Beyond the Beyond

The religious life is the real life -- all else is delusion and deception."

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Russian Orthodox Monastery of Ganina Yama. 

Yakenteberg, Siberia, Russia

Photographed by Martin Wágner

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Saint George Monastery

A Serbian Orthodox monastery in Manastire, Timis, Romania. January 2026.

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Hierarch Tikhon (Belavin) amid the clergy and flock

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Antique Russian icon of Our Lady of the Burning Bush (Neopalimaya Kupina), 19th century.

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“The Most Holy Mother of God prays for us ceaselessly. She is always visiting us. Whenever we turn to her in our heart, she is there. After the Lord, she is the greatest protection for mankind. How many churches there are in the world that are dedicated to the Most Holy Mother of God! How many healing springs where people are cured of their ailments have sprung up in places where the Most Holy Theotokos appeared and blessed those springs to heal both the sick and the healthy! She is constantly, by our side, and all too often we forget her.”

—Elder Thaddeus, Homily on the Dormition of the Theotokos delivered August 15/28

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“The Lord is called light, life, resurrection and truth (Jn. 8:12; 11:25; 14:6). He is light because He gives lucidity to the soul, dispels the darkness of ignorance, illumines the intellect so that it can grasp what is unutterable, and reveals mysteries perceptible only to the pure. He is life because He gives souls who love Him the activity proper to the divine realm. He is resurrection because He raises the intellect from its lethal attachment to material things and purifies it from all decay and mortality. He is truth because He gives to those found worthy an unchanging state of sanctity.”

—St Maximos the Confessor

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Monastic Family of Bethlehem, of the Assumption of the Virgin and of Saint Bruno

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monastery of saint barnabas

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novice in the icon studio

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Altar in the home of a Maya family in Chiapas, Mexico

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cover of reliquary with the Crucifixion and inscription of Giorgi, king of Abkhazia, 10th c.

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An Ethiopian Orthodox woman prays at Deir El Sultan in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in Jerusalem’s Old City

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donskoy monastery, moscow

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The Syriac Icon of the Mother of God from Ghighiu Monastery

The Ghighiu Convent is located in the village of Barcăneşti, Prahova County, 44 miles north of Bucharest. The Syriac Icon of the Mother of God arrived to Romania in 1958, brought to Patriarch Justinian by Bishop Vasilios Samaha of Sergiopolis of the Patriarchate of Antioch following a dream in which the Theotokos instructed him to bring the icon, painted on sandalwood in the Syrian school in the 16th century. He presented the icon to the patriarch at Ghighiu Monastery.

Since 1958, many believers have testified that they received quick help, healing, and strengthening of faith after praying to the Mother of God before her holy Syriac Icon.