11 March 2017. What Is At the Centre of Christianity? S I Fudel Tells You…

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No educated Russian needs an introduction to S I Fudel. He spent a good deal of his life in the camps… but had no bitterness or hate. He wrote:

My life wasn’t an endless series of misfortunes and mishaps; it granted me the chance to bear the Cross for Christ’s sake. In a sense, I died in infertility. Nevertheless, in a strange way, it gave me gratitude for life and, more surprisingly, gave me the hope of forgiveness.

The priest in the photo is the famous Mitred Archpriest N V Balashov, the real tsar of the MP OVTsS (Department of External Church Relations… he’s Alfeyev‘s minder and everyone knows it).

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4 July 2016. A Point to Ponder…

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7 December 2015. Reverence and Familiarity… Why We Disconcert the Heterodox and Their Obsessive “Orderliness”

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The temple is also the House of the People of God. In a typical Russian church, the kids play in the back… people meet n’ greet on the porch… people light candles and venerate icons as the service goes on. The Liturgy is for Man’s service… Man isn’t a servant of the Liturgy. Never forget, the Orthodox Church is the People’s Church! Reverence and familiarity mix in a way disconcerting to the Western mind. The Church is both human and divine, in ways that the heterodox don’t even begin to fathom.

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2 December 2015. A Point to Ponder on the Liturgy

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The liturgy is where God IS… full stop. Even if you don’t commune, the power gets through. It’s where, in normal circumstances, we meet God face-to-face. The liturgy is why I stay a Christian, despite all the rubbish that rotten priests and crank parishes throw at us. God IS with us…

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