Author: Fr. Joshua Makoul

Fr. Joshua Makoul has been serving as the Dean of St. George Cathedral in Pittsburgh since 2012. Before that time, Fr. Joshua worked in the Counseling Field for 16 years. This involved work in a family-based, school-based, and an outpatient setting. Fr. Joshua received two years of training in family therapy at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Center and completed a one year certificate course in Cognitive Behavior Therapy at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. During his last six years working in a small outpatient group, he was supervised by Dr. Jesus Salas who supervises at the Beck Institute in Philadelphia. Fr. Joshua received his Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia and his Bachelors in Psychology from Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA. He is licensed in the state of Pennsylvania for counseling. For seminary he attended Holy Cross Seminary in Boston and received an M.Div.

Surviving the Pandemic: Escaping the Mirkwood Forest of our Age

· Fr. Joshua Makoul
We find ourselves in curious times. If we use just a bit of awareness and that proverbial lifting up of our head when out and about, we can detect some shifts in the social and emotional fabric of our society. Some things have changed and indeed something is off. We can see evidence of this in the faces of the many people we see in public, in changes in driving habits, in people’s resistance to looking at each other or interacting with each other in public, in increasing erratic decision making in others, and overall, a sense of agitation, estrangement, and just feeling miserable. Many are tired and burned out; as though they are holding in a massive amount of…

A Nativity Musing: The Inescapability of our Need for Love

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If there is one resilient and God given aspect of us that has remained intact throughout history and time, it is our innate desire to love and be loved. At our core we want to belong. We want to be loved and needed. Safety has also always been important for us. We like to feel safe. No matter how ugly or disturbing the world becomes, no matter who we are, this innate yearning for love and safety holds true. Perhaps the real tragedy is when this innate urge and desire becomes buried under layers of hurt, alienation, anger, and fear. When this occurs, the one who just wanted to be loved like everyone else, can become the stereotypical difficult person.…

On the Road from Jerusalem to Damascus: Navigating Life-Stages Peacefully

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This past Sunday allowed us a final liturgical meditation on the cross before the Leave-taking of the Elevation of the Holy Cross.  The presence, existence, and image of the cross measures our attachment to this world. It is indeed a measuring stick. When we see the cross, do we feel indifferent, or do we yearn for something more than this world? Perhaps there was a time when we were sitting in traffic, and we caught a glimpse of a cross sitting high on top of a church. Did it for a moment, pull us from this world and towards the Kingdom of God? The epistle and gospel reading this past Sunday were both about attachment. They were about attachment and…

A Heroic Transfiguration: Becoming Vessels of Healing

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Each of us takes a different approach to resolving the unresolved. There is such a wide spectrum of responses to the experiences in our lives that have left a painful mark on us. The following is by no means a criticism of any of the approaches that each one of us takes. Each of us decides on our own what is best for us. If we were to explore the many responses people have to their experiences, we might approach them by placing them on a spectrum.  On one end of the spectrum, we would see examples of lives where there is no awareness of how events affected them, however the effects of those events are everywhere in their lives,…

The Forward Leaning Life: Sails Up in the Pursuit of Peace

· Fr. Joshua Makoul
It is good to pause and reflect on what spirit or disposition we engage our daily life. Have we been living reactively or proactively? Each one has profound ramifications for our emotional, spiritual, and physical health. When we are living life reactively, it means that our default daily functioning tends to be living life proverbially on our heels. We never feel that we have a firm footing in our lives. We seem always be in the process of responding to something unexpected or not planned. We feel at the mercy of the powers of this worldly life and at the beck and call of others.  It can even reach a point where we feel that everything that we do, we…

Putting our Finger to the Wind: Mastering Pandemic Fear

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Many of us might remember that expression, “a finger to the wind”.  It is something someone would do to get a sense of which direction the wind was blowing. It would help the individual be informed so they could make the best decisions moving forward. It is not an act to be taken lightly and it has great meaning. It is a sign of being deliberate and prepared.  Clearly, there is much more meaning figuratively to that expression. All of us, hopefully, have attempted to gain a sense of which way something is going before making a decision. The alternative is to disregard the direction of the wind and allow ourselves to be swept up by the wind and carried…

Finding Balance in the Post-Pandemic World

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In this world there seems to be so many forces at work. These forces seem to push and pull at us. It can be difficult to find our footing so to speak. We all lose our balance sometimes, but hopefully we gain our composure and rebalance ourselves in a short time. Finding balance in this world can be elusive. Yet balance is critical for the Orthodox spiritual life. The Orthodox phronema or mindset is steeped in balance. Even now as we navigate ourselves out of the pandemic, one can sense subtle currents acting on us, perhaps nudging us in certain directions. To some the pandemic is over and to others it is very much alive due to variants and potential…

Exiting the Pandemic: Why don’t I recognize this life?

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What a fascinating time we find ourselves in presently. It seems the pandemic is rapidly drawing to a close, as states lift restrictions and even the mask mandates. For the first time, many of us are feeling and seeing the first signs of “normal” re-emerging into our lives. Perhaps it was the feeling of air hitting our faces as we walked into a store for the first time without a mask, the first indoor school event in over a year, the first coffee hour at church, or even the resumption of hugs and handshakes.  In the past week, my family and I attended an event at the local high school. After the event, parents gathered on the athletic field to…

How We Relate with Ourselves: An Often Overlooked Area of Our Spiritual Life

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We are often encouraged to reflect on and be mindful of how we relate to and treat others. We also, quite naturally, are very mindful of how others treat us. However, we very often pay little attention to how we relate with ourselves or how we treat ourselves.  This aspect of our spiritual lives is almost entirely overlooked. Some of us might have an aversion to being mindful of how we relate with ourselves. Perhaps it conjures up fears of being ego-centric or self-focused. However, as we shall see, making sure we are relating with ourselves as Christ would want us to, has huge ramifications for all areas of our spiritual life. First, let us start with the question, “what…

When Our Children Need Help: Giving the Generational Gift

· Fr. Joshua Makoul
Parenting is never perfect. Most of us yearn and deeply desire to meet all the needs of our children. This weighs on every well-intentioned parent. We often feel enormous pressure to be able to meet their needs physically and spiritually. We would also say emotionally, however so long as we imitate Christ in our parenting, all of our children’s emotional needs will be met. As we watch our children grow, it stirs up so much in us. We see ourselves in them, we have constant reminders of our own childhoods, and we often reflect on what aspects of our upbringing we want them to experience and which aspects we do not want them to experience. We keep an ever-watchful eye…