On the evening of Wednesday, March 15, two men were tonsured into monasticism in the caves at the famous Kiev Caves Lavra. The rite of tonsure was celebrated by the abbot of the monastery, His Eminence Metropolitan Pavel of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl.

Of course, the Great Fast is the most fitting time to give one’s life to Christ in the angelic habit with the requisite vows of asceticism.

It’s also fitting to remember this event today, on the Sunday of the Cross, as monasticism is nothing less than co-crucifixion with the Lord. As St. John of Climacus teaches, angels are a light for monks, and monks are a light for men, because it’s the monastics who most fully live out the Gospel of picking up one’s cross and dying to oneself. The spirit of monasticism is a continuation of the spirit of martyrdom, of the pursuit of the perfection of Christ.

The Orthodox faithful of Kiev came out in force on Sunday to worship and show their love and support for holy Orthodoxy.

Thousands of people filled the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra on the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, when all the saints of the Lavra are also celebrated, following their beloved hierarch His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine in prayer.

The blessed event occurred just two days after it became known that the state intends to completely expel holy Orthodoxy from the Lavra by the end of the month. The Church was already kicked out of the cathedrals of the Upper Lavra late last year, and has been worshiping in the churches of the Lower Lavra since then. Both sections of the monastery have been under state control since Soviet times.

The celebration began with the All-Night Vigil on Saturday night in the Church of St. Agapit in the Lower Lavra. The next morning, the saintly Met. Onuphry, together with 29 other hierarchs, led the Divine Liturgy in the Holy Cross Church.

It was initially planned to hold the service outside on the square in front of the church to better accommodate the thousands of pilgrims who were expected, but due to inclement weather, the service was held inside. Nevertheless, the rightly believing Kievan faithful filled the territory of the Lavra, braving the elements.

The video below shows thousands of faithful chanting the Nicene Creed together on the square outside the church:

After the reading of the Holy Gospel, His Beatitude addressed the faithful with an archpastoral sermon in which he addressed the state’s ill will towards the Church and the brotherhood of the Lavra:

Today, dear brothers and sisters, clouds have gathered over this holy monastery…

The Patriarch of Jerusalem Irenaios, who had been facing serious health problems for years, passed away. He was unjustly deposed from the throne of Jerusalem Patriarchate in 2005.

Father Timotheus Iliakis says on his Facebook:

“The Patriarch Irenaios of Jerusalem, the long-suffering, benevolent, sanctified by the great Cross he lifted and flew to Heaven. He endured with Joveian patience and bravery the wickedness of people and indeed those whom he benefited, he blessed everyone and did not take offense,” he said.

“As a genuine Agiotaphite, he should have been in Jerusalem to be buried next to the Patriarchs of Jerusalem, but even here pettiness, malice and envy, but it doesn’t matter, he is honored by God and the People who loved him and stood by him.”

The UOC hierarch said the believers of the UOC in Ukraine, who form the majority, are being persecuted.

The head of the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna diocese, rector of the Ascension Bancheny Monastery, Metropolitan Longin (Zhar) called on the Local Churches to stand up for the UOC.

The hierarch of the UOC said this in a sermon published on the YouTube channel of the Bancheny Monastery.

“I want to appeal to all the Orthodox Churches of the earth. Say that there are a lot of us in our state; that we are in the canonical Church. The one that was created 2-3 years ago (OCU – Ed.) is not a church. The Church of Christ has existed for 2,000 years, and no one has the right to go against our Church,” said Metropolitan Longin.

According to him, instead of uniting, people arrange inter-religious hostility and go against God.

Metropolitan Longin called to repentance all those who voted for the ban on the UOC.

“It sounds bizarre – ban the Church, ban God… Those who voted against our Church, repent, confess this terrible sin, and those who force you to vote like that, remember: the Lord will not forgive, this is a sin against the Holy Spirit, come to your senses. Atheists and communists brought so much evil to our Church and people, do you want to repeat it? It will be hard to fight with God, and it will be necessary to answer before God,” he added.

Source: www.spzh.news

The Holy Dormition-Svyatogorsk Lavra in the Donetsk Province of Ukraine considers it a miracle that an icon of one of the most beloved Orthodox saints safely floated down the river and was brought to the monastery.

The icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov, which was eventually found by some fishermen on the Seversky Donetsk River was handed over to the Lavra on October 5, which marked the 30th anniversary of the return of the Svyatogorsk Icon of the Mother of God to the monastery after the period of soviet persecution, reports the Ukrainian Orthodox Church’s Information Center.

“The icon is paper, a lithograph with glass, floated down the river. Some fishermen caught it and brought it to the Lavra,” His Eminence Metropolitan Arseny of Svyatogorsk, the monastery abbot, explained in a video published by the UOC Information Center.

Source: https://orthochristian.com/148693.html

To strengthen our faith, the Lord sends us meetings with His saints. They are living examples and the embodiment of humility, patience, selflessness, and love for God and neighbor. I was vouchsafed to meet such people in the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky in Tbilisi.

According to local old-timers, in the Soviet era there was a kind of a secret monastery at St. Alexander Nevsky’s Church, where the following Glinsk elders struggled: Metropolitan Zinovy ??(Mazhuga), Schema-Archimandrite Andronik (Lukash), and Schema-Archimandrite Vitaly (Sidorenko; 1928-1992), along with many secret monks and nuns. Their spiritual children would often travel from Russia to Vladyka and the Elders for advice. Sometimes only monks would sing in the choir, and such services were unforgettable.

I didn’t see the Elders, but the Lord vouchsafed me to meet their followers—their spiritual children. And there was a lot to learn from them. One of them was Mother Maria (Kalinina), later Schemanun Xenia.

She was a true disciple of Fr. Vitaly. She spoke a lot about him and other marvelous elders whom she had had the privilege of communicating with. Unfortunately, at that time it didn’t occur to me to write down her stories, and now that twenty years have passed, there’s little left in my memory.

His very name is translated as “blessing.” He was always sent to the most difficult sites on the Church front. He raised Moscow’s Danilov Monastery from the ruins—the first monastery handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church after the tumultuous years of Soviet authority—then he revived Optina Hermitage from the same desolation. Then he spent three decades peacefully ruling the Vladimir and Suzdal Diocese, which he received in a difficult state of division.

On July 22, our Church bid farewell to an epochal man, a metropolitan who could easily kneel in the middle of a working day just to teach humility to his employees and spiritual children—Vladyka Evlogy (Smirnov).

He used to reflect:

“How weary I have grown of all this fuss. I’m so tired”—his face so bright, his gaze far away, as if he were already looking toward the place where he has now gone—to the Lord, where they don’t speak, but sing.

“Life doesn’t stand still, but extends into time like a speeding arrow,” he wrote in his spiritual journal, “and invariably passes into eternity.”

Read more about vladyka Evlogy (Smirnov): https://orthochristian.com/133577.html

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church responded to the OCU’s intention to establish a new “monastery”.

The Legal Department of the UOC commented on the decision of the “synod” of the OCU dated May 23, 2022, which created a religious organization with the name “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” and filed a petition to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to transfer one of the temples of the Upper Lavra to the use of the OCU. The text of the commentary is published by the Information and Education Department of the UOC.

“By its decision to establish the ‘OCU’ monastery in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, the ‘Synod of the OCU’ actually duplicates the name of the UOC monastery that currently operates in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. Also, this decision is further proof to the predatory policy of church looting at the level of the ‘Holy Synod of the OCU’, which was put in place since the beginning of the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine and consists in the illegal seizure of temples and religious organizations belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The practice of creating parallel church structures with a similar or identical name was launched under Filaret (Denisenko) with the aim of raider seizure of the property of religious communities,” the commentary says.