The first Sunday after Pascha is called the Sunday of Thomas, because it commemorates a certain event involving the Apostle Thomas, through which the Church tries to teach us a lesson in faith. Here is what the Gospel tells us:

“But Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them (i.e. the other disciples) when Jesus came. And the other disciples said unto him: we have seen the Lord. But he said unto them: except if I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe.”

This unbelieving disciple is very like modern man, who has lost the ability to believe with the heart, the ability to simply accept manifestations of the spiritual world. Like the Apostle Thomas, people nowadays demand physical proof of everything and are unable to believe in anything they cannot grasp physically, i.e. through their five senses. But the Lord is extremely merciful: He does not turn away from such people, but is lenient towards their spiritual handicap and helps them overcome this handicap, as long as they show at least some desire for faith.

So it happened with Thomas. On the eighth day after His Resurrection, the Lord once again appeared to His disciples when Thomas was with them, too, and allowed him to touch His wounds. And at this moment the heart of the unbeliever underwent a total transformation, and Thomas cried out the words which move us even to this day: “My Lord and my God!”

And here is Christ’s response, which is meant for all of us, because it opens up a new era of faith that will remain until the end of the world: “You have believed because you have seen Me. Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” “This has been written, – adds Apostle John the Theologian, – so that you might believe that Jesus is Christ, Son of God, and that believing you might have life through His name.”

These words have great significance right now, and specifically for us, contemporary Orthodox Christians. We are living in a time of incredible technological progress, a time of the most amazing discoveries, but a time which is absolutely soulless and spiritually desolate. Our planet is covered entirely with a network of communications, and every hour, every minute the mass media informs us of all that is happening in the world, even in the most remote corners of the earth. We are continuously being bombarded with news reports, communiqu?s, sensational events…

But among all this mass of news and sensations, there is not a single item of news so amazing, so overwhelming, having such cosmic significance, as the news which for almost two thousand years is being brought to us annually by the Church. And this news is that…

Beloved brethren in Christ! From ancient times it had been noticed by the Holy Fathers and Teachers of Christ’s Church that all four Evangelists do not mention a single case wherein a woman insulted Christ, mocked Him, or treated the Saviour with hauteur and arrogance.

On the contrary, the women in the Gospel serve as examples of penitence, remorse, humility, and meekness. The woman of Canaan, who came from non-Orthodox stock, was not offended at Christ’s response to her prayers and entreaties for the healing of her possessed daughter: “It is not meet to take the children’s (i.e. Orthodox believers’) bread and cast it unto the dogs.” This woman justified the words of King Solomon: “Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee,” for the Saviour’s words engendered within her a sincere and deep feeling of meekness, and in response to her wondrous reply: “Yes, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs,” she was granted immediate healing for her daughter.

A certain fallen woman washed Christ’s feet and embraced them, anointing them with precious myrrh and wiping them with her hair. Her bitter tears of repentance dissolved in this precious myrrh and forever remained a supreme example of a sacrifice pleasing to God.

Women constantly served the Lord with all their frail capabilities, surroundding Him with love and care, with that unique feminine power of observation that helped them silently learn from Christ’s holy presence.

One can boldly say that it was within their own families that the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Jewish elders who were full of wrath against Christ, met with the first line of resistance, and this was the beginning of the fulfillment of the Saviour’s words: “It is not peace which I brought, but the sword.” Only in the face of the frenzied anger of their husbands did they bow down their heads. They followed Christ to the Golgotha, weeping and beating their breasts.

But as soon as the vision of the lifeless Most-pure Body of Christ temporarily satisfied the Jews’ ire, the myrrh-bearing women, having spent a sleepless night, as soon as daybreak came were already hurrying early in the morning toward the tomb, in order to pour out unimpeded all their love for their Teacher and Mentor by means of this last funereal anointment with fragrant myrrh.

To a woman – Mary Magdalene – Christ appeared first after His glorious Resurrection, and many times inquisitive minds offered different explanations for this undeniably Divine indication.

The Lord undoubtedly did this because He wished to manifest His Resurrection, and through it our liberation from demonic captivity and from sin, first of all to the female sex, which had carried the greatest part of the burden of original sin. In fact, we see in the history of mankind that the deeper a certain people became immersed in the darkness of idol worship, the more enslaved became the state of its women. Even the ancient enlightened, but still pagan people, who seemed to stand on a high level of culture and civilization, turned their women into objects of lust, greatly humiliating and degrading the female sex.

And now in the Saviour the woman instinctively and very strongly perceived her Deliverer from centuries of constant degradation and slavery. To Him she turned with her entire being, because in Christ her soul mysteriously recognized her Saviour, the second Adam, the Emmanuel.

It is in Christian society that woman found her true place, and in our mind’s eye we see the wondrous images of the holy women martyrs, venerable mothers, righteous women, and the countless humble and unnoticed mothers, known only to God, who in the quiet of their hearths were able to nurture the spiritual giants who so enrich our history.

And now? More and more often we see how the mankind-hating devil wishes once again to take away from you, O modern myrrh-bearers, the freedom and dignity you had gained at such great cost. The ancient tempter is whispering into your ears practically the same olden song he had used on your ancestress Eve. But this time he does not dare to tempt you with the idea of equality with God, but insidiously offers you imaginary equality with the male half of humanity, seducing you with the “emancipation” that ensures equal rights in all fields of endeavor, including the wearing of male clothes.

The Lord had divided mankind into two halves, adorning each half with its special and differing characteristics. These characteristics are not eternal, for according to the Saviour’s word, after our death all of us will be as God’s angels in the Heavenly Kingdom, and there will be no more men or women. These differing characteristics are given to us now, however, as a means to spiritual endeavor in our temporal earthly wandering. And the entire essence of the spiritual endeavor of these two halves of mankind is comprised in a sacrificial depletion of these temporal differences, in the labor of mutual concession.

If now, O new myrrh-bearers, you follow the voice of this subtle demonic flute, inviting you to a false equality with men, and of your own accord you unlawfully divest yourselves of your feminine characteristics, you will be robbing your own selves by losing your honor and depriving yourselves of dignity. In your poverty you will be left with only a single characteristic for sacrifice – your frail flesh, which does not inherit the Heavenly Kingdom.

An oak tree does not put on the leaves of a birch, nor does a birch tree dress itself in the needles of a pine. Everything in God’s creation knows its own value, and only sentient man does not wish to know it. Listen, ye Orthodox wives and maidens, what our Lord says through the mouth of the prophet Moses: “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man… for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 22:5).

In his wondrous hymn to love the apostle Paul says: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly”… (1 Cor. 13:4-5). These last words should be understood not in their modern application, but in their etymological provenance – in the sense of violating the order established by God. Does this not mean that every woman who dresses herself in male clothes does indeed “behave herself unseemly,” i.e. violates the divine order of things, sins against the commandment on love and, therefore, goes against God and is an abomination unto God?

We should not only fear to sin openly, dear brethren, but also to violate God’s order, the proper way of things that is pleasing to God, for all of these things comprise the immaterial temple in which we save our souls.

May the Lord bless you and grant you wisdom to guard your souls with care and vigilance. Amen.

Today’s Gospel reading about the paralytic, dear brethren, fosters in us an even greater awareness of the divinity of our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ.

The Gospel readings of the two preceding Sundays told us about the appearances of the resurrected Christ. These wondrous appearances – to His disciples, to Thomas, to the Myrrh-bearing Women, – were full of the radiance of Christ’s Resurrection. But today’s Gospel begins with a gloomy and terrible picture in which there is no radiance, no light. In our mind’s eye we see the pool by the sheep market. At the pool there are five covered porches. Inside these porches lies a great multitude of the sick, the blind, the lame, the withered. At certain times an Angel of the Lord went down into the pool and troubled the water, and whoever was first to step into the pool after the water was troubled – was healed of whatever illness he had.

There was a certain man lying here who had been sick for 38 years. Let us contemplate this case, dear brethren! To lie for 38 years in such a horrible condition, in pain, in suffering, without a doctor, without any care, without any medicine. And the wretched man bore it all only because he wished to become well. He tried to step into the pool after the troubling of the water, but he had no one to help him, and so he arrived late and was not healed. And so it went on like this for 38 years – a whole lifetime!

And suddenly everything changed! Jesus came up to him and said: “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk…” And the man went.

What happened? How did this come about? What happened was that the cause of his illness was removed. Christ reveals this cause when He meets the man in the temple and says to him: “Now you are made whole, sin no more, lest something worse happen to you.” Therein lies the cause: in sin. Sin, and only sin is the cause of all evil, of all our suffering, of all our illnesses… And only Christ alone can destroy it, can forgive it. But that can happen on one condition only: sin no more.

Just recently we have lived through Passion Week, we have lived through the death of Christ, the death of the Lamb of God, Who had taken upon Himself the sins of the world. This means our sins, too, dear brethren! He, our Lord, the sole One without sin, offered Himself as a sacrifice for us before our Heavenly Father. And now – week after week – we live in the paschal joy of the resurrected Christ. And still we continue to trip, to fall, to sin…

But let us not despair; instead, let us turn to Him, our Lord Jesus Christ. The healing of the paralytic at the pool is only a shadow of all that Christ can do for us. He Alone is the source of our healing and forgiveness. He Alone, as God, can forgive sins. Let us turn to Him then, and He will say to us the same words which He had said to the paralytic: “Rise, take up thy bed, and walk,” – i.e. arise from your spiritual paralysis, because you have been healed, because all your sins have been forgiven in the sacrament of confession, and walk firmly on the path to salvation. And we will arise and will once more walk in the radiance of His Resurrection. But we should always likewise remember His other words to the paralytic: “sin no more.” And we should make sure to avoid sin, because

On May 2nd (April 19th by the old calendar) the Church commemorates the Blessed Saint Matrona of Moscow.

Before the revolution and in the early 1920s, the faithful could go with all their sorrows and daily problems to a monastery, to an elder. But to whom could they turn for spiritual help in difficult moments during the years of persecution, of repressions, when the monasteries were closed, the churches were destroyed, the elders and spiritual fathers were dying in labor camps?... The faithful were truly like a flock without a shepherd…

At that time, the Lord in His mercy set up a holy and righteous person to help the common people – a blessed woman from their own milieu, who understood all their earthly needs and sorrows, who spoke their language, who was close and accessible to them, and who sanctified their daily life with her spirituality.

St. Matrona was born in the village of Sebeno in Russia, in the family of Dmitry and Natalia Nikonov, in either 1881 or 1885. The exact date was never established. It is known that her patron saint was Matrona of Constantinople, who is commemorated on 9/22 November. Since infants, when being baptized, were usually given the names of saints commemorated on their birthday, November may be considered as the month in which she was born.

The infant girl came into the world totally blind, with tightly shut eyes and a bulge in the form of a cross on her chest. She was baptized in the local church of the Dormition of the Theotokos by priest Vasily Troitsky, who was beloved by his parishioners for his righteousness and who served in this church for 40 years until 1905. When he immersed the infant in the font, all who were present saw a light fragrant mist issue from her. Thus the Lord indicated His elect one.

From childhood the girl grew up surrounded by saints: she loved the holy corner at home and the services in church. Outwardly blind, she amazed people by her vision of not only the material, but also the spiritual world. Having the gift of prophecy, she forecast fires and other disasters, and was able to read the innermost secrets of human souls. Already from the age of seven people started coming to her from neighboring villages for spiritual help and for the healing of physical illnesses.

Once during a pilgrimage to Kronstadt, after the service in St. Andrew’s Cathedral ended, the righteous St. John of Kronstadt turned to her and publicly called the 14-year-old Matrona “the eighth pillar of Russia.” After the age of 16 the young girl lost the use of her legs. She saw a spiritual cause for this, and for the following 50 years she was destined to only sit or lie down.

When the revolution reached the village of Sebeno, Matrona’s brothers greeted it with enthusiasm – entered the Communist party, became activists. In 1925 Christ’s loyal saint was forced to abandon her native home and move to Moscow. From this time onward she became a wanderer on earth, moving from apartment to apartment, persecuted by the police, of whose visits she always knew in advance.

During the day Matrona received visitors, sometimes up to 40 people, while at night she prayed. Sometimes she dozed lying on her side and quietly moaning from exhaustion. Not only deeply religious people came to see her, but also all those who had become victims of bewitchment and the “evil eye.” She prayed for all who needed her help, lighting God’s light in doubting souls, entreating them to rectify their sinful lives.

She taught people not to judge others, but to look at their own sins. She taught people to give themselves over into God’s will; to pray constantly, to live with prayer; to frequently make the sign of the cross over themselves and surrounding objects, thus protecting themselves against the evil forces; to regularly commune of the Holy Mysteries; to love and forgive the old and the sick. She taught people to pay prayerful attention at church services; to disregard dreams; to refrain from running from one spiritual father to another, seeking “elders” or “clairvoyants.” Those who wished for spiritual perfection she taught not to put themselves forward among other people. She taught the need to endure sorrows…

It was said of her that during street demonstrations she did not allow her intimates to go out of the house or to open the windows. She saw the spiritual side of what was going on. When the excited crowd moved along the streets of Moscow with red flags and portraits of the Communist leaders, singing revolutionary songs and shouting Party slogans (in a demonic parody of a church procession), – the demons filled up the aerial space of the streets and penetrated into homes. What were Christians to do, when the world became demonic, became possessed? – They had to shut themselves up in their domiciles, which were sanctified by icons and prayer.

In regard to the issue of the closing down and destruction of churches, Matrona replied: “That is God’s will; the number of churches has been reduced because the faithful will be few and there will be no one to serve… The people are under hypnosis, they are not in their right minds, a terrible force has taken over… This force exists in the air and permeates everything. Formerly this force inhabited the marshes and the dense forests, because people went to church, wore crosses, and their homes were protected by icons, lampadas, and sanctification. The demons used to fly by such homes, while now they occupy them and their inhabitants, due to the latter’s disbelief and rejection of God.” The saint entreated people to put the temples of their souls in order, rather than grieve over man-made church buildings.

Of illnesses she said: “One must be in control of oneself and endure. At the same time, people should go and be treated, because the body is like a little house given to us by God, which should be repaired when necessary. God created the world and all the healing plants in it, and we must not disregard them.” Matushka used to say: what are known as psychological illnesses are really spiritual ones – frailty, paralysis, and possession by various demonic forces… Many sicknesses disappear after drinking holy water… Also, God forbid that you pick up any objects or money off the street.”

The blessed Matrona reposed on May 2, 1952 in the home of a distant relative living in the Moscow suburbs. On May 4th, on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, she was buried in the Danilovo cemetery. Her grave became the site of pilgrimage from all corners of Russia. On May 1, 1998 the tomb with her relics was ceremoniously transferred to the Holy Protection monastery, and on May 2nd blessed Matrona was canonized as a locally-venerated Moscow saint.

The flow of people coming to her relics in Moscow is never-ending. Some arrive for help with their sorrows, others – with tears of gratitude. She is loved and venerated by all. Almost every church has an icon of her – Matronushka is depicted in a white kerchief, with eyes closed and her right palm raised. She sees and hears everything, as though she is comforting us, her visitors: “Do not be upset. Everything will be alright”…

Of great merit is St. John’s work in preaching the patristic inner prayer to Russia. St. John wrote that “the vision of God is a requisite for prayer.” St. John himself was granted visions of spiritual forces, both of the lower and higher order. Once a certain abbess stood together with St. John near one of the bridges across Neva River, while a funeral procession passed by them. The saint told the abbess that he saw demons in the procession, who were rejoicing over the perdition of a drunkard’s soul. On August 15, 1989, on the day of the Dormition of the Holy Virgin, for the first time in his life St. John was granted a vision of the Mother of God and heard Her blessed voice calling him “a dearest child of the Heavenly Father.”

In view of the fact that when starting upon inner prayer, novices suffer from the wandering of thoughts that is inflicted upon them by the devil, St. John offers practical advice on how to overcome this impediment. He writes that in prayer “there is the sin of inattention to which we all are subjected terribly; we should not forget it, but repent of it; we are inattentive not only at home, but also in church. When you do your rule of prayer, especially by the prayer book, say the words of the prayers with heartfelt strength, do not hurry from word to word without having felt its sincerity, without having instilled it into your heart, but work constantly at feeling with your heart the sincerity of all that you are saying. Many church readers, who read with facility, end up with false prayer: with their lips they appear to be praying, they seem to be pious, but their hearts are dormant and do not know what the lips are saying. This happens as a result of their hurrying and not thinking over with their heart what they are saying. Only those can pray quickly without harming their prayer, who have learned to engage in inner prayer with a pure heart. All others should wait until each word of prayer is echoed in their own hearts. Sometimes it is well to say a few words of prayer of one’s own, full of ardent faith and love for the Lord.

We should not always converse with God using the words of others, we should not forever remain infants in faith and hope, but should manifest our own mind, offer from our hearts our own good words; moreover, we get used to the words of others and our prayer becomes cold. And how pleasing to God is our own babble, which issues directly from a believing and grateful heart.”

Out of his own spiritual experience the saint offers us the following revelation: “Try to achieve a child-like simplicity in your dealings with people and in your prayer to God. Simplicity is man’s greatest blessing and merit. God is absolutely simple, because He is absolutely spiritual, absolutely good. May your heart, too, refrain from dividing into good and evil.”

Speaking of his own endeavors with the Jesus prayer, St. John writes: “When you have Christ in your heart, make sure you do not lose Him and together with Him your inner tranquility, for it is bitterly hard to begin anew; all your efforts to attach yourself once again to Him after falling away will be hard and will cause many bitter tears. Cling to Christ with all your might, attach yourself to Him and do not lose your sacred connection with Him. Christ, introduced into the heart through faith, dwells there in peace and joy. When you notice that your heart is cold and unwilling to pray – stop and warm your heart with some dynamic vision – for example, of your iniquity, of your spiritual poverty and blindness, or of God’s great and continuous blessings upon you and all of mankind, especially Christians, – and afterwards continue to pray unhurriedly, with warm feeling; even if you do not have time to finish all your prayers, that does not present a problem, since much greater benefit accrues from warm and unhurried prayer than from reading all the prayers without any feeling. It is well to pray continuously, but not all are capable of such an effort, thus to each his own. Whoever is unable to cope with lengthy prayer should preferably pray briefly, but with an ardent soul. One should ceaselessly address the Lord and be with Him every single moment, in order to avoid being overcome by demonic irritation or dejection. By using the spirit of dejection, the enemy has led many people away from the narrow and salvific path and unto the wide and smooth path of perdition. While praying count yourself for nothing and accept prayer as a great gift from God. Pray without any hesitation, with heartfelt simplicity: just as it is easy to think, so should it be easy to pray. Prayer is the breath of the soul just as air is the breath of the body. Our souls breathe with the Holy Spirit. One cannot utter a single heartfelt word without the Holy Spirit. While praying you are conversing directly with the Lord, and if your heart is open through faith and love, you will at the same time breathe in the spiritual blessings issuing from Him. Learn to pray, force yourself to pray; at first it will be hard, but afterwards, the more you force yourself, the easier it will get, but initially you must always force yourself. When you pray to God, look with the eyes of your heart inside yourself, at your soul. The Lord is there, in your thoughts and in the movements of your heart, just as He is outside of you and everywhere. The heart’s insensitivity to the genuineness of the words of prayer comes from disbelief and insensitivity of one’s one sinfulness, which comes, in turn, from a hidden feeling of pride. From his feelings during a prayer a person can discover whether he is full of pride or humility: the more ardent is his prayer, the humbler he is, and the more insensitive the prayer – the greater his pride.”

All these instructions on the part of St. John concerning prayer are aimed at novices, since they concern mostly verbal prayer and only the beginnings of inner prayer. The saint himself, however, had attained the supreme gift of constant inner prayer, which was confirmed by Hieromonk Nikander of Valaam: “In truth, Father John’s face bloomed with God’s grace, with constant inner prayer. During the sanctification of the Holy Gifts, Father John submersed himself entirely in inner prayer, his face became wondrously transfixed, and it was apparent that he did not see those around him and even tarried in saying the priest’s exclamations. Deep and ardent prayer attracted him completely to God.” The Muscovite judge Peter Pavlovich Yastrebov also confirmed that while St. John served the divine liturgy, during the priest’s prayers in the altar he was granted spiritual visions. At such moments the saint seemed to be somewhere far away, seemed to be conversing with God, Whom he clearly saw in front of him on the altar table. Such moments left an indelible impression on the faithful.

We continue our presentation of various aspects of the vision of the end times. Following is an interesting article by Archbishop Seraphim of Chicago, a hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, written in 1959 and expressing hope in the fulfillment of the bright prophecies concerning the resurrection of Russia before the end of the world.

This people converts to Christianity not formally, not outwardly, as did many peoples in the West, but whole-heartedly, with its entire soul. Holy Prince Vladimir becomes the symbol of the transformation of the Russian soul after it puts on its white baptismal vestments.

Of course not right away and not all the semi-barbaric Slavic tribes became model Christians, but the process of their Christianization and churching was quicker and more profound than in the West. It is enough to mention that in the times of the Great Princes Yaroslav and Vladimir Monomachus, the then capital of Russia, Kiev, was a much more cultured city than its contemporaries Paris or London, while the legal code called “Russian Justice” was more infused with a bright Christian spirit than all the other contemporary legal codes of the Western peoples.

Unfortunately, the Russian people were unable to remain for long at the pinnacle of their great Christian calling. There began the fratricidal strife of the principalities, the internecine strife…

Then the Lord began to send tribulations of short duration upon the Russian land, warning the people by means of external sorrows. All kinds of Polovtsians, Pechenegs, Khozars, and other nomads began to ravage Russian cities and lands with fire and sword.

But alas! the Russian people did not come to their senses and continued their fratricidal strife.

Then, by God’s tolerance, the outwardly mighty Tatars appeared from the depths of Asia and enslaved Russian Christians for a long 250 years, physically destroying a good half of them and burning down and razing the majority of Russian cities and villages.

It was as though the fate of the Biblical Job the Long-suffering was repeated upon the Russian people. All earthly possessions were taken away from him, and only his soul the Lord commanded the devil not to touch. Thus the Tatars did not dare touch the Church, which was the one that saved the Russian soul from despair, breathed into it the will to live, and helped it arise anew. It was to the Orthodox Church that the Russia of those times owed its spiritual renaissance and its transformation into a large and monolithic state formation.

The Russian people, headed by the Great Prince Ivan III, came out from under the Tatar yoke with a realization of their great statehood, of their special calling in the world, with the idea of the Third Rome – inheritor of the declining Byzantium. This sacred and great idea, which inspired the best Russian people of those times, was the idea of the realization of genuine Christian statehood in the world.