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When we receive Holy Communion, we receive the mightiest medicinal cure, the Body and Blood of Christ.

Saint Paisios the Athonite, On Prayer

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“Because faith is not a logical certainty but a personal relationship, and because this personal relationship is as yet incomplete in each of us and needs continually to develop further, it is by no means impossible for faith to coexist with doubt. The two are not mutually exclusive. Perhaps there are some who by God’s grace retain throughout their life the faith of a little child, enabling them to accept without question all that they have been taught. For most of those living in the West today, however, such an attitude is simply not possible. We have to make our own the cry, “Lord, I believe: help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). For very many of us this will remain our constant prayer right up to the very gates of death. Yet doubt does not in itself signify lack of faith. It may mean the opposite – that our faith is alive and growing. For faith implies not complacency but taking risks, not shutting ourselves off from the unknown but advancing boldly to meet it.”

— The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware 

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The Holy Trinity

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Antique personal possessions owned by the nuns of Diveyevo

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Through the Cross, we strike down our enemies and raise up the horn of salvation. Through the Cross, we put the passions to flight and freely determine to live our lies above the heavens. Whoever carries the Cross on his shoulders becomes an imitator of Christ and is glorified together with Christ. Seeing the Cross, angels are adorned and devils are scorned. Finding the Cross, the thief entered paradise and in place of his thievery received the kingdom. The one who simply makes the Sign of the Cross disperses his fears and in their place, receives peace. The one who has the Cross as his protection will be safe from all harm and inviolate.

Saint Theodore the Studite, Oration on the Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross

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Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

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Consider my soul, the bitter hour of death and the dread Judgement of thy Creator and God. Terrible angels will seize thee, O my soul, and lead thee off to eternal fire. Repent, therefore, before thy death, crying out: O Lord, have mercy on me a sinner!

Canon of Repentance

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Don’t trade your soul for the world’s empty promises.

Elder Amphilochios Makris

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I await God's time.

The Way of a Pilgrim

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It is easy to understand why the early Christians continued in their synagogue and temple practices. Worship had been revealed to them by God. Nobody thought it up. It didn’t just happen. They didn’t create a new form of worship. God told His people how to worship. Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all that God had promised in the Old Testament; in Him all the hopes of Israel were fulfilled. It was only natural that in worshiping God through Jesus Christ, believers would continue to do as they had been told, in the manner God revealed to them.

This was natural, almost automatic, for the Jews who accepted Jesus Christ as Messiah. There was, however, one major change for these Jews who had been completed in Jesus Christ. The ani-mal sacrifices of Old Testament practice had been fulfilled in the person of Christ. All that had been anticipated was now completed. All that had been prophesied was now reality. The Messiah had come. So for these early Christians, the Jewish worship practices were continued with a brand-new understanding of the centrality of the victorious Christ, and with newfound joy.

Christians did not view their Jewish liturgical practices as passé. Nor did they simply continue in some kind of mindless habit of outmoded ritual. They maintained this liturgy as their own, as described in the inspired Scriptures of the Old Covenant carried over into the New. In fact, that Jewish liturgy made the work of God in Jesus Christ comprehensible. The Old Testament worship practices, now fulfilled and given new meaning in Christ, became the core of Christian worship within this New Covenant. The sacrifice had changed, and—thanks be to God—the worship of Jerusalem became available to the whole world. And this worship was centered in Jesus Christ.

Orthodox Worship A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple, and the Early Church (Benjamin D. Williams, Harold B. Anstall)

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Elder Pavlos (of blessed memory, +March 1st, 2020) taking care of the Burning Bush still growing outside the Sinai Basilica in Saint Catherine's Monastery

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Ustiug Annunciation.

Napkin. Studio of Anna Ivanonovna Stroganova. 1660s.

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The Communion of Saints in the Orthodox Church

Unlike us moderns, Christians through the ages have affirmed the “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1), those saints who have gone before us, and pray for them even as we believe and expect that they pray for us.

When we gather to worship, especially to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, we recognize that it is not just those of us on earth who are present, but those gathered as “the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven” (Heb. 12:23). These saints are simply those among all Christians who have led particularly spiritual or exemplary lives in Christ. The Church has recognized this and held them up as especially worthy of honor by those of us striving to be conformed to the image of Christ. We who as Christians pray and are prayed for usually give hardly a thought to the prospect of asking a brother or sister to pray for us in times of trouble or need. Inasmuch as the saints departed this life have gone to be with the Lord and are alive in the Kingdom, then is it at all unusual to ask for their prayers on our behalf? They are saints who share the same spiritual communion as we do; they constitute the communion of the saints. Thus it is no different to ask intercession or prayer of them than it is to ask intercession or prayer of one another.

For the Christian, death is not the end, nor is it an eternal holding pattern. Rather, life continues in the Kingdom of God, as St. Paul declares: “to be absent from the body [is] to be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8). If we indeed believe that life continues spiritually after the physical death, then we should have little trouble affirming this understanding of the saints. Taken one step further, if any of us are undergoing trial and tribulation then to some extent our salvation is in jeopardy; thus, to ask a brother or sister to pray for us is to ask them to pray for our salvation. This is exactly what is intended when, during the Liturgy, this petition is offered up to God: “Through the prayers of the Mother of God, O Savior, save us.”

Orthodox Worship A Living Continuity with the Synagogue, the Temple, and the Early Church (Benjamin D. Williams, Harold B. Anstall)

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“Flight into Egypt,” from the Nagara Māryām (History and Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary), Ethiopia, ca. 1730–55. British Library Or. 607, fol. 17r.

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Everything that is done not according to Christian love, that is to say without the Holy Spirit, is not true virtue. And therefore a man who has not the Holy Spirit within him, for all his virtues, is poor and indigent.

Saint Innocent of Alaska, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven

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When the Lord handed down this Mystery to His disciples, He did not merely make a recommendation, saying: 'Whoever wants to eat My body, and whoever wants to drink My blood'--as He did when He said, 'Whoever wants to follow Me,' and, 'If you want to be perfect'. Rather, He commandingly cried out, 'Take, eat; this is My body' (Mt. 26:26), and, 'Drink of it, all of you, this is My blood' (Mt. 26:27-28). That is, 'You must absolutely eat My body, and you must unfailing drink My blood'.

Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Concerning Frequent Communion