Lark Buns (Zhavoronki) Recipe for the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste These lark buns are traditionally baked in Russia each year to celebrate the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. There are forty buns to celebrate each of the forty martyrs. The larks are the first bird to arrive in Russia each spring, and the feast day of the Forty Martyrs falls during Lent, so the buns also celebrate the arrival of spring.
1st Recipe
These "larks" are not sourdough like the ones referred to in the Siberian cookbook article. However, they are good. If readers have any recipes for these or other foods which are associated with the Church calendar, such as the "crosses" made for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, please send them in so that we can share them.
21.03.2024Read more
Sermon 35. On the Fast at the Beginning of Quadragesima{1}.
1. The holy Apostle presents testimony from the prophets when he says: At an acceptable time I heard you, and on the day of salvation I helped you (Cor. 6.2; Isa. 49.8). And this follows: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation (Cor. 6.2). Hence I also testify to you that these are the days of redemption, that this is the time, as it were, of heavenly medicine, when we shall be able to heal every stain of our vices and all the wounds of our sins if we faithfully implore the physician of our souls and do not, as people scarcely worthy of the undertaking, despise His precepts. For a person wearied of his illness has found healing when he very carefully observes his doctor’s orders; but if he does one thing when another is ordered, then the transgressor and not the physician is guilty if the sickness is aggravated. But the physician is the Lord Jesus Christ, who says: I will kill and I will give life (Deut. 32.39){2}. For the Lord kills – in a certain manner – before He gives life. First, by baptism He kills in us murders, adulteries, crimes, and robberies, and with that, by the immortality of eternity, He gives life to us who are like new persons. For we die to our sins through the bath, but we are reborn to life through the Spirit, as the holy Apostle says: For you have died to your sins, and your life is hidden with Christ (Col. 3.3). For in baptism you have been buried with Him in death (Rom. 6.4). Now we have been killed in a certain manner when we cease to be what we have been. By a new kind of piety both death and life are at work in one and the same person, for the lust of sins dies and the order of virtues comes to life. In one and the same person the impious and the adulterer are slain so that one who is merciful and chaste might be reborn; idolatry is destroyed so that religion might be generated; the fornicator and the drunkard are annihilated so that the continent and the sober might come to birth. Thus, therefore, the Lord kills in order to make alive, thus He slays in order to make good, thus He strikes in order to correct. This is, then, the extent of His severity toward His servants – that in them sins be punished, the soul preserved, detestable vices abstained from, and the best virtues nourished. Thus far we notice that, by the Lord’s kind slaying, many have been converted inasmuch as they have made progress to what is better, going from very bad to very good, so that when you see them you would think that they were changed persons, although you would not see that they were changed in appearance. For, to the extent that what we were previously is destroyed, removed, and annihilated in us, let us believe that what we are since then has been born anew. Hence this second birth signifies that the former life has come to an end.
17.03.2024Read more
The Great Fast is preceeded by the Sunday of Forgiveness – the day when we,mutually and sincerely from our hearts, forgive one another's offenses.
To forgive offenses... What can be harder? Yet, at the same time, what can be sweet as this? The root of offences sits deeply in each man's heart.
With pain and over time, we are able to throw off and expel grudges.
But, when you'just master yourself, when you just collect enough strength to tear out and cast aside those things that are so sickly and which deeply sit in one's soul, bright joy at once relieves us of the state of darkness and agitation with the forgiveness of offences and injuries and brings us to the daring possibility to pray to our Father: "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
Often, in our time, men would talk of paradise and hell with a skeptical smile. Man does not understand that he carries both paradise and hell in his soul, already being on earth.
17.03.2024Read more
On this day we commemorate all the holy men and women who have shone forth in the ascetic life.
The God-bearing Fathers, having made us ready for the course of the Fast by gently instructing us by means of the two preceding Sundays, have thus led us away from luxury and satiety. They have instilled in us the fear of the future Judgment and purified us in advance – as is right – by means of Cheesefare week. Furthermore, they have wisely inserted the two intervening weeks of partial fasting so as to prepare us little by little for the full fasting which will begin next Monday.
16.03.2024Read more
Οn this day we commemorate the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous Judge.
The most-godly Fathers placed the present commemoration of the Second Coming of Christ after the two parables of the preceding Sundays so that no one, having learned of God’s love for mankind, might lead a life of negligence, saying to himself, “God loves mankind, and when I finally cease sinning, everything will go easily.”
Hence, they appointed the remembrance of that fearful day in order to frighten the negligent with the thought of death and the anticipation of the future torments and rouse them to the acquisition of virtue so that they will not merely trust in God’s love for man but also bear in mind that He is a just Judge who rewards everyone according to his deeds.
10.03.2024Read more
Today, the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, we call to remembrance the noble parable that is in the Holy Gospel according to the Apostle Luke.
There are people, as they live prodigally from their youth, who observe in themselves many improper things. Spending their time in drunkenness and wantonness, they have fallen into a depth of wickedness and reached despair, which is a result of pride. Yet they do not wish to engage in the pursuit of virtue because, as they say, their evils are very many. And so they continually fall into the same and worse evils. For this reason, in their paternal and loving care for such people, the Holy Fathers placed this parable on this day, wishing to save them from despair, and by showing God’s forbearance and plenteous goodness, they aim to entirely uproot such passions ol prodigality from sinners’ hearts and to inspire them to take up a virtuous life again. The Fathers’ purpose is to show, through this parable of Christ, that there is no sin whatsoever that can prevail over His love for mankind.
02.03.2024Read more
On this day we commemorate the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, which occurs in the Holy Gospel according to the Apostle Luke.
With God’s blessing, we enter this day into the period of the Triodion, in which many of our holy and godly Fathers who were hymnographers inspired by the Holy Spirit composed hymns and odes. St. Cosmas, Bishop of Maiuma (comm. Oct. 14), a famous ecclesiastical poet and hymnographer, was the first to devise the pattern of the three-ode canon (tri-ode = Triodion), in the image of the life-originating Holy Trinity. He first used this model in his canons for the Great and Holy Week of the Passion of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ, composing the hymns and using acrostics containing the names of the days of that week. Then the rest of the Fathers, and particularly Saints Theodore (comm. Nov. 11 and Jan. 26) and Joseph (comm. April 3) the Studites, in zealous imitation of St. Cosmas, composed canons for the other weeks of Holy and Great Lent. When they had further arranged and ordered the odes and collected and compiled the book’s other material from the different Fathers, they first used it in their own Monastery of the Studion in Constantinople.
25.02.2024Read more
Sermon 95. On Zacchaeus{1}.
1. It has been my frequent wish, beloved brethren, to preach on the parable from this section of the Gospel and to speak of the grace of the wealthy Zacchaeus in words of great eloquence and to be abundant in praise of him, since he was free-giving for his own salvation. For who would not praise a person who was able to give his own wealth to himself and to acquire everlasting dominion for himself by owning temporal property?{2} He gave his wealth, I say, to himself, because what we possess is another’s if we do not use it properly for salvation{3}; for whatever seems to be mine will not be mine when I depart from the world if it is kept from being useful to me in the world.
It has been my wish, then, to preach on Zacchaeus’ wealth and grace – that of a rich person, clearly, and of one for ever rich, because he merited to be richer to Christ than to the world, and he was wealthier in the possession of faith than in temporal goods. Zacchaeus must be praised, then, because although the rich are excluded from the glory of the heavenly kingdom (as the Lord says: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19.24)), he hastened to enter into the kingdom of heaven by means of those very riches and to pass through that strait and narrow needle’s eye with the twisted mass of his body. What is a ruinous hindrance to others was profitable to his salvation.
17.02.2024Read more
1. Before Christ we all shared the same ancestral curse and condemnation poured out on all of us from our single forefather, as if it had sprung from the root of the human race and was the common lot of our nature. Each person’s individual action attracted either reproof or praise from God, but no one could do anything about the shared curse and condemnation, or the evil inheritance that had been passed down to him and through him would pass to his descendants.
2. But Christ came, setting human nature free and changing the common curse into a shared blessing. He took upon Himself our guilty nature from the most pure Virgin and united it, new and unmixed with the old seed, to His divine person. He rendered it guiltless and righteous, so that all His spiritual descendants would remain outside the ancestral curse and condemnation. How so? He shares His grace with each one of us as a person, and each receives forgiveness of his sins from Him. For He did not receive from us a human person, but assumed our human nature and renewed it by uniting it with His own person. His wish was to save us all completely and for our sake He bowed the heavens and came down. When by His deeds, words and sufferings He had pointed out all the ways of salvation, He went up to heaven again, drawing after Him those who trusted in Him. His aim was to grant perfect redemption not just to the nature which He had assumed from us in inseparable union, but to each one of those who believed in Him. This He has done and continues to do, reconciling each of us through Himself to the Father, bringing each one back to obedience and thoroughly healing our disobedience.
15.02.2024Read more
Sermon 65. Given after Epiphany{1}.
1. I believe that my preaching on the holy day of Epiphany reached all of you, brethren, especially you catechumens. In it we spoke to those who assert that water was changed into wine then{2} and also to the many who testily that the Lord was baptized in the Jordan on that day{3}. Although it is believed by different people that only one of these took place, nonetheless I hold that both took place and that one is a sign of the other, for both took place. For when the Lord was baptized He instituted the mystery of washing and also, by contact with the Divinity{4}, changed the human race – brackish water, as it were – into an eternal substance. Likewise, when He turned the jars full of spring water into wine He did both things: He presented something far better to the wedding feast and also showed that, by the washing, the bodies of human beings are to be filled with the substance of the Holy Spirit. The Lord declared this in clearer fashion elsewhere when He said that new wine was to be stored in new skins{5}, for in the newness of the skins the purity of the washing is signified, and in the wine the grace of the Holy Spirit.
2. Therefore it behooved you catechumens to have listened to this quite closely. There is greater need that your understanding, which is now as chilly as water because of ignorance of the Trinity, should become as warm as wine with a knowledge of the mystery, and that the brackish and weak liquid of your souls may be decanted into a precious and strong grace. Thus, instead of wine we may taste what is good and be redolent of what is sweet, and hence we can say, in the words of the Apostle: For we are the good odor of Christ to God (2 Cor. 2.15). For a catechumen is like water, cold and pale, before he is baptized, but a believer is strong and red like wine. A catechumen, I say, is like water, having no taste or smell, valueless, useless, unpleasant to drink, and unable to keep{6}. For just as water spoils and smells when it is kept a long time and has deteriorated within itself, so also a catechumen becomes worthless and goes to ruin when he remains a catechumen a long time, for he deteriorates within himself{7}. As the Lord says: Unless one is born again from water and the Holy Spirit he will not enter into the kingdom of heaven (John 3.5). The one who does not enter into the kingdom, however, necessarily remains in hell. But rightly is the faithful compared to wine, for just as every part of the whole creation goes to ruin as it gets older and only wine improves with age, so, while all are perishing of old age from throughout the human race, only the Christian improves with age. And just as wine acquires a pleasant savor and a sweet odor as its bitterness diminishes from one day to the next, so also the Christian takes upon himself the wisdom{8} of the Divinity and the agreeable aroma of the Trinity as the bitterness of his sins diminishes with the passing of time.
21.01.2024Read more
