ORTHODOX ROOTS, BEKTASHI NEIGHBORS An Interview with Albania’s Metropolitan John of Korca
We see every human being created as an icon of God, and as the Orthodox Church we have tried to emphasize this to our people. But also there are many other unnoticed affinities, such as family, cultural and historical ties. For example, respect for St. Cosmas of Aitolia is still very widespread among Albanian Christians and Muslims alike. During St. Cosmas’ life, southern Albania and northwestern Greece were one region – Ottoman ruled Epirus – and the Albanian ruler Ali Pasha, who governed Epirus in the early 19th century, had known the saint personally. He was a Bektashi
Moslem, and even now the Bektashi use the prophecies of St. Cosmas, although they call him by another name. We Albanian Orthodox call him Shen Kosma (St. Cosmas). They call him Choban Baba. Choban means “shepherd,” and Baba, “father.”
Petersburg’s Street Kids Find a Home
The Psalm 23 Orthodox Boys’ Shelter
In 1991 Natalia Ustinova, a St. Petersburg math teacher, took a dozen homeless boys off the street and started one of the first private children’s homes in postglasnost Russia. Her boys are all grown now and on their own, but Natasha’s work continues. We asked her to tell us her story,
and found it as direct, warm and inspiring as Natasha herself.
COLUMBA SAILS EAST by Columba Bruce Clark
You say you are Orthodox? And what did you say your baptismal name was? I am a Northern Irish convert to Orthodoxy who regularly finds himself working and going to church in places which are much closer to the traditional heartland of eastern Christianity. So I am often asked, by gingerly Greeks or sceptical Serbs, about my path to Orthodoxy and in particular my patronal saint. When I give the answer, the scepticism sometimes deepens. And so – if the conversation is worth pursuing at all – I find myself attempting to explain the Christian heritage of the place where I grew up, and my own relationship to that place. Sometimes people are interested; sometimes I can watch their eyes glaze over. But since my story is the story of many western Orthodox Christians, I shall try telling it in print.
A Russian Priest: My Work with English-speaking Converts
An Interview with Father Artemy Vladimirov
Fr. Artemy Vladimirov, an English-speaking Moscow priest from the Church of All Saints at Krasnoselskaya, has, for the past decade, been a mainstay for Western Orthodox converts living in Moscow and visitors seeking a deeper spiritual life. His staunchly traditional belief, deep insight, warm humor, and willingness to reach out to souls from diverse backgrounds, have brought more than a few foreigners to Orthodoxy. As the expatriate community has come and gone, Fr. Artemy has generously presided over numerous missionary dinners, high teas, and spontaneous talks—unforgettable gatherings that awaken souls and delight the spirit.
How do you relate to your unbelieving friends and relatives?
Some of our non-Orthodox relatives and friends are afraid of the outward parts of the faith – of the long prayers and keeping fasts, for example, but this is almost always because they have never tried.
From America to Russia:The Myrrh-Streaming Icon of Tsar Nicholas II by Richard (Thomas) Betts
A myrrh-streaming icon of Tsar Nicholas II has appeared in Russia, and it has appeared with the same unpretentious simplicity with which the late Tsar laid down his throne and bore his final months of house arrest. The icon was not painted by a contemporary iconographer in Moscow or St. Petersburg, nor is it the property of one of the old and venerable churches. It is, in fact, an inexpensive paper copy of an American icon, given away in Russia by the thousands by a Russian-American wife and mother, Ija Schmit, the founder of the Society Honoring Russian Nobility.
DIVEYEVO:A PILGRIM’S CHRONICLE 1993-2003 by Mother Nectaria McLees
When I asked my Moscow parish priest how he had found his summer pilgrimage to the Holy Trinity-Diveyevo Women’s Monastery, he replied, “Diveyevo is the center of the universe.� Most Russian Christians would agree. Veneration of St. Seraphim has spread like wildfire over the past decade, not only among new Russian believers, but around the world, recalling the fervent piety of pre-revolutionary Russia. In 1991 the saint’s relics were found in the basement of a former Soviet anti-religious museum in St. Petersburg and returned to the monastery, bringing tens of thousands of pilgrims in their wake and making Diveyevo the most revered pilgrimage site in Russia.
Teaching Our Children to Pray: Reflections of a Young Mother
When the Road to Emmaus staff first decided to talk to an Orthodox mother about children and prayer we pictured an experienced woman with grown-up children and the leisure for a long interview. After some discussion, however, we decided on Inna Belov, a young mother with a three-year-old son, “in the midst of the fray.� At a time when her joys, fears and concerns about raising an Orthodox child occupy most of her waking hours, we found Inna’s spontaneous reflections both fresh and intriguing.
THE TINOS ICON “OF GREAT JOY� by Mother Nectaria McLees
Known in antiquity as the “Island of the Winds� (a name now given to its near neighbor, Andros), Tinos was first inhabited by the Ionians, and from classical times the islanders been known for their abundant vineyards and orchards, and as skilled stone artisans. Later it was part of the Roman and Byzantine empires until it fell prey to Arab pirates who raided it time and again until it was left uninhabited in the ninth century. Tinos was taken by Venetians in 1207, who maintained sovereignty over it until 1714 when it fell to the Turks, and was only restored to Greece after the 1821 War of Independence. Little is known the island’s early Christian history, and its fame as the most frequented pilgrimage site Greece dates only from the last century, when the Megalochari icon (Icon of Great Joy) discovered through a revelation of the Mother of God.
THE LOTUS CROSS, Just how old is Christianity in China? 1st Century A.D.
On August 1, 2002, the Beijing People’s Daily reported that while studying stone carvings of recently discovered funeral monuments from the Eastern Han Dynasty (28-220 A.D.), Chinese Professor of Theology Wang Weifan found early Christian designs and engravings illustrating biblical accounts of creation. Related to Iraqi and Middle Eastern Christian designs but tempered by the local style of China’s Eastern Han era, the carvings have been dated to 86 A.D. Now exhibited in the Museum of Xuzhou Han Stone Carvings, Jiangsu Province, the monuments were found in twenty intact Han burial tombs. If Professor Wang’s assessment proves correct, the earliest known Christian population in China may date from the time of the apostles....
TEXT IN ENGLISH
Dear visitors of our web-site of the monastery Lepavina! Due to a high number of visits of our website, I am honoured to take the responsibility to describe you in English different events from Serbian Orthodox Church and monastery Lepavina. We would like to inform you that we will be also putting on our web-site some texts in English on different subjects from other Orthodox websites. I deeply hope and believe that our Lord will help me in that!
With God’s blessing, from monastery Lepavina Archimandrite Gavrilo.
Biografia Archimandrite Gabriel (Vuckovic)
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