A confusing aspect of our Christian growth is that we can, sometimes even at the same moment, have a very peaceful, godly thought full of love for God and neighbour, and then have a terribly sinful and embarrassingly nasty thought. How can this be? If God is alive in us, how can such terrible thoughts keep appearing in our minds? How do we combat this? One unhelpful way to combat this experience…
Some of the most accessible and practical wisdom from the ancient Christian desert tradition can be found in the letters of Sts. Barsanuphius and John. They lived in Gaza (Palestine) in the early sixth century. Over 800 letters are preserved for us, and in these letters we get an inside look at what spiritual guidance looked like in the desert monasticism of those early years. And although much is different in the…
One of the biggest stumbling blocks many of us in the world face (by “in the world” I mean “not in a monastery”) is that almost all of the Orthodox spiritual advice written in books is written by monastics for monastics. Therefore, a certain amount of discernment is called for, a certain amount of adjustment is needed, a kind of retuning of the material to fit a different key. Those who are…
One of the temptations of being an Orthodox priest and pastor is to present a view of the spiritual life and the ascetic path by which one develops his or her relationship with God in the Church as if it were essentially one thing, as if there were only one way for everyone—and I knew what that way looks like. A lot of the reason for this, in my own experience, has…
Immediately after the Apostle Peter recognizes Jesus as the Christ (something revealed to him from heaven), Peter rebukes Jesus for saying that He must be rejected and killed, (something inspired in Peter by satan). Even the Apostle Peter, even immediately after a heavenly revelation, could not accept that the way we enter into the Father’s Glory, the way we experience the Resurrection, is through suffering and death. Jesus, however, assures us that…
