Acquiring righteousness is not a part time job Teachers and parents routinely remind children of the importance of refraining from giving in to peer pressure, knowing that good behavior can often be undermined by the desire to fit in with their friends and school mates. We adults need to remember
Your closest and most intimate friend is yourself If you have never learned to accept and love yourself, you will never be able to love another person. If you don’t learn to forgive yourself, you will never be able to forgive another person. You must learn to be your own
The capacity to forgive and the capacity to love The capacity to forgive is directly related to the capacity to love, and it is in our act of forgiving others, that we find forgiveness. For it is in the turning away from our own self-concern, and our own self-will,
The importance of confidentiality between the confessor and penitent The Seal of Confession is a hard and fast rule throughout the history of the Orthodox Church. Since the priest, in Orthodox theology, is but a witness to the confession, since the confession is made to Christ Himself, confidentiality is an absolute
Also known as the Feast of Lights The Feast of the Holy Theophany of our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ is celebrated each year on January 6 (19th according to the Julian Calendar). The Feast commemorates the Baptism of Christ and the divine revelation of the Holy Trinity. At
The declining numbers of avowed Christians A recent survey, carried out by a team from Lancaster University in England, showed that the number of people who consider themselves non-religious is rising with each generation. Among the over-60s of all races, there are nearly twice as many Christians as non-religious respondents
Those occasions when we can mature into spiritual adulthood There are those times in our lives when God seems distant, even absent from us. These are usually times when our faith seems weak and we struggle to believe God really cares for us, or perhaps we begin to question whether
When prayer becomes dry and lifeless When we find ourselves struggling with prayer, and feel that it has become dry and lifeless, we are sometimes tempted to stop praying. When our prayer has become a struggle, it is good to remember that God knows our needs, and even knows what
The most arduous of all ascetic practices St Gregory of Sinai spoke of the effort involved in prayer, when he wrote, “No bodily or spiritual activity without pain or toil ever brings fruit to him who practices it, because ‘the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it
Accuse ourselves, blame ourselves, judge ourselves We see people’s sins, but we don’t know whether they have made peace with God. We don’t know if the person who has sinned regrets it, but we are not called to judge them, but only to forgive them. As we become aware of