Orthodox Christianity: Mortally Wounding Its Opponents Since 363 AD

Saint Basil the Great, whose feast is celebrated on New Year's Day, once prayed before an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos, upon which Saint Mercurius was depicted as a soldier holding a spear.

He asked God not to permit the emperor Julian the Apostate to return from his war against the Persians and resume his oppression of Christians. The image of the holy Great Martyr Mercurius, depicted on the icon beside the image of the Most Holy Theotokos, became invisible. It reappeared later with a bloodied spear.

At this very moment Julian the Apostate, on his Persian campaign, was wounded by the spear of an unknown soldier, who immediately disappeared. The mortally wounded Julian, as he lay dying, cried out, “Thou hast conquered, O Galilean !”

Russian Orthodox Crusade Against The Wicked West

The Apostolic Canons
28. We command that a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who strikes the faithful that offend, or the unbelievers who do wickedly, and thinks to terrify them by such means, be deprived, for our Lord has nowhere taught us such things. On the contrary, “when Himself was stricken, He did not strike again; when He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not.”

I couldn't help but notice the Kremlin's ever-increasing employment of Chechen Muslim troops, in Russia's special military operation against its sovereign Orthodox neighbor. Perhaps someone should inform Rasputin that Jihad has never been an Orthodox tradition.

In its ostensive desire to fight the west, Russia has become just like it, crusades being a product of the schism, which, ironically enough, even westerners themselves have long since repudiated.

Weather Forecast

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Official Eastern Orthodox Stance On Pride Parades

Genesis 19:24

Then it rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven.

Severe Sexual Repression

In the Western hemisphere of the Christian world, such utterly abnormal feats and unbearable psychological burdens are reserved only for certain highly select and especially privileged social classes, such as Catholic priests, or homosexuals, whose sole “domain” they represent. The Orthodox Church, however, knows better than that... :-)

Silent Hill: Orthodox Version

Ecumenical Relations Between Catholicism & Orthodoxy

Roman Catholics & Eastern Orthodox, Working Side By Side...

Is Orthodoxy A Religion Of Peace ?

1. The Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ falls on the same day as the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945.

2. The Feast of the Assumption of Mary falls on the same day as the capitulation of Japan nine days later, on August 15, 1945.

3. The Ecclesiastical New Year begins on the same day as the Second World War, on September 1, 1939, marking Hitler's invasion of Poland.

Apart from these uncanny World War II coincidences, our faith perceives the entirety of human life on earth as one long and never-ending spiritual struggle and Unseen Warfare (a famous Orthodox classic on asceticism and spirituality), and its view of salvation can be summed up by the phrase Christus Victor.

Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. 14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; 15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

The Toll That Two Whole Months Of Lenten Abstinence Takes On A Marriage...

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What They Won't Tell You In Catechism Class...

Catholics Explaining To Protestants The Requirements Of Orthodox Lent

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A Lenten Classic

Santa Claus Siding With Muslims In The Arab-Israeli Conflict

Why do so many Americans, especially from Christian-conservative and right-wing (Republican) political circles, feel the need to convert to Eastern Orthodoxy in droves, and flood into the Eastern Church by the hundreds, when even the greatest Orthodox Saints themselves so shamelessly and unapologetically espouse such clearly anti-American politics on the hotly-debated topics of Gaza and Palestine ? Oh, well... I guess we'll never really know -- will we ?...

5. A Muslim man came to Beit Jala to shoot at the Israeli settlement of Gilo. An old man appeared to him, telling him to leave immediately. The man did so. Moments later a shell exploded on the exact spot where he had been standing. The man later identified the person who spoke to him as St Nicholas.


6. Another elderly Muslim man was deeply worried about his son who had been in an Israeli prison for some years. During the night before the man's birthday, an old man appeared at his bedside, telling him his son would return on the next day. When the man asked the visitor who he was and where he was from, he answered: "I am Nicholas, from Beit Jala. If you need to find me, just ask for me, everyone knows me there." The following day, the son returned. The old man set off for Beit Jala to share the good news with the stranger, and to thank him. Confused by the story, no one in Beit Jala could tell him who had visited him. Then the sacristan took the man into the Church of St. Nicholas, where he immediately recognized the icon of St Nicholas as the person who had visited him.

Source

Perhaps it is in moments such as these that the leaders of the Free World should take a brief pause to reflect, and -in all honesty and sincerity- genuinely ask themselves: What Would Saint Nick Do ?...

The Spirit Of Unity: An Ecumenical Pentecost Article

I think that those who sow discord among Christians are wrong, and that John Paul the Second was right when he called Orthodoxy and Catholicism the two lungs of Europe... For instance, some people think -wrongly, I might add- that the fact that Catholics and Orthodox attach opposite colors to the Feast of Pentecost ( red in the West, and green in the Christian East ) would also imply a polarity of opposition between the two faiths: when nothing, in fact, could be further away from the truth ! Far from being polar opposites, the two faiths harmoniously complete and complement each other in perfect unity: the green grass and willow-branches that fill the floor of Orthodox churches on the day of Pentecost are the much-needed fuel that is necessary for the Catholic Inquisition to kindle the red flames of fire underneath the scaffold meant for Protestants and other heretics...

Your Best Life NOW !

Galatians 5:24

And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.

You May Drink Alcohol, But You May Not Become An Alcoholic

The same holds true for sexual intercourse and meat-consumption.

Other religions (like Baptists, Adventists, Jews, and Muslims) forbid the ingestion of alcohol and/or certain kinds of meat in a purely Judaizing fashion. Gnosticism also forbade both sexual intercourse and flesh-consumption on the grounds of matter being intrinsically evil and unredeemable. But Orthodoxy doesn't do that. Coupled with the fact that the vast and overwhelming majority of Orthodox Christians world-wide are at the very best nominal and lukewarm in the practice of their faith, not to mention that many of them don't even give a rat's posterior about some of the very basic moral teachings of their own religious belief, this creates to outsiders, both Orthodox and un-Orthodox, the illusion or false impression that our faith is very 'friendly' and permissive: it is not, I assure you! Why? Because, though allowing all these things and viewing them as being clean and permissible, at the very same time Orthodoxy also teaches its faithful followers that their hearts, minds, souls, and bodies are not to become enslaved by any of these things, through the tyranny of lusts, passions, cravings, addictions, and compulsions, all of which are forms of spiritual idolatry:

1 Corinthians 6:12 ¶All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.

Orthodox Snake-Handling 101

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Eastern Orthodoxy:

Teaching Pentecostals Lessons In Snake-Handling Since 1700 AD !

On the Holy Liturgy

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Eastern Orthodoxy: Brutally Disrupting Pious Protestant Services Since 1600 AD

Shakespeare and Picnics: Successfully Planting Orthodox Ideas on American Soil Since the Seventeenth Century AD

The Heavenly Banquet: the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

King: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
Hamlet: At supper.
King: At supper? Where?
Hamlet: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene III.

Orthodox Ecumenism 101

1 Kings 18:40 And Elijah said unto them: Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

Eastern Orthodoxy: THE Family-Friendly Faith !

Eastern Orthodoxy: reuniting all your little ones with the Lord since 170 BC

In a time and age when so many religious faiths exclude women and children from martyrdom, we here, in the Orthodox Church, are proud to announce you that we make no such sexist and ageist discriminations ! Quite to the contrary, the motto by which we gladly stand is: Women and children first !

2 Maccabees 7:20 But the mother was marvellous above all, and worthy of honourable memory: for when she saw her seven sons slain within the space of one day, she bare it with a good courage, because of the hope that she had in the Lord. 21 Yea, she exhorted every one of them in her own language, filled with courageous spirits; and stirring up her womanish thoughts with a manly stomach, she said unto them: 29 Fear not this tormentor, but, being worthy of thy brethren, take thy death that I may receive thee again in mercy with thy brethren. 41 Last of all after the sons the mother died.