• Articles,  Holy Fathers,  Lives

    The Sacrifice of Nicola Yanney

    I have always felt that only God truly knows who the saints are until He chooses to reveal them to us, but how does this happen? One way that this happens is through local veneration, which attracts the attention of the regional church. It is my hope that Fr. Nicola Yanney of Nebraska will soon be glorified in this manner. I have a very close relationship with Fr. Nicola. I first heard about him after my godfather had returned from a visit to Fr. Nicola’s church in Kearney, Nebraska. He later took me on a small pilgrimage to Kearney as well. I can still recall the great joy in my…

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    The Point of a Monk

    “They wandered about in sheepkins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented – of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth” (Heb. 11:38-39). The idea that the life of a monk is useless is not uncommon amongst Christians of today. The seeds of such thought can be found in Blessed Augustine’s critiques of certain monastic groups (though he did not attack the monastic life as such), but are mostly to be found in the fruit of the Protestant Reformation in the West. There is decidedly something off when one compares the so-called “Protestant work ethic” with misunderstandings and even…

  • Articles,  Lives,  Martyrs

    An American Saint Faces the Communists

    Bishop Barnabas (Varnava Nastich), was born in Gary, Indiana in 1914. In the nine years he lived there, he gained an outstanding appreciation for our love of freedom. Eventually, he moved to Serbia, from where his parents had come. In Serbia, St. Barnabas worked diligently against the Communists regime and was eventually brought to trial in spite of his position in the Orthodox Church. Here is part of the transcript of his interrogation for allegedly spying for the United States. Try to imagine yourself in the courtroom. ‘Q. What do you have to say? A. All your accusations are inventions and false. I tell you, I am not afraid. You may kill me,…

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    GENERATIONS AND TRUTH

    Generations I can barely count how many times I have muttered to myself about the generations of kids and early twenty-somethings, “These kids don’t care about anything. They’re zombies, zoned-out, beyond apathetic.” But why is this? What has happened to this generation of kids, and why have they demonstrated the apathy and idleness that they are so often accused of? Certainly, every generation is annoyed by the one preceding it. Each new trend or zeitgeist amongst the next generation is viewed as inexplicable or as somehow more self-indulgent and sinful than the ones we ourselves fell into. Those born in the 60’s (like my parents) seemed to me to be…

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    On Spiritual Healing and Legalism

    Many of us come to Orthodoxy broken and wounded – having lived in the world as prodigals outside of the house of God, we indulged in all kinds of sin, went down any and every dead-end searching for something that would point to some kind of meaning. In Orthodoxy we find the healing for these scars and wounds that we have accumulated. Christ the Saviour says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). As a former Seventh-Day Adventist, I was overwhelmed with the excessive legalism inherent to it; when I became a Roman Catholic, there too I felt lost…

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    Beginnings

    “Restless soul this place will never be your home, and if you wanna have it all, you’ve gotta let it all go.” Modern Life Is War, The Outsiders It’s taken me an honest while to see certain things; hopefully one day the picture will be even clearer. Anyways, my name’s Ephraim, and I’m a college kid that lives about twenty minutes south of Memphis, Tennessee. I’m big on reading— particularly the writings of Holy Fathers, the lives of the saints, the Church’s hymnography, philosophy (within the scope of patristics), history and poetry. God allowed me to come into the fold of the Church (and ironically enough, one of His tools to…

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    Leave the Vanity of This World

    The other day, I found these sobering words from St. Feofil, Hieroschemamonk of the Kiev-Caves Lavra. I was completely struck. I wish to share with all readers these same words that affected me so much. May they be a preservation against falling into the vain things of this world, and a sure guide along the narrow path. “Leave the vanity of this world for its wells are useless, they cannot hold within themselves saving water. Yesterday, my eyes saw, my ears heard, my lips spoke, and my body moved. But the spirit of life has left it and what is now before you? And so remember, my friend, to live…

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    Arriving at the Last True Rebellion

     “…Escape from brainwashed minds and pollution. Leave the earth to all its sin and hate, find another world where freedom waits…” -Black Sabbath, Into the Void I was born into brokenness. I have never known the type of family you read about in books or see in movies. My parents were both very young and separated before I took my first breath of air. They were both metal-heads that had no idea what a baby was all about. Drug use, partying, and cranking up the volume on their stereos was life before me. In fact, my first concert was Iron Maiden while still in the womb and most pictures of…

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    From Revolution to Restoration

    When I was quite young, my mother abandoned my younger sister, kid brother and I for a life of Drug Addiction, and just a few years later my father began his new life with his second wife and her children.  Being so young, I could understand very little of what was transpiring, but I did know that I was living in a broken home. The burden of three little ones was thrusted upon my grandparents, and out of the goodness of their hearts, they took it upon themselves to raise us.  Although the situation I grew up in may not seem ideal to some, I thank God every single day…

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    Our Ascent is Unending

    “‘I seek for truth.’  Happy is he who places the accent on the last word: ‘Truth.’  It is far worse with those who proudly emphasize the word ‘seek,’ and are full of vanity because of their position among those continually tending towards truth – ‘Ever learning and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth.'” (2 Tim. 3:7) +Fr. Alexander Yelchaninov, Fragments of a Diary My journey to Orthodox Christianity was, like many, a painful one. Growing up in the sheltered world of Seventh-Day Adventism in a tiny school of 30 kids, I often rejected and rebelled against the evangelicalism of my youth. After my parents split up when I…

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    The Start

    I was not raised in the Christian faith. My mother can take an online quiz and it tells her that she is “a believer.” And to this day, I have no idea what my father believes about religion in general. As a child, I read the nativity story on Christmas as we sat around with extended family. This only happened a few times. And other than that, my early childhood was pretty devoid of religion. I recall dabbling in Fellowship of Christian Athletes when my club wrestling coach discovered Christ and became a born again evangelical. Dabbled. That can pretty much describe my late teens to mid-twenties; in and out of…