Wisdom

Why Does God Put Us Through Trials?

God put us through trials so that we finally believe in Himby Vladimir Basenkov –
So that we finally believe in Him.

The unit for measuring faith has not been invented yet, but its value determines the degree and the character of a person’s closeness to God. There are fewer convinced atheists than we think. When asked whether or not they recognize the existence of God, most of your personal respondents will answer in the affirmative, even if they are not Christians or actively practicing representatives of any religion in general.

What kind of God they would bear in their minds and how actively they are growing in the knowledge of Him is another story, which ultimately determines the clarity and depth of faith. [Read more…]

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Cultivate the Spiritual Discipline of Gratitude

Cultivate the Spiritual Discipline of Gratitudeby Fr. Luke A. Veronis –
The spiritual discipline of gratitude helps us to discover life from the perspective of God.

Gratitude as a spiritual discipline. Gratitude as a choice. Let’s think about this. Sometimes, we look at gratitude as a spontaneous response to something someone has done for us. That’s nice. Yet, gratitude as a spiritual discipline means consciously cultivating a spirit of gratitude in all circumstances – for whatever we perceive as good as well as for the blessings we receive even in the midst of difficult, unfortunate or challenging experiences.

Cultivating a spirit of gratitude means opening our hearts to see God’s Presence everywhere in all things and at all times. That’s surely hard to do at times and it may take serious discernment. Yet it is possible. [Read more…]

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Faithfully Connecting with God Leads to a Grace-Filled Christian Life

Faithfully Connecting with God Leads to a Grace-Filled Christian Lifeby Fr. Theodore Stylianopoulos –
Genuine faith is not a theoretical affirmation of the idea of the existence of God but a personal search for God as our loving Father and unfailing hope.

Much of everyday life in our divisive and confused times, which people call modern and post-modern, is marked by disconnectedness. Because of busy schedules and innumerable distractions, not to mention our own evil passions and the social and political problems all around us, a spouse is often disconnected from spouse, a parent from child, a friend from friend, a neighbor from neighbor. Disconnectedness harms families, schools, places of work, communities, nations, and even churches. The worst kind of disconnectedness, and the root cause of all others, is disconnectedness with God.

Christians know God primarily as revealed in the person and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the Orthodox faith, everything in the Church begins and ends with Jesus the Lord. [Read more…]

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All or Nothing – God Can Never Bless Sin or Accept Evil

All or Nothing – God Can Never Bless Sin or Accept Evilby Anthony Esolen –
Not one minute of time, not one millimeter of space, may be devoted to the false god, as if we could declare it off limits from God.

“Ye shall be as gods,” said the serpent. Whitaker Chambers called it the second oldest religion in the world. It has always proved popular. In his time, it took the form of communism. But the tempter is not so stupid as to appear in the same guise always; even human beings eventually get the idea that certain “moral mushrooms” will kill them, and they may even remember it for a few generations. In the meantime, the tempter must peddle something else, must appear as someone else. No trouble there. Mushrooms and mountebanks are always ready to hand.

I am thinking about the characteristic sins of our age. These have to do first or most obviously with the body, but they seep their poison into social relations, economics, medicine, education, law, art, and politics, corrupting them all. If holiness is like a royal dye that ennobles all it touches, sin is like acid. [Read more…]

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Sin Cannot Be Blessed by the Church

Fr Photious Avant Sin Cannot Be Blessed by the Churchby Fr. Photius Avant –
Sin itself, of any variety, cannot be blessed by the Church. It can’t be. Sin is destructive. It is corrosive. It has within it the principle of death, of dissolution.

“Thine they were. Thou gavest them Me and they have kept Thy Word” says the Lord Jesus Christ in His high priestly prayer to the Father (John 17:6). And it is the Word, Jesus Christ Himself, which the Father gave to the apostles, Whom the apostles have kept.

And, it is the Word Jesus Christ Who is defended at the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 325 which we commemorated yesterday. A terrible heresy had disrupted the peace of the Church: the heresy of Arius. Now, he was not the first heretic and certainly not the last. But, heresy, all heresy, is destructive because in changing what we understand about Christ, in changing about what we understand about the Holy Trinity, the end goal gets changed. The goalposts have been moved. [Read more…]

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Living in an Age of Many False Teachers

Fr. Seraphim Rose - Living in an Age of Many False Teachersby Fr. Seraphim Rose –

Never has there been such an age of false teachers as this pitiful twentieth century, so rich in material gadgets and so poor in mind and soul.

Every conceivable opinion, even the most absurd, even those hitherto rejected by the universal consent of all civilized peoples — now has its platform and its own ‘teacher.’

A few of these teachers come with demonstration or promise of ‘spiritual power’ and false miracles, as do some occultists and ‘charismatics’; but most of the contemporary teachers offer no more than a weak concoction of undigested ideas [Read more…]

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The Meaning of Life: Follow Christ, Seek the Holy Spirit, Desire Salvation

The Meaning of Life: Follow Christ, Seek the Holy Spirit, Desire Salvationby Fr. Gabriel (Hieromonk) –
The answer to the question, the meaning of our life, is the Holy Spirit of God being poured out upon us. It is our calling on the name of the Lord and being saved.

Throughout all the ages of human history, mankind has been ceaselessly occupied with a single question: why? What is the meaning of life, what is the purpose of birth and death, of love and of suffering? Why have we appeared in this world which is so full of both beauty and misery? Men and women of every culture and nation, of every philosophy and religion, have sought for countless centuries to find the answer to this question, and still there are those who seek to find it today despite the modern cacophony of triviality which has all but overwhelmed us. [Read more…]

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Faith Gives People True Freedom and Unites Them with God

Patriarch Kirill Faith Gives People True Freedom and Unites Them with GodPatriarch Kirill (Moscow and All Russia) –

A person who believes in God is filled with tremendous power, because knowledge is revealed through faith. Faith brings a person into living contact with the Lord, and everyone who turns to God with faith gains a special life experience said His Holiness Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, in his sermon on February 7, on the 35th Sunday after Pentecost, the feast day of the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.

“All atheistic work aimed at destroying the faith in our country consisted of rationally, relying supposedly on some scientific achievements, proving that there is no God. [Read more…]

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Corruption Must Be Revealed in Order to Overcome the Darkness

Corruption Must Be Revealed in Order to Overcome the Darknessby Fr. Johannes Jacobse –
Be courageous. Don’t fear. Stand on the Rock.

We may be in the stages of a final reveal. Corruption must be revealed to overcome the power of darkness. The darkness is sustained when fear overcomes the heart and mind of man. He loses hope and the necessary constituents that give his life meaning move beyond the horizon. He becomes blind.

Men embrace ideology because they refuse to face the corruption in their own hearts. The ideology confers a false righteousness that avoids the honest appraisal of one’s own heart that is necessary for freedom, and replaces it with a lie. This lie reiterates the lie first whispered in Eden: “You will become like God.” That is how a man becomes blind. [Read more…]

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Pride and Vanity are Most Dangerous Passions

Pride and Vanity are Most Dangerous Passions by Olga Rozhneva –
In the world, pride and self-esteem are sometimes raised almost to the status of virtues or signs of the nobility of one’s nature. This view is erroneous and happens, according to the words of St. Macarius, “out of ignorance or from darkening by the passions.” The elder wrote to a spiritual child:

“In your previous letter you mention your self-esteem more than once and, as if you hold it in high regard, you show it off like some adornment. You need to extirpate it from yourself by all means—it is the cause of all our evil and vices. Worldly people still regard it as a virtue and as nobility, and this is out of ignorance or from darkening by the passions; while we have to oppose it in everything by humility and selflessness.” [Read more…]

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