St. Elisabeth Convent

COME WITH ME TO MOUNT ATHOS by Priest Nikolai Okhotnitsky Author’s Note Travelling is a lot like reading a good book. First of all because it brings discoveries. All countries on earth were discovered long ago, and yet, everyone is a pioneer of their own universe. A human soul is always a new dimension. When we read a book, we step into the unknown together with its heroes and live their lives in a day. Travelling around the world, we ourselves become the heroes of a novel called Life. Such discoveries always bring joy, which cannot be complete unless it is shared with someone. This book came as a complete surprise to me, its author. Even on the very eve of the day when I picked up my “pen” and started writing, it was absolutely clear to me that literature was not my cup of tea. With all the ardor of my temperament, I was arguing that writing books was something that should be done by professionals. I’m not a writer. It’s like cooking: anyone can tell when a meal tastes good, but not everyone knows how to cook it. And yet, the desire to share my joy with my wife Ira and my children overpowered me one fine day, and I began to write. Every day I made time for letters and lines and made another important discovery. I was on Athos again. (Athos is not only a mountain or a peninsula but also a preserve of Orthodox spirituality). The process of writing kept me fully captivated and did not let go until the last line was written and the story was finished. The book was born and took on its own life, almost without my participation. This work has been done for you, dear readers, looking for your own Athos. Enjoy your pilgrimage! With sincere love in Christ, the Author. A Cure for Despondency Human life is like a pedestrian crossing where the white stripes are interchanging with the black. And we are constantly moving through Joy and despondency, going through ups and downs. Members of the clergy also experience spiritual difficulties. My fellow workers, after plunging headlong into their priestly ministry, without pacing themselves, often face professional burnout resulting in a spiritual crisis. I am no exception. Once, during one such crisis, I visited Athos. The shock (in a good sense) that happened to me on this pilgrimage was so strong that it pushed me towards literary creation. This book, written in the genre of travel notes, was born as a result of a great desire to help those on their way to God and experiencing spiritual difficulties, states of abandonment, loneliness, not being understood and perhaps despondency. To help people who are in constrained spiritual circumstances, one needs to have the grace to be a particularly skillful healer of souls. I don’t have that. But I can offer a remedy that once worked for myself. Although this is similar to a conversation in a queue for a doctor, where one patient advises another, who knows, perhaps this experience will be useful to someone? Seeing the situation with self-irony and visiting holy places may also be a cure for despondency. If you cannot afford financially to travel so far, then, picking up this book and “turning on” your imagination, try to look at Athos with my eyes and travel with me! Perhaps these impressions will ease the wounds of your own heart. Well, let’s go, shall we? I Have a Dream As a loving person misses his loved one, so my soul has a nostalgia for Holy Mount Athos. I would call it love at first sight, but the truth is that I fell in love with this place before I actually saw it.

Ever since the Orthodox worldview has taken root in my soul, the desire to visit Athos has become my golden dream. For some reason, from time to time I was almost certain that this was impossible. Now that God has allowed me to walk along the pilgrims’ and ascetics’ paths of the Holy Mountain, I remember my journey like a dream. Sometimes it seems to me that everything that happened to me there was written in one of the many books that I have read about Athos, and that I have confused the imaginary world with reality. But the photographs, and the relics brought from there and even my dreams convince me of the opposite. Unable to resist the desire to share the joy of a fulfilled dream with loved ones, I began to write. Perhaps you will find some parts of this book overloaded with small details, but this is how my memory works. Apparently it considers them important for the reader to have the “presence effect”. Read whole book 👉🏼 https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2021/07/come-with-me-to-mount-athos-part-1

Saint Nectarios of Optina: Thoughts on Salvation and the Challenges of Being an Elder 🙏🏻In this piece, we share with you several stories from the saint’s life and some of his best-known teachings. They were narrated by his spiritual child, poet Nadezhda Pavlovich and relate to the last seven years of his life. Hopefully, this narrative will give you answers to some of your questions or concerns. Continue reading: https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2021/05/saint-nectarios-of-optina-thoughts-on-salvation-and-the-challenges-of-being-an-elder

SAINT IGNATIUS BRYANCHANINOV, A TEACHER OF PRAYER AND SALVATION How can we keep our faith in a rapidly secularizing world? How do we resist the temptations of ideas that promise quick solutions to the world’s problems? Can we find peace in our hearts amid deepening confrontation and hostility? Saint Ignatius Bryanchaninov gave answers to many of these questions. His guidance brought many to the faith and contributed to the spiritual revival of 19th century Russia. 💬 Read full

On 14 May we celebrate Radonitsa - a day when we commemorate our departed brethren. The Sisters of our Convent will be glad to pray for you and your departed loved ones. Please click on this link to send your prayer requests 👉 https://obitel-minsk.org/prayer-request. As always, donations are welcome, but completely optional.

What is a Radonitsa? ☦️On this day, the Tuesday of St. Thomas week, according to the order instituted by our Holy Fathers, we call to remembrance, in Paschal joy, all those who have died from the beginning of the ages in faith and in the hope of resurrection and life eternal. “Having previously celebrated the radiant feast of Christ’s glorious Resurrection, the faithful commemorate the dead today with the pious intent to share the great joy of this Pascha feast with those who have departed this life in the hope of their own resurrection. Continue reading: https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2017/04/what-is-radonitsa

THE TRUE TEMPLE. A Homily for Bright Friday by Archpriest Alexander Shargunov (Jn. 2:12-22). The indignation of the Lord is nowhere else manifested with such force. There are among us those “preachers of love” who say that no anger is acceptable in the Church, and they are even offended by the Lord’s actions. But Christ, we see, overturns the tables, scatters the coins, and drives the merchants out of the Temple together with their livestock, as an impurity. “Where are you, you mercantile souls? This is not a market, not a house of trade!” Why does the Lord show such zeal for the Temple? Is it really to protect its beauty? This Temple, just rebuilt by Herod, was large and magnificent. 600 priests and 300 Levites participated in the services during the high holidays. In the center of the square, amongst many courtyards, one of which was accessible to Gentiles, was found the sanctuary. It consisted of two rooms: the Holy Place, where only priests could go, and where were the incense offerings, the golden seven-branched candlestick, and a table for the showbread, and further, divided by a double veil, was the Holy of Holies. In the first Temple, built by Solomon, the Ark of the Covenant was kept here, with the tablets of the Law, delivered by God to Moses. The Ark disappeared with the destruction of the Temple in 587 BC, but the Holy of Holies remained the sacred place of the presence of God. Only the high priest had the right to enter there once a year—on the feast prophesying of atonement. This is why the Lord becomes angry! The ringing of money in the Temple, near the Holy of Holies, was an affront to the greatness of God. The Lord reminds us how dangerous is every impiety. From it is gradually created an atmosphere of wickedness—such that, according to Scripture, “the man of lawlessness” will be able to sit in the Temple, representing himself as God. The Lord permitted there to be the cleansing firestorm of 1917, destroying our churches, to give us time for repentance. But how little we learned! If only every one of us could say, following the Lord, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up (Ps. 69:9). The Lord says that the true temple, worthy of unending reverence, is the humanity of Christ, which became the ark of His Divinity. The Word became flesh, and His body is the true Holy of Holies of the Temple. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9). The Body of Christ, which we receive in the Eucharist and which is present in the tabernacles on the altars of our churches, should fill us with the fear of God and unending awe. And conversely, any irreverence or simply indifference in the face of this great mystery should evoke a holy anger in the heart of a Christian, incomparably more righteous than against the wickedness in the Jerusalem Temple.

The new temple, worthy of veneration, is not just the human nature of Christ, but the whole people of God, grafted onto Him and nourished by the Divine life radiating from Him to every member of His mystical Body. The whole Church, the Body of Christ is the new temple, of which churches of stone are but a pale image. It is composed of all baptized people seeking life according to the will of God. Despite the imperfections, sins, and infirmities of its children, the Church—the abiding of God among men—is the sign of His presence in the world. It was not created by holy men, but was created to make men holy, because its Creator is God, Who became one of us through the Most Pure Virgin. On the feast of the Lord’s Pascha, rejoicing in that miracle that the Church performs in the world, let us take care for our inner purification, to be her children in truth. Throughout all of Bright Week we hear, “As many as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.”1 Every Christian is a temple of God. The body of every baptized child is a receptacle of the presence of Christ. Christ is born in every newly-baptized babe. With what reverence should our children, and we with them, ascend to God, bearing in our bodies the living presence of the resurrected Christ, received in Baptism. The day is coming when our bodies, these temples of the Holy Spirit, will return to the earth. The time is coming when the earthly Church, with its priesthood and sacraments, will cease to exist, having fulfilled its mission. There will be no more Divine Eucharist. Our world will be destroyed, and all the marvelous churches will become nothing. But in the heavenly and eternal city there will remain but one temple, which is God Himself. We will be lead into it as children of God, and our lives will be unending communion of the joy of the Resurrected Christ.

REMEMBERING THE DEAD AND REJOICING IN CHRIST’S RESURRECTION I remember a steep trail, new leaves on birches, and the embroidered crosses on my grandmother’s white towel. We were walking up the hill with my grandmother to visit the graves of my ancestors. We reached the top, and my grandmother spread the towel and said to me, "My great grandmother knit it". 💬 Read full

CHRIST IS RISEN, AND THERE IS NONE DEAD IN THE TOMBS! Dear Friends, Christ is risen! In patristic literature, there is an amazing example of how the departed share this triumph with us. It happened on Easter. An elder of the Kiev-Caves Lavra went to the caves where according to custom, the dead brethren are buried. He took with him a deacon with a censer. Entering the caves, they exclaimed, “Christ is risen, fathers and brethren!” Immediately, the answer was heard from the tombs, "Truly He is risen!" Archpriest Andrei Lemeshonok, the confessor of the Convent, also speaks about this in his sermon on Radonitsa: "My beloved, go to the holy graves today and share with your departed relatives and friends everything that is inside of you. Today at the proskomedia, the blood of Christ washed the particles for your health and the continuation of your earthly journey, as well as in memory of your loved ones who have gone to eternity..." 👉 Read more