thrown.”🕯️☦️

♰ St. Joseph the Hesychast ♰

“Cleanse me of all sin before the end; for frightful and terrible is the place that I must pass through when I have separated from this body, and a multitude of dark and inhuman demons awaiteth me, and there is no one to come to my help or to deliver me.”
Canon to our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, Final Prayer

In the Ascension Monastery, the land of St. Seraphim.

“By their actions people often contradict themselves! They protect their eyes from specs or sores, but their mind, that is the eye of their soul, they do not think to protect. Thus they litter their mind with all kinds of rubbish. The Lord commanded us to preserve the mind, because it is the leader of the man. If the mind goes astray from the true path, a persons entire life will become a delusion. It does not take much for the mind to go astray: all it takes is some kind of false idea.”
St Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

The first thing to do when any idea comes is to check yourself with the Scripture, Church Fathers, lives of the Saints.

During prayer there sometimes occur moments of deadly darkness and spiritual anguish arising from unbelief of the heart (for unbelief is darkness). Do not let your heart fail you at such moments, but remember that if the divine light has been sent off in you, it always shines in all its splendour and greatness in God Himself, in God's Church, in heaven and on earth, and in the material world in which "His eternal power and Godhead are visible." Do not think that truth has failed, because truth is God Himself, and everything that exists has its foundation and reason in Him. Only your own weak, sinful and