Là où deux ou trois sont rassemblés en mon nom.

   Ce récit a été rapporté par "Alexis" et confirmé par différents témoins qui vivaient alors dans le baraquement (camp d’emprisonnement)  du Père Arsenie (1893-1973), prêtre, prisonnier et père Spirituel durant la révolte Bolchévique:

   Au cours de l'hiver, un jeune homme a été assigné au baraquement de Père Arsénié. Etudiant âgé de 23 ans, il a été condamné à vingt ans de camp. Il n'a pas l'expérience de la vie au camp parce qu'il a été expédié directement de la très stricte prison "Butirki" de Moscou vers ce camp spécial. Encore jeune, il ne réalise pas exactement ce qui l’attend. A peine a-t-il pénétré dans le camp de la mort qu'il rencontre les criminels. Ses habits sont encore convenables parce qu'il n'est en prison que depuis quelques mois. Les criminels, conduits par “Ivan le Brun”, décident de s'emparer des vêtements du jeune homme. Chacun se rend compte que ce garçon va bientôt se retrouver nu, mais personne ne peut faire quoi que ce soit à ce sujet. "Sazikov" lui-même n'ose pas intervenir!. La loi du camp stipule que quiconque interfère sera massacré. Les anciens du camp savent très bien qu'une fois que les criminels ont décidé de jouer pour vos haillons, résister signifie votre fin imminente.

Un Court Compte Historique surla Préparation du Concile Panorthodoxe.

Les Septs Conciles.

   La préparation du Concile.

   110 ans!. C'est la longue histoire d'une gestation encore inachevée, où l'on peut distinguer trois périodes: de 1902 à 1952, de 1952 à 1990 et de 1990 à aujourd'hui.

   La préhistoire du Concile.

   Le mouvement vers un concile panorthodoxe commence au début du XXe siècle, avec des encycliques du patriarche œcuménique Joachim III, en 1902 et 1904. En 1902, s'adressant aux Églises orthodoxes locales, soucieux de leur unité, il leur propose une conférence commune pour préparer le champ à un rapprochement régulier, réciproque et amical, et pour examiner avec le commun accord des membres de toute notre Église orthodoxe les fondements, les mesures et les moyens qui seront jugés les meilleurs.

   Pour Joachim III, cet effort est inséparable de celui qu'il faut mener avec toutes les Églises chrétiennes. Unité orthodoxe et unité chrétienne ont une même visée: la communion qui doit caractériser l'Église du Christ.

The One Thing Needful.

Julianna Schmemann.

   It might be old age, or it might be the approach of the final stage of life-­the coming face to face with the blind­ing light of the Cross, Love cruci­fied-and feeling so responsible for it. I feel I must ask that question which follows and at times even haunts me: "Lord, during my long life, have I sat at Your feet like Mary and have I chosen the one thing needful, that will never be taken away from me?!"...

   Another Lent has come and gone: the Sunday of Zacchaeus, the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, the Judgment Sunday, For­giveness Sunday - already they begin to fade into the recesses, crowded out by the everpresent clamor and bustle of a new day.

The Miracle of Our Lady of the Living Spring in Her monastery in Loggovarda.

   Here below is an account of one of the miracles that Our Lady of the Living Spring had performed in her monastery in Loggovarda through her servant the abbot of the monastery Elder Philotheous*.

   On May 14 1944, an English submarine bad docked at an inlet behind the city of “Livadi” and some soldiers debarked and went up to the village of “Tsibido” where they captured 7 German soldiers while the Germans slept, killing 2 Germans and wounding the airport commissioner, Lieutenant Tabe, and 2 wires were found cut. In the morning, the Ger­mans captured a youth named “N. Stellas” at the airport, and suspecting him to be an accomplice; they hung him from a pole on a high place so that his corpse could be seen from all the neighboring villages to frighten them. The army commissioner, “Grafonbereyberg”, demanded that the presidents of the committees of Paros and Antiparos hand over one hundred and twenty five youths to him by an appointed day for execution.

The Resurrection and the Cross.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom.

   We must at no moment forget that the end of our journey is our meeting with the Risen Christ. Some people, whilst admitting the importance of the Resurrection in the experience of the Apostles, wonder how this apostolic experience can have the same central significance for us. But is it enough for us simply to believe in the words of others and to found our faith on something totally unverifiable?. Of all the historic events in the world, the Resurrection of the Lord belongs equally to past history and to present reality. Christ dead on the Cross on one particular day, Christ risen from the tomb in His glorified human flesh on one particular day belongs to the past as an historic fact; but Christ, once risen, living forever in the glory of the Father belongs to the history of each day and each instant, because living, according to his promise, he is with us, now and always.

To Be a Person Is to Love

   If within the Trinity the persona expresses itself in its mutual kenosis (Self emptying) and in its love toward the world, this is also true of the human persona. There is love toward God, other human personae and the created order. Fr Sophrony makes an explicit and direct connection between the divine mode of being, charac­terized by kenotic love, and its image - the multihypostatic body of human­kind. In humankind as in God love emerges as a uniting principle:

   The attitude of love is natural for the persona made in the image of God, of love. He does not determine himself oppositively, by contraposing himself over against the "not I." Love is the most intrinsic content of his essence. Embracing the whole world in prayerful love, the persona achieves ad intra (with effect or result only in one's own mind, self, internally) the unity of all that exists. In the creative act of his becoming, he aspires to universal unity ad extra (With effect or result in the outside world as opposed to one's own mind, self, in the world at large; externally, perceivably) also. In love lies his likeness to God Who is Love (1 Jn 4:16).

   In the human hypostasis there is the same "divine" capacity for the ultimate transference of being - the ultimate self-giving (emptying) and ultimate receiving (fullness) - the modus patiendi (receptive mode) and modus agens (active mode) in persona's existence.

The building up of the heart by the grace of repentance.

Father Sophrony in the middle surrounded by Father Zakharia
and Father Symeon, Father Kyrill and Father Raphael

   Christ’s Gospel begins with the words: "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." These words resume the dialogue between God and man, which was severed in Paradise by the disobedience of our fore­fathers. But these words are now proclaimed with a new creation in view, a new generation, whose Head is Christ, the Creator Himself. It follows that repentance is the begin­ning of our turning against sin, so that God's original pur­pose for man and His creation of man in His image and after His likeness may finally be fulfilled.

Unprofitable servants!.

St Nicholai Velimirovitch.

   "Unprofitable servants!”, Thus speaks the Lord of Life and Vanquisher of death:

   "Can you increase your stature by a single cubit?. Can you make a hair turn white or black?. And when you cannot do what is least, why do you worry about the rest?.

   The master of a house, who hires servants, gives them a field and tools and food. Even so does the Heavenly Father provide for His servants!.