If a man lives in sin, away from the Church and its sacrament of confession, his soul becomes burdened with the cumulative weight of his transgressions. Simply put, he feels bad most of the time but doesn’t know why, and continually searches for worldly solutions to relieve his internal pain, guilt, and strife. He does […]
Saint John of Kronstadt was a parish priest who was intensely familiar with interpersonal problems between relatives, neighbors, and friends. In the following passages from My Life In Christ, he describes the Christian way of responding to those who hurt us. Hopefully you are not surprised that he does not advise you to get revenge […]
In 2019, during my road trip across the United States, I visited restaurants all across the country. I noticed that the more gay flags a restaurant had, the tastier its food. How could it be that those who supported the awful act of sodomy make food that I liked the most? The answer is that […]
Saint John Of Kronstadt is a highly esteemed Russian saint and miracle worker who died in the early 20th century. He was a chosen vessel that healed scores of people while foretelling the intense tribulation of the Russian Revolution. His spiritual diary, My Life In Christ, is among the top three Orthodox books I’ve read. […]
There is no greater validation to our ego than for someone to copy our ideas or behaviors. If a man wants to get drunk at a party, he will aggressively convince others to get drunk as well so that his drunkenness is validated and his conscience silenced (i.e., “Since everyone else is doing it, my […]
In the 19th-century book A Hero Of Our Time, Russian author Mikhail Lermontov describes the life of a selfish, nihilistic Casanova who can’t seem to satisfy his itch for adventure and women. The protagonist lived not like a child of God but a beast, and allowed his fallen human nature to hurt others for fun […]
Compared to maintaining an Orthodox relationship (i.e. courtship or marriage), secular relationships are easy. They’re so easy that even I was able to maintain many for varying lengths of time even though I was a narcissistic wretch with not a drop of love in my soul. As long as you are able to pursue various […]
That’s one of the arguments given by revered Orthodox priest Father Josiah Trenham in his book Rock and Sand, which gives a history of Christendom through an Orthodox lens, focusing primarily on the Protestant Reformation and the “fruits” of their dizzying array of denominations. He points out that Catholics are looking more and more like […]
The persecution of Christians is more subtle than in Roman times, when it was absolutely clear that you were being killed for your faith. Satan has become reluctant to send throngs of crowned martyrs into heaven, and has instead refined his strategy to where your persecution garners little attention and ends up looking like “love” […]
Father George Calciu was a saintly Romanian priest who was tortured in Romania’s worst communist prison, Pitesti. He was eventually released and sought asylum in the United States where he gained an understanding of America’s declining spiritual condition. The quotes below are excerpted from the book Father George Calciu— Interviews, Homilies, and Talks. The blasphemy […]