This week at All Saints
Sunday, July 13 (n.s.) / June 30 (o.s.)
O foremost of the Apostles and teachers of the world, intercede with the Master of all, that He grant peace to the world and to our souls great mercy.
Christ the Rock doth radiantly glorify the rock of Faith, the most excellent of His disciples, as He doth Paul and the assembly of the twelve today; and, faithfully celebrating their memory, we glorify Him Who glorified them.
All Saints of North America is an Orthodox Church serving the Staunton, Waynesboro, Harrisonburg and Charlottesville areas of Virginia. All services are conducted in English.
We are a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, following the Old Calendar (Julian) and other traditional practices. We are located in the heart of Virginia's beautiful Shenandoah Valley, where our priest and many of us in the parish were born and raised. We invite you learn more about our parish and our faith in the links above, and to come pray and worship with us.
Consider the words of St. Macarius:
The inhabitants of this world, the children of this age, are like wheat in a sieve. They are being sifted by restless thoughts of this world. They are constantly tossed to and fro by earthly care, desire and absorption in a variety of material concerns. Satan tosses such souls as a sifter sifts wheat.... By these concerns he disturbs men, keeps them anxious and in a state of nervous motion.
St. Macarius lived in the 4th century, but he clearly describes our situation today. The Church is a spiritual hospital. It is exactly the place where the tired and fearful and sifted need to be. Each Sunday when I enter the Sanctuary, pictures of former patients who were cured [i.e., icons of the saints] surround me. This hospital has a record of almost 2000 years of successfully curing the sick in heart.
Metropolitan Laurus, in his lecture, "The Ascetic Podvig of Living in the World," writes the following,
Christianity is an ascetic religion. Christianity is a teaching about the gradual extirpation of the passions, about the means and conditions of the gradual acquisition of virtues. And this Podvig, this struggle comes as we begin to separate ourselves from the world.
This is traditional Orthodoxy and the true Orthodox mind-set. We practice these disciplines not because we are required to do them, or because God will hate us if we don't. God calls us to practice them because they are good for us, they work, and without them we will never get well. Without them, we will not acquire the Holy Spirit. Without them, there will never be true joy.
Traditional Orthodoxy is the pursuit of holiness. A heart aflame with the Holy Spirit is possible for us all, even in this sinful and adulterous generation. To gain it, we must check in to our grace-filled hospital and do our therapies. This requires an Orthodox mindset that challenges the fast and strenuous lifestyle of this generation. May God help us to recover from the vain dream of the pursuit of happiness, a fantasy that grinds us with stress and toil and robs us of our Orthodox birthright: righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit!
The above was excerpted and adapted from a talk, "Living the Traditional Orthodox Life," given by our priest at a Southern Missions Conference. The full text is also available.NEW: The St. Macrina Sisterhood now is offering for sale an Orthodox Cookbook! Details, including sample pages, pricing, and volume discounts are available here: Give Us Your Five Best.