Let us be angels unaware to others There is not one of us who does not meet someone in a given week who is not in need of encouragement, love, and mercy. They are often mothers, whose children are going to bed at night hungry for lack of food money. The old woman whose husband is long gone, and whose…
We must avoid centering on our own needs and desires Self-centeredness keeps us from focusing on the needs and interests of others, and obscures our true nature, as God intended. Pride keeps us from embracing Christ’s way of selfless service to others, even to those who especially need our love and support. Children of such people are deprived of the…
We’ve created a pre-Soviet culture in the United States “What began in Russia will end in America.” ~Elder Ignatius of Harbin, Manchuria Alexander Solzhenitsyn, in his “Godlessness: the First Step to the Gulag”, explained how the Russian revolution and the communist takeover were facilitated by an atheistic mentality that lead to the secularization of Russia, and alienated the people from…
Avoiding hypocrisy in our journey to God It is very easy to live our lives in hypocrisy if we are not mindful of the pitfalls of the spiritual life. We can become Pharisees without even noticing, if we let our Christianity be artificially lived. Living our lives as though we have been rehearsed by a stage director, we will have…
And the demon of dejection Depression is one of the plagues of the modern age, overtaking many with it’s insidious poison, and ravaging many a life. The pain and suffering that comes with deep depression can infect those who surround the sufferer, for the depression of one person can spread like mold on stale bread. Psychiatrists are kept busy writing…
And the injustices perpetrated against the indigenous peoples When the United States purchased the Russian-American Company from the Imperial government of Russia, they were not sold Alaska, as has been claimed, but a Russian company. However, once the American government took control, they subdivided Alaska, considered land owned by the native people by the Russian government, into thirds. Alaska was…
Where the temporal and the eternal are connected We can be rich in liturgical correctness and wealthy in traditions, but if we do not have love and mercy, we are in reality bankrupt. Our Lord Himself made love and mercy the chief criterion whereby we will be judged on the Last Day. The fulfillment of the law is love, not…
The energy of the mind inside the heart In the patristic tradition the heart is the center of our self-awareness. This self-awareness is the energy of the mind inside the heart, something the holy fathers referred to as our “noetic faculty”. There is an important distinction that must be noted concerning the difference between the Western and Eastern understands of…
None can be saved without compassion for others We must not be so self-consumed as to have no compassion for others. Saint Basil tells us that a man who has two coats or two pair of shoes, when his neighbor has none, is a thief. In the Holy Scriptures we read, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,…
The power and influence of good deeds “For it is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men (1 Peter 2:15). Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic tells us in The Prologue from Ochrid that we are better off if we do not engage others in lengthy debates and fruitless discussions, but that we…
The necessity of Christian friendships In this age where secularism is on the rise, and materialism has become a major distraction from spiritual pursuits, Christian friendship has never been more important. The pursuit of personal fulfillment, entertainment, worldly pleasure, and the acquisition of material goods, has become the dominant theme of our age. Families that once placed the life of…
Those occasions when we mature into spiritual adulthood There are those times in our lives when God seems distant, even absent from us. These are usually times when our faith seems weak and we struggle to believe God really cares for us, or perhaps we begin to question whether God even exists. In Western Christian tradition these moments are often…