Whoever approaches the Lord Jesus Christ with obedience and humility will never want to be separated from Him. The beginning exercises of the newly-recruited army of Christ are the exercises of obedience and humility.

With obedience begins a new world, a new creature, a new mankind. The old world trampled upon obedience to God and humility before God, and thus destroyed the bridge between earth and heaven. The spiritual building materials for restoring this bridge are first of all, obedience and humility. As long as Adam was rich in obedience and humility, he could hardly introduce a difference between his own spirit and the Spirit of God, between his own will and the will of God, between his own thoughts and the thoughts of God. He could not feel, want, and think anything that could not have been in God and from God. Like the angels of God, so too did Adam stand in direct proximity to God, and because of this direct proximity he contemplated the Primary Source of light, wisdom, and love. Living within the sun itself, he had no need to light any candle of his own. His candle would not have burned or given off light within the sun.

But when Adam violated obedience and lost humility—and these are always lost or acquired at the same time—then his direct communion with God was broken, the bridge destroyed, and he fell into terrible darkness and rotten dankness, which he was forced to light up with his own candle given to him nevertheless by God’s mercy when God’s righteousness cast him out of Paradise. Then he not only began to feel the difference between himself and God, between his own will and God’s will, his own feeling and God’s feelings, his own thoughts and God’s thoughts—he not only began to be aware of the difference, but only in rare hours of enlightenment was just barely able to notice his own divine likeness.

Saint Laurence of Chernigov said that during ‘the little freedom’ (which we now know to be the period since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and which continues to this day – Ed.), ‘churches and monasteries will open and be restored. But all kinds of false teachings will appear, through demons and secret atheists (catholics, Uniats, self-consecrated Ukrainian schismatics). These will join the battle against the Russian Orthodox Church and her unity and sobornost in the Ukraine. The schismatics will be supported by an atheist government.

‘We must resist the invasion of ‘the civilized world’, that is, dark demonic forces, which will try and penetrate into spiritually undefended areas. They will seize church buildings from the Orthodox and beat up the faithful. Then the Metropolitan of Kiev (unworthy of his name) with his supporting clergy will shake the Russian Church to the foundations. The whole world will be astonished at his iniquity and stand in fear. But he will go to eternal perdition like Judas. All these assaults of the evil one and false teachings will disappear in Russia and there will be One Orthodox Church of All Rus’.

‘Kiev, without the great Russia and separate from it, is anyway completely unthinkable. Kiev has never had a Patriarch. Our enemies in Poland so much disliked the word ‘Rus’ that they changed the name of this area to Little Russia and then to ‘the Ukraine’ (meaning ‘the borderlands’), so that we will forget the name Rus and so forever be torn away from Orthodox Holy Rus. In those who have erred or fallen away from Orthodoxy there is no grace of the Holy Spirit, salvation or obtaining of the Kingdom of Heaven’.

The Ancient of Days, Who formerly granted the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai, today is seen as an infant, and according to the Law, as the Creator of the Law fulfills the Law, being brought into the Temple and is given to the Priest.

The Righteous Symeon receiving Him, and beholding the dissolving of bonds being performed, cries out joyfully: My eyes have seen the Mystery hidden from before the ages, but which has been revealed to us in these latter days, the Light that disperses the darkness of the faithless nations, and the glory of the new Israel. Therefore, let your servant depart from the bonds of this flesh towards the heavenly and wondrous eternal life, You Who grant the world the great mercy.

– from the Litia of Vespers for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ to the Temple

“Come, let us wonder at the virgin most pure, wondrous in herself, unique in creation, she gave birth, yet knew no man; her pure soul with wonder was filled, daily her mind gave praise in joy at the twofold wonder: her virginity preserved, her child most dear. Blessed is He who shone forth from her!”

— St. Ephraim the Syrian, Songs of Praise

“When God became known to us in the flesh, He neither received the passions of human nature, nor did the Virgin Mary suffer pain, nor was the Holy Spirit diminished in any way, nor was the power of the Most High set aside in any manner, and all this was because all was accomplished by the Holy Spirit. thus the power of the Most High was not abased, and the Child was born with no damage whatsoever to the Mother’s virginity.”

“And while, according to the Theologians,

the Thrones judge,

the Seraphim warm us,

the Cherubim make us wise,

the Principalities command,

the Powers work deeds,

the Dominions preserve things,

the Authorities rule the nations,

the Archangels are ministers of the faith,

and the Angels liturgize,

however, Michael and Gabriel, as the Taxiarchs over all the rest, even more so, judge, warm us, make us wise, even more so command us, work deeds for us, and preserve us, even more so rule over nations, minister the faith, and liturgize with us.”

Excerpt on the Holy Angels by St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain

“When you are about to pray to the Most-Holy Mother of God, be firmly assured, before praying, that you will not depart from her without having received mercy.