Hearts And Minds

Let us remember to lean on each other. "A burden shared is half the burden. A joy shared is twice the joy."

The struggle is what we bring to God, only what we bring, because deliverance his His job.

Our Lord's desire is for each of us to have experiences with Him, to be able to say, "My Lord and my God," and to share that experience openly and freely with others.

The purpose of your life is to become by grace what God is by nature.

Fr. John shares his reflections on the priesthood in anticipation of the 2016 Antiochian Archdiocese Clergy Symposium to be held at the Antiochian Village in Bolivar, PA.

Love is too precious, too powerful, and too popular to mean anything we want it to. Instead, love needs definition and contour so that we may know what love is not, just as we may know what love is.

A martyr for Christ is someone who has good reasons to live, but a better reason to die.

God does not always remove the wave, but he does always give us himself.

Why work on ridding ourselves of excuses in this life? So we won't face the consequences of our excuses in the next.

"It's not the size of the crumb that turns it into a miracle; it's whether we can see it as a miracle at all."

We need both truth and love to row through the fog of this world.

An old proverbs says, "When you light a torch for another, you illumine your own path too."

"The soul can not know peace unless she prays for her enemies. If you will pray for your enemies peace will come to you." St. Silouan the Athonite

In Communion we meet the God of love and judgment. Are you ready?

St Gregory Palamas said, "Every argument has a counter-argument, but who can argue against life."

Working together as Christians can be a challenge which is why Fr. John encourages us to examine a maxim that has stood the test of time. In Essentials, Unity. In Non-Essentials, Liberty. In all things, Charity.

How does the Faith proclaim when life begins? It might surprise you and help inform you as some of you go to the polls tomorrow.

In part 3 of his series on same sex marriage, Fr. John reflects on what a civil right is and how that applies to the question of same same unions.

Fr. John sees our sexuality as a gift from the Divine Logos.

As our culture grows more and more accepting of things that trouble us as Orthodox Christians, Fr. John Oliver shares the example of St. Paul to guide our response.