Fr. Jacobse

Ten Steps to a Better Prayer Life

January 11, 2010January 21, 2025 by Orthodox Editors

OrthodoxyToday | by Fr. Hans Jacobse | Jan. 11, 2010

If you want to improve your prayer life, the time to take action is now. These ideas may seem of little significance, but can help you make leaps and bounds in the intensity and consistency of your prayer.

1. Designate A Prayer Space
Whether it is in the corner of your desk or a little stand in your room, it is important to have a place where you can put your Bible, Icons, etc. Dedicate the use of that space for God alone.

2. Acquire A Time
Incorporate prayer in your routine and set time aside to center your thoughts to God. [Read more…]

The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience

November 23, 2009January 21, 2025 by Orthodox Editors

American Orthodox Institute | by Fr. Johannes Jacobse | Nov. 22, 2009

On November 22, 2009 group of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant leaders unveiled a document called “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience” that affirms the traditional Christian teaching concerning abortion, homosexual marriage, and religious freedom. The Declaration asserts that these three issues (sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, and freedom of worship) are under assault in western Democracies and call Christians into non-violent resistance against the injustices and, if necessary, non-violent non-compliance with the laws that would require a Christian to violate his conscience. (Read full text.)

The Declaration opens:

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are (1) the sanctity of human life, (2) the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and (3) the rights of conscience and religious liberty…We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

[Read more…]

Green Patriarch Bartholomew Embraces Leftist Environmental Agenda

October 23, 2009January 21, 2025 by Orthodox Editors

AOI | by Fr. Johannes Jacobse | Oct. 22, 2009

His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew lost no time ringing the alarmist bell as he officially opened the symposium, “Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River” today.

He said that, “we have reached a defining moment in our history … the point where absolute limits to our survival are being reached … instead of living on income, or the available surplus of the earth, we are consuming environmental capital and destroying its resources as if there is no tomorrow.” [Read more…]

Fr. Johannes Jacobse: Paschal Message 2009

April 20, 2009January 21, 2025 by Orthodox Editors

Christ Resurrection - Pascha Orthodox by Fr. Johannes Jacobse –

Only the Gospel of Christ, the proclamation that Christ is risen from the dead, reveals that death is an enemy destroyed and exposes the nihilistic embrace of death as a lie. The grand schemes of the social engineers who are intoxicated by their own pride and contemptuous of what is good and true, will one day come to nothing. Babel will fall. But until it does, destruction and suffering prevail by their hands.

How does evil flourish? Edmund Burke answered the question this way: When good men do nothing. God enters the world through a word. The Gospel of Christ, when preached with authority and by the Spirit of God, tears down strong places. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places,” writes the Apostle Paul. Truth, spoken into the world of space and time, draws from and reveals Him who is True, and tears down the towers that men build to reach God. [Read more…]

One Word of Truth Outweighs the Whole World

March 30, 2009January 21, 2025 by Orthodox Editors

Alexander Solzhenitsyn Word of Truth OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse | Mar. 28, 2009

When Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn gave his Nobel Lecture in 1970, he quoted this Russian proverb: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

We know Solzhenitsyn’s story. In WWII Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet Army officer who was arrested and sentenced to eight years in the Gulags under Stalin. In prison Christ captures him. The encounter changes him, so much so that he clandestinely wrote the three volume “Gulag Archipelago” that laid bare the moral bankruptcy of Marxism. His work caused the collapse of the Marxist establishment in Western Europe and tilled the intellectual ground that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. [Read more…]

Moral Tradition and the Assault of Gay Activists

November 22, 2008January 21, 2025 by editor-main

OrthodoxyToday.org | Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse | Nov. 24, 2008

It used to be that when the voters settled on something — even twice, the matter was decided. No more. Proposition 8, the bitterly fought constitutional amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman that squeaked by in California recently, needs to be “overturned” — or so the homosexual activists tell us.

Overturn a constitutional amendment? If judges can overturn the amendment, then effectively we have no constitution and we will be governed by the whims of a non-elected judiciary. Say goodbye to the constitutional republic. [Read more…]