Author: Hieromonk Gabriel

The Perfect Law of Liberty

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Freedom and the Gospel Commandments I wrote several week ago about the salvific and life-giving nature of the Gospel commandments. I argued that those who would dispense with them out of a misguided sense of compassion for modern man are in fact dispensing with the very medicine by which modern man can and must be healed. So often we view the commandments as burdensome rather than as therapeutic, as obligations rather than…

The Unknown God

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I would like to begin by telling two stories. The first is a story from the life of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos (in the story, Fr. Sophrony of Essex is the narrator and St. Silouan is the Staretz): I remember a conversation he had with a certain Archimandrite who was engaged in missionary work. This Archimandrite thought highly of the Staretz and many a time went to see him during his…

Truth, Compassion, and the Transgender Movement

· Hieromonk Gabriel
The Atlantic recently published a front page article about kids with gender dysphoria. Among other things, the article tells the story of so-called “detransitioners”: people who at one time considered themselves to be transgender and decided to “transition”, but later regretted that decision and attempted to transition back. In some cases, however, the surgical and/or hormonal procedures which they had undergone proved to be tragically irreversible. The article itself is far from…

Against Modern Legalism

· Hieromonk Gabriel
For all of its godlessness, this modern age hungers more than any other for love, compassion, and mercy. It hungers too for God (though often without realizing it), perhaps all the more strongly since no other age has banished Him more thoroughly from all its affairs. Yet so many modern people think of the God of the Bible as a vengeful, wrathful, angry deity, a god of hellfire and brimstone, a god…

Ye Shall Be As Gods

· Hieromonk Gabriel
I wrote several days ago that lawlessness is the defining characteristic of both Antichristianity and the modern world. The Antichrist is described by St. Paul as “that lawless one,” and without any doubt at the heart of the modern era is Revolution: the unprecedented systematic overthrow of all traditional political, moral, and spiritual authority. Yet it is clear that the “mystery of lawlessness” means far more than mere anarchy. Although raw and…

Mental Illness and Childhood

· Hieromonk Gabriel
Matt Walsh has written a very insightful article about the recent meteoric rise in the number of ADHD diagnoses in school-aged children. Children are being diagnosed — and consequently are being prescribed powerful psychiatric medications — at ever higher rates and at ever younger ages. On what basis are these diagnoses being made? Walsh has a hypothesis: Well, the National Institute of Mental Health offers a clue (emphasis mine): People who have ADHD have combinations…

The Rise of Antichristianity

· Hieromonk Gabriel
For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed… II Thessalonians 2:7-8 I wrote that this site is intended, in the words of Fr. Seraphim Rose, “to give one a perspective on those things which are happening in the world today which we come across in our daily experience, every…

The Pursuit of Happiness

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The New York times recently published an article about how to tell if you are gay, bisexual, transgender, etc. It included the usual hash of self-contradictory talking points, beginning with the assertion that LGBTQ feelings are completely normal, and then proceeding directly to an all-out attack on the idea that there can be any such thing as “normal” in the realm of sex or gender at all. But buried underneath all the…

On Political Philosophy, Fairy Tales, and the Spiritual Life

· Hieromonk Gabriel
It might, at first glance, seem strange that I spend so much time writing about political philosophy and propaganda on a site dedicated to Orthodoxy and the spiritual life. It might seem even stranger given the fact that I am a monk, and claim to have renounced the world. Why should I concern myself at all with political philosophy, much less write articles on the internet trying to convince others of my…

Making Saints: Toward Establishing Orthodox Schools

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The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions, but to destroy the capacity to form any conviction. -Hannah Arendt I’ve been writing a lot about Orthodoxy and education lately. However, I have as yet done little more than to point out the utter travesty which modern public education has become, as well as to emphasize the dire necessity of founding Orthodox schools for our children. Providentially, a friend forwarded me a…