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The Last Words of St. Nil Sorsky
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, I leave the following will to be executed by my words and brethren who are of the same spirit as myself. I pray you, cast away my body in the desert, to be devoured by the beasts and birds, for that body has greatly sinned before God and is unworthy of burial. If you will not do this, then dig a pit on the grounds where we live and bury me in it with every kind of dishonor. Take heed of the words with which the great Arsenius charged his disciples: ‘I will prosecute you…
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Arguing About God’s Existence
“The following passage is how Fr. George Calciu concludes a story about a time when, imprisoned by the Communists, he asked one of the cruelest guards for a piece of bread to celebrate the Liturgy in his cell. The guard’s jaw dropped at the audacity of the request and he slammed the door… only to return a while later to silently slip him the requested bread. Fr. George concludes: ‘So you can see the miracle. I did not ask God to make the miracle for me. The most important miracle that God performed during my imprisonment was a miracle of the heart: not breaking the doors, not setting me free,…
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Apathy Epidemic
“Rouse thyself, thou who sleepest, and rise from the dead, and the Christ shall shine on thee.” +St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (5:14) Too often do we become diverted in the cares of mass and social media, teleporting through computer mainframes and cellular devises to a land sadistically bent on self-worship. It seems these days that at birth we are plugged into a computer grid of ever-distracting chaos, gazing on a vacant throne only occupied by phantoms of our own fantasies. This is something that has been talked about over the last few decades throughout academia and scattered across millions of blogs. We are loosing ourselves in distraction, letting…
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Should We Hope That Men Be Damned?
“…This is the way we should see Christ. He is our friend, our brother; He is whatever is good and beautiful. He is everything. Yet, He is still a friend and He shouts it out, “You’re my friends, don’t you understand that? We’re brothers. I’m not…I don’t hold hell in my hands. I am not threatening you. I love you. I want you to enjoy life together with me.” – +St. Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia “…we, if we wish to retain grace, must pray for our enemies. If you do not find pity on a sinner who will suffer in flames, then you do not carry the grace of the Holy…
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It’s Easy to Give Up and Give In
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” – 1 Corinthians 2:9 “Such is the message of the Cross to each one of us. However far I have to travel through that valley of the shadow of death, I am never alone.” +Metropolitan Kallistos Ware Much of my young adult life has been a deep struggle with depression. One wouldn’t be too far amiss to say it is virtually a plague in today’s world; in fact, most people I know suffer from some form of anxiety, depression or other form of mental anguish.…
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Love Moves: The Life of St. John the Wonderworker
Take a listen to an excellent podcast on The Arena by guest speaker Fr. Irenei Steenburg about Saint John of San Francisco! “Loving God Without Fear” is a free three-part lecture series by Father Irenei (Steenberg), Ph.D., author of “The Beginnings of a Life of Prayer.” Father Irenei, a onetime fellow of Oxford University and Chair of Theology and Religious Studies at Leeds in the United Kingdom, is currently director of the Ss. Cyril and Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies and an Archimandrite in the Western American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church in America. This is part two.” http://audio.ancientfaith.com/thearena/20141206_Lecture.mp3 (Audio curtesy of Ancient Faith Radio)
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Dying to the World on Vashon Island
What I had pictured as a peaceful and anticipatory trip to All-Merciful Saviour Monastery on Vashon Island was quickly thrown right out the window. My head in a bag for the first half of the trip, I found myself sorely seasick beyond measure as the Victoria Clipper bounced across the violent waves to Seattle. I had been told that the devil often did whatever he could to foil a pilgrim’s trip to such places, but I had never expected this. Needless to say, the sight of Abbot Tryphon waiting for me just outside the ferry terminal was a sight for sore eyes. I went to the monastery, to tear a…
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Fear Not Little Flock
To choose Orthodox Christianity here in North America is to immediately place oneself apart from the majority. I learned this firsthand the other night when I went to the local gathering of Christians at the pub known as Theology on Tap – an event where one could discuss theology and faith over a pint in a semi-organized fashion. The uncomfortable part was that I was the only Orthodox Christian present; all the rest (62 in total!) were Roman Catholics. Add to this the awkward fact of my being a former Roman Catholic, and the feeling of being alone set in rather heavily. However, it gave me some real food for…
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ANTITHEISM IN MY LIFE, PART 2
“I find no peace and I am not at war, I fear and hope, and burn and I am ice; I fly above the heavens, and lie on earth, and I grasp nothing and embrace the world.” – Petrarch In my view, the world was dying. The sheltered Seventh-Day Adventist apocalyptic bubble of my childhood to the liberalized evangelical flirtations of my early youth offered me nothing. When my world was shattered at 16 when my parents split, God seemed completely absent. As I got older, suddenly everyone seemed to be dying around me. My parents were absent – one had moved halfway across the country, and one was on…
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ANTITHEISM IN MY LIFE, PART 1
“The entire devil is found here: in the desire to exclude God, in the desire to always be by himself, to always belong only to himself, to be entirely within himself and always for himself, to be forever hermetically sealed in opposition to God and everything that belongs to God.” + St. Justin Popovich I was never an atheist. I could not, no matter how hard I tried, disbelieve in God. I have always believed, to the point where God’s existence seemed to me to be simple fact (this often contributed to my complete confusion regarding how one could be an atheist at all). This kind of faith can be…
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Last Men Standing
As a former Roman Catholic, I used to always view the Orthodox with a kind of annoyance at what I termed their “crankiness”, their “stubborn nature.” I used to say to myself in frustration, “if they would only stop being so thorny towards us, maybe we could have unity” (this was a justification for myself really, as I was supremely drawn to the Orthodox Church for a long time). As I surveyed the writings of some of the Saints, I became increasingly irritated at their criticisms of us Roman Catholics, and in my mind, I formed a crude caricature of the Orthodox as simply a bunch of old cranks sitting…
