Spiritual words
 

Prepare your soul for eternity, don’t leave it for tomorrow

Sit and wonder whether you loved justice and hated transgression as something ugly, pointless, that keeps you away from God and leads you into perdition.

Where is love, there is endurance

Purifying love

The innocent forgives the guilty

Not the guilty forgives the innocent, because he no longer thinks reasonably. But you, which are innocent, should forgive the guilty and ask for his forgiveness. 

Saint Luke the Surgeon and Saint Ephraim in the Operating Room

”In 2004, I was operated on for a brain tumor. After three and a half years, it appeared again. I visited plenty of doctors, but none would agree to operate on me. I was very depressed and disappointed. Ultimately, I found a doctor who agreed to dare to try this difficult intervention. My relatives told me to go venerate St. Luke, who was a physician, and that he would help me, like he helped the others.”

The Will of God

We must always pray, so that the Lord will tell us what we must do, and the Lord will not leave us in confusion. Adam was unwise not to ask the Lord about the fruit brought to him by Eve, and so lost Eden. David did not ask the Lord, "will it be good if I take for myself the wife of Uriah?" and so fell into the sins of murder and adultery. And so all the saints who have sinned, sinned because they did not call upon God for help and spiritual guidance. Saint Serafim of Sarov once said, "When I spoke of my own mind, I made mistakes."

The Challenge of Raising Children in the 21st Century

Orthodox Christian parents cannot afford to be wimps. We need to take the authority of an abbot in our little monasteries, providing our children with spiritual formation bathed in the tradition of the church. This requires courage and mental fortitude, being able to withstand our children's anger at times, and determination to stand against the current tide.

“You should go light a big candle!”

“My Saint Ephraim, I don’t know who you are. It is the first time I’ve heard your name…” I entreated him with a lot of faith, me the sinner, to make my husband well. After two hours, as I was in the hall crying so my husband wouldn’t understand anything, I see the doctor go again into my husband and after a short time come out again. As soon as he saw me crying, he said: “Why are you crying? I just saw your husband and he’s on the way up!”

The Authenticity of Orthodoxy in a Post-Modern World

Orthodox Christians in America are living in a very challenging era, yet at the same time are living in the most exciting age of the Church. Americans have been blessed with the appearance of the Orthodox Church and its appearance couldn’t have come at a better time.

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