I've just created a StrawPage to replace Curious Cat. Ask me anonymous questions or send me a doodle there.

These scanned images above are taken from this book "Letters to His Family" in case you ever want to pick it up yourself. It's mostly addressed to his sister Maria tho. The latest version has Saint Sophrony on the subtitle, but my older copy says Archimandrite Sophrony.

In a letter of St. Sophrony of Essex dated 1978, he recounts the biggest highlight he saw in all of Italy was seeing the Shroud of Turin in person. He was convinced it's the genuine burial-shroud of Christ originally kept in "the Orthodox East." In other words, an Orthodox relic.

The first two pages above are from the book Seeking Perfection in the World of Art. The last two pages are from the book 'Being.' Both books are by Sister Gabriela, a spiritual child of Saint Sophrony. Saint Sophrony had mentored Sister Gabriela in the subject of icon painting.

Eastern Orthodox saint, Sophrony of Essex, considered the Turin Shroud as authentic. God waited until the invention of photography to reveal its image. St Sophrony would always have a photo of the negative as inspiration to paint icons of Christ. God had given us His photograph.

-Ancient Patericon (9.9).

A brother asked an elder: If I see my brother fall into sin, is it good to hide him? The Elder answered: When, out of love, we hide the sin of our brother, then God also hides our sins; but when we show our brother's sin before others, then God also makes our sins known to people

The scans in the OP are from this dual Slavonic-English prayer book if anyone else is interested in getting it. It is a Russian Old Rite prayer book, but it is published by a canonical ROCOR parish.

Prayers are not for a single person's benefit. As Father Roman Braga said salvation is not individual, it is communal. You help those around you by praying.

Another priest told me you can go to the toilet when you wake up, but you should promptly do morning prayers after that. You don't want to get sidetracked so much you end up not doing morning prayers. If you're rushed it is far better to do something brief than no prayer at all.

If you struggle to pray consistently every evening because you feel too fatigued or tired to do them right before bed or for some other reason you can start your evening prayers as early as 3 pm instead as one priest I know once told me before he was ordained.

Prayers are for our benefit like hygiene in our daily routine for health. Morning prayers help us to go by the day in the Lord's will & evening prayers give us protection at night for we're in unending war with demons. Every time I say this evening prayer I feel it does something

Translation taken from this $4 Kindle e-book provided by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Lately, I have been incorporating this prayer by St Philaret Drozdov in my morning prayers and I have found it beneficial especially this line: "teach me to pray, pray Yourself in me."

I love how providentially God made it so that the feast days of the great contemporary saints, Sophony (☦️ 11 July, 1993) and Paisios (☦️ 12 July, 1994) the Athonites, are back-to-back.

This is a reupload of this video:.

Hieromonk Melchisedec recounts the method that Saint Sophrony of Essex personally taught him on battling lust.

Sister Magdalen states that the main point of her book, Reflections on Children in the Orthodox Church Today, is "that if children are conceived, born, and brought up by prayer and love, they will grow up as spiritual persons, and thus fulfil their human vocation."

Sister Magdalen says we shouldn't tell little kids about dangers of demons & hell like adults bc of serious spiritual harm. And: "We should never, when speaking theologically, remove someone's idea unless we replace it by something more mature which is within their comprehension"

Much of Sister Magdalen's advice for families on TV at home, from the 1980s, is applicable to today's internet. There are 2 extremes: "children become too isolated from their contemporaries" without access or they become too attached to devices. "it must serve the family's life".

Spiritual Father (St. Sophrony of Essex) and spiritual child (Sister Magdalen) agree: there are (spiritual) consequences if infants don't drink their mother's breast milk.