Recently a Presbytera (that's what we call the wife of the priest) passed away after a heroic struggle with breast cancer. This woman was a young woman with a husband and 17 year old daughter who struggled with their mother for the years she battled this illness. I knew...
"We have an eye witness." Well, that got his attention. You see I was helping with an investigation with a recent spate of home burglaries in the area and we had caught a suspect in one of the neighborhoods where this was happening. This young man had been very...
"But, how does it work?" That was the question burning in my mind as a young, curious, typical pre-teen boy. So, I did what any normal kid would do. I took the clock apart! Still didn't get my question answered because I didn't understand the concept of the gears...
Friedrich Nietzsche declared "Faith means not wanting to know what is true." And Fr. Seraphim Rose responds: “Atheism, true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling...
If you have a younger sibling then you've heard this before: "She did it! Why can't I?" I know I've heard it in my house on numerous occasions, especially when the younger kiddo wonders out loud "What about me?" But sometimes (actually, many times) the younger child isn't developmentally ready...
Faith Encouraged is launching our "100 Campaign" today! We want to reach our goal of 100 sustaining donors in the next month. YOU can help! Please visit our Patreon page to donate. https://www.patreon.com/FaithEncouraged As little as $5 a month can help us grow our outreach and help our Church fulfill the...
When I think of our requests we make of God, I find my own requests break down into a few categories - Personal needs, Family concerns, Parish concerns, and Hopes and Fears. But one of the blessings of being Orthodox is that the wise prayers preserved in the Faith cause...
Welcome to the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church are meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! I know this...
Everybody else was squirming. They were obviously having a hard time with the information and seemed to rather have been elsewhere. But I was at peace. It just made sense to me, I guess. Some of you know the story of how I entered the Orthodox Church. I was a...
Alexandre Solzhenitsyn once said "We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap." I wish I had learned this earlier in my life. I would have avoided some painful idolatries. But we humans are slow learners. And over and over again we come to the end of what we...
