Love and Sin
“The Fathers of the Church tell us to hate the sin, not the sinner. They tell us to refuse to sin ourselves, and to understand that the...
Happiness
“Happiness is the state of a calm, joyful, and cheerful soul, and only a man with a clear conscience can experience it. If a man’s heart...
Falling Down and Getting Up
“…there’s no reason to be depressed by your shortcomings or discouraged when you fall. Repentance as a lifestyle doesn’t mean that you...
Attention and Distraction
“St. Peter — always the most zealous of the disciples — then made an extremely bold reply: “Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee on...
Loving or Hating
“It’s important to understand that when early Christians talked about love, they didn’t just mean a feeling. Their idea of love was...
Obedience (and Trust and Knowing God)
“We all have the experience of falling into our familiar sins again and again. Instead of being disheartened to the point that we no...
Obedience (and Stillness)
“As Holy Scripture records, “Noah did according to all the Lord God commanded him” (Gn 6:22), never uttering a word of reply to God....
Hunger
“All of us are born into this world with a deep and insatiable longing for Paradise. Perhaps we are not even aware of it. Most of us bury...
Utopia
“Throughout human history, the existence of evil spirits has been something so obvious that it is practically a universal constant across...
Blame
“St. John Chrysostom writes an encomium of Abraham, pointing out that nothing in his life prepared him for such faithfulness to God. For,...