#50 Fr Aleksandr Groves | Orthodoxy reveals our true humanity

Please support or subscribe to help us raise funds to buy our new Church Building - https://www.buzzsprout.com/2429544/subscribeWe are an Orthodox Church in St Leonard's-on-Sea, Hastings in Albany Road. Check out the awesome Bed and Breakfast run by Fr Aleksandr and Paul - St Benedict - Victorian Bed and Breakfast, Hastings (updated prices 2026)Join the Jarvah Founders Club and get a discount on Biltong for a whole year! https://www.jarvahbiltong.com/jarvah-founder-s-pageSomething strange happens when you step into an Orthodox church: the room is full, yet nobody is performing for anybody else. Attention stops being stolen and starts being trained. We’re joined by our own Father Alexander Groves to talk about Orthodox Christianity as the work of becoming fully human. We dig into why the Orthodox life involves effort and sacrifice, why that struggle is worth it, and how the Church heals us through prayer, confession, and the Eucharist. Father Alexander also shares his personal journey from an Anglican choirboy with a sense of vocation, to a Church of England priest, to Roman Catholic lay life, and finally to what he describes as a joyful homecoming into the Orthodox Church. We go deep on Russian Orthodoxy, not as an idea but as lived history: the persecution under communism, the witness of martyrs, and the quiet heroism of grandparents who kept the faith alive when the state tried to crush it. From there we turn to the saints, veneration, and the startling closeness of holiness, including Father Alexander’s own patron, Saint Alexander of Svir, and the story of relics rediscovered after 1989. Finally, we bring it home to Hastings and St Leonards in East Sussex: a tiny chapel built on a sliver of land, a growing parish, and the surprising chain of events that led to renting a larger building while we work towards buying it, including a visit from the myrrh-streaming Hawaiian icon of the Mother of God. If you care about Orthodox liturgy, Christian tradition, spiritual discipline, and building a real local community, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave us a review so more people can find the Sunny Banana.Drop us a lineSupport the show