Everyone wants to follow Christ the Victor. Orthodox priests follow Christ the Victim. Therein lies the power of the Orthodox Christian priesthood.
Can you follow them?
Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, adored in Russia for his wit and wisdom, talks about the Bolshevik terror.
300, 000 priests were killed during Communism.
They actually had an easy way out. They could have just rejected their priesthood and been set free. They could have kept praying in secret, even singing in church choirs, as long as they rejected their calling.
Yet so many of them chose death.
What people are ready to die for reveals with startling clarity what is actually valuable in life.
I mean, can you imagine being ready to die just because something frustrated you, for example, if you didn’t get your newspaper in the morning?
No, people are only ready to sacrifice their lives for something incredibly, immeasurably important.
Something priceless.
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