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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Don’t Lose Heart in the Troubling Times We Live In

Dont Lose Heart in the Troubling Times We Live Inby Fr. Dimitry Shishkin –
Whatever may happen, we must not succumb to melancholy, but on the contrary, we must resist it with faith, courage and patience

According to statistics, about seventy-five percent of our compatriots [in Russia] were baptized in the Orthodox Church. But the spirit that many of us possess, alas, is far from Christian. This is the spirit of this world with its lack of faith, relaxation and pride.

Now, succumbing to the influence of this spirit, Christians are gradually losing courage, the sense of belonging to the spirit of Christ; and when faced with inevitable problems of life, they begin to grumble, complain and plunge headlong into the abyss of their sufferings. This is also facilitated by the ideology of extreme individualism (which has spread recently), when a person considers himself, his moods and feelings to be the most important thing in life. [Read more…]

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St. Paisios Brotherhood: Orthodox Men’s Group Challenges Men to Recover Authentic Manhood

St. Paisios Brotherhood: Orthodox Men Group Challenges Men to Recover Authentic ManhoodThe Brotherhood of St. Paisios –
The first goal is purity of heart, growth into real manhood, the acquisition of virtue, the strengthening of manly character.

The Brotherhood exists so that we can learn how to become men. Our Lord needs men to be men. Real men will be able to withstand the assaults of the enemy and reveal Truth to the world.

Focus on this men. Don’t be drawn into the illusion that the battle is about polemics. Polemics has a place, sometimes an important place, but the first goal is purity of heart, growth into real manhood, the acquisition of virtue, the strengthening of manly character. [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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“When It’s Safe” in Church Means Never

When It's Safe in Church Means Neverby Fr. Geoffrey Korz –
Kindly set aside the idea that you will return to the holy services “when it’s safe”. That day will never come.

At every liturgy in the Orthodox Church, just before the singing of the Nicene Creed, the priest or the deacon intones the words, “The doors! The doors!” This call dates back to the earliest times, when the doors of the church had to be barred shut, to prevent outsiders (in those days, Roman soldiers) from entering the church, witnessing those who confessed the faith, seizing them, and killing them.

Being a Christian was not safe. [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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It’s Transdelusional Not Transgender

Transdelusional Not Transgenderby Fr. Ioannes Apiarius –
Being transgender is impossible. Humans cannot change their biologically determined sex. There is no such thing as a “transgender man.” There is no such thing as a “transgender woman.” No man can transform himself into a woman. No woman can transform herself into a man. It’s stark raving madness. It’s insanity. It’s delusional, or more accurately, it’s transdelusional.

From the beginning God created us as male and female. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them,” (Genesis 1:28). Our biological sex, male or female, is determined by the X and Y chromosomes. Maleness or femaleness is established when a child is conceived. [Read more…]

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Ten Things to Say When Children Say They Don’t Believe in God Anymore

Things to Say When Children Say They Dont Believe in God Anymoreby Natasha Crain –
I always enjoy talking to parents after speaking and this weekend was no exception. One thing I realized this time was that at every event where I’ve spoken in the last couple of years, there have been parents who share with me afterward that their child has recently said they no longer believe in God. Sometimes the kids are very young, other times they’re well into their adult years. But the question parents bring to me is always the same: “What should I say to them?”

After having a couple of long conversations with parents about this over the weekend, I wanted to write this post for others who may be struggling with the same thing. While this is, of course, a complex topic, these are ten of the most important things I think you can say to a child of any age when they say they don’t believe in God anymore. [Read more…]

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Leftists Denounce Math as Racist

Leftists Denounce Math as Racist Hidden Figuresby Jeff Davidson –
Progressives, BLM advocates, and social justice warriors detect racism, real or not, everywhere they look, particularly in education.

Imagine that a young Isaac Newton, Madame Curie, Henri Poincare, Srinivasa Ramanujan, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, or, for that matter, Pythagoras, Euclid, or Archimedes was newly enrolled in a Portland, Oregon grade School.

Exposed to this state’s absurd edict regarding how math is to be taught – to make it less “white,” and to remove the onus of showing your work and reaching the right answer — would any of them have achieved prominence? Would the world be the same? [Read more…]

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How Do We Keep Our Youth in the Church?

How Do We Keep Our Youth in the Churchby Abbot Tryphon –
We are living in an age that has witnessed changes on a massive scale as never before. The way we communicate has changed with the coming of the internet, with information available that would have required a library and advanced degrees to access in the past. Ideas and information are available that leave our youth with choices that were never available a generation ago.

Moral norms have changed, with values and lifestyles that would have never been seen as acceptable in the past becoming part of mainstream. Gay marriage, the high divorce rate, children being raised by unwed parents, and profane music that sounds like it came from the underworld (which inspired it, I’m sure). Child sexual abuse is reaching shocking numbers, with clergy, boy scout leaders, coaches and police officers under arrest. [Read more…]

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