A brother told an elder: “I see no battle in my heart.” The elder said to him: “You are open on all four sides. He who wishes comes in and goes out of you and you are not aware of it. If you have a door, close it and do not allow perverse logismoi to come in through it. Then you will see them standing outside, battling against you.

#Sayings_of_the_desert_fathers

May the life of the Church be the source of our joy, the inspiration of our souls and the strength of our spiritual striving! Amen.


📸 Nikolo-Solbinsky Monastery

"Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee, and today I arise with thy arising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee. Glorify me, O Savior, with Thee in Thy Kingdom."

The Paschal Canon (Ode 3)

Jesus never went to the Himalayas or anywhere near India. This is a popular belief among the New Agers and the gurus enjoy promoting such lies further. Most of these beliefs depends on the person’s feelings and emotions. But we know feelings are not facts!!
There is absolutely no evidence to support it. Nada. This is a big fat lie made up in the 19th century.

Этой ночью на службе в Сретенском монастыре было необычно много молодёжи. Никогда столько не видел.
Причём, именно молодёжь упорно стояла до конца службы, до трех утра, а потом группы молодых людей сидели на ступеньках Храма Новомученников и о чем-то весело болтали под звон колоколов.

Впрочем, не только в этом храме так вышло. Утром общались с друзьями: удивительно, но всех храмах, в разных городах была молодёжь. Много молодёжи. И тут, да, соглашусь с коллегой. На фоне миграционной ситуации, на фоне явного цивилизационного конфликта кишлака 19 века с городом века 21, на фоне агрессивного продвижения инокультурной повести, храмы становятся точками сборки русского этноса. Смысловой сборки, культурной, цивилизационной.

Но это часть ситуации, лишь одна из причин, почему в храмах вообще стало больше людей, не только молодых. Вторая причина даже не столько сама война, сколько возникшая в какой-то момент атмосфера в военной ситуации. Я думаю, что поворотной точкой стала осень 2022-го. Харьковское отступление, видео расстрелянных русских учительниц в Изюме, отход из Херсона. Кругом была тьма. Мы понимали, что сдаться невозможно. Что надо все равно сражаться, идти вперёд. Не только на фронте. А страна должна идти вперед. Но страна это разве что-то абстрактное? Это же мы. Чтобы идти, в те тёмные дни особенно нужна была вера. Без Веры мы не преодолели бы всё что было с тех пор.

В конечном счёте, именно Вера, русские православные традции лежат в основе стойкости русского солдата, русского человека. Даже если человек этот атеист.

Священники на фронте, стяги со Спасом, кадры, как русские солдаты поднимают поруганные кресты. Кто знает, было бы это все, если бы не тяжкая война? Но смогли бы мы преодолеть испытания, если бы в национальном генокоде не была бы зашито Православие, как точка сборки народа?

Такие вот размышления в первый день Пасхи. С праздником всех. Христос Воскресе!

There were an unusually large number of young people at the service at the Sretensky Monastery last night. I have never seen so many.
Moreover, it was the young people who stubbornly stood until the end of the service, until three in the morning, and then groups of young people sat on the steps of the Church of the New Martyrs and chatted cheerfully about something to the sound of bells.

However, this happened not only in this church. In the morning we talked with friends: surprisingly, there were young people in all the churches, in different cities. Lots of young people. And here, yes, I agree with my colleague. Against the backdrop of the migration situation, against the backdrop of an obvious civilizational conflict between a 19th-century village and a 21st-century city, against the backdrop of the aggressive promotion of a foreign cultural story, churches are becoming points of assembly of the Russian ethnos. Semantic assembly, cultural, civilizational.

But this is part of the situation, only one of the reasons why there are more people in churches in general, not just young people. The second reason is not so much the war itself, but the atmosphere that arose at some point in the military situation. I think that the turning point was the fall of 2022. The Kharkov retreat, the video of the executed Russian teachers in Izyum, the retreat from Kherson. There was darkness all around. We understood that it was impossible to surrender. That we had to fight anyway, to go forward. Not only at the front. And the country had to go forward. But is the country something abstract? It is us. In order to go, in those dark days, faith was especially needed. Without Faith, we would not have overcome everything that has happened since then.

Ultimately, it is Faith, Russian Orthodox traditions that underlie the fortitude of the Russian soldier, the Russian person. Even if this person is an atheist.

Priests at the front, banners with the Savior, footage of Russian soldiers raising desecrated crosses. Who knows, would all this have happened if not for the difficult war? But would we have been able to overcome the trials if Orthodoxy had not been embedded in the national genetic code as the point of assembly of the people?

Such are the thoughts on the first day of Easter. Happy Easter to all. Christ is Risen!

Above, an interesting testimony about the situation with Orthodoxy in Russia 2025.