In December 2017, the icon exhibition Saints of the Undivided Church opened at the National Art Museum of Belarus in Minsk. It presented icons of the ancient saints of the West up to the Great Schism of 1054.

Writing in Paris in 1931, Russian Orthodox religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev noted that “the greatness of creative genius is not correlative to moral perfection.” In the Orthodox religious culture of Berdyaev’s day, the summit of personal moral and religious perfection was found solely in holiness crafted through asceticism and prayer.

Creation is born of contemplation: contemplation of nature, of people, and finally of objects. Contemplation is a process of mutual creation. You look at an object, and the object looks back at you.

I was born on the island of Patmos where the religious aspect of life is particularly intense, with the presence of the Cave of the Apocalypse and the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian. I was fortunate enough to belong to a family that had monks in the monastery, so from a young age I had the opportunity to come into daily contact with the works of great iconographers. I could spend hours admiring the artistic treasures in the monastery!

I have heard the legacy of Father Alexander Schmemann described as one of freedom. So many descriptions of Orthodoxy present the Church as history and rules. Indeed, many people find their way to the Church through reading about the early church. The strictness of the Orthodox Church’s disciplines reflects the strictness of its theology.

One does not listen to Bach. One participates in the music, one sings it (if only silently), one lets it sing within oneself. Because his music is inseparable from prayer, it is a music that prays and causes one to pray.

We stand at a major threshold. For the first time in our history, most of the population has virtually unlimited access to education and culture. Innumerable sources of information and communication are now available. Never before has the great treasure trove of Christian art and thought been so accessible.

In Eastern Christianity, an iconostasis is a wall of icons and religious paintings separating the nave from the sanctuary in a church. “Iconostasis” can also mean a portable icon stand that can be placed anywhere within a church. There are strict rubrics governing the placement of icons within the iconostasis, and far from being a mere decorative scheme, it is designed to give the worshiper a meticulously orchestrated glimpse of heaven, a mystical window looking in on the holy of holies.

The HBO series The Young Pope, directed by Paolo Sorrentino, generated unexpectedly involved and heated discussion among Orthodox Christians in Russia. It seemed as though every self-identified believer in Russia watched it. Some spat and condemned it. The majority admired it. But nobody remained indifferent or reserved judgment until the first season’s end.

Anastasia Semash paints, draws, and makes sculptures of people, flowers, and animals. Between 2012 and 2014, she created sculptures of gospel characters out of bottles.

The Russian Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris has been mired in controversy and scandal from the beginning. The genesis of the project, according to the official story, was the request by the late Patriarch Alexey II to the presidents of Russia and France for a new cathedral in Paris for the use of the rapidly growing Russian diaspora.

Few endeavors test a parish’s collective determination and mutual goodwill like the construction of a new building, or the renovation of an existing one. Even a modest building is a tangible manifestation of a community’s distinctive character and of the public face it wishes to present. Like liturgy itself, the church structure plays a crucial role in orienting participants in relation to one another and to the world.

Between 1576 and 1581, Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremiah II engaged in substantive epistolary dialogue with Lutherans of the Tübingen School of emerging Lutheran scholasticism. In some ways it would be correct to say that, prior to the inauguration of the contemporary ecumenical movement, it was the most significant point of theological contact between Lutheranism proper and the Orthodox Church.