Praying in the Rain

Compunction can guide what we do and say.

"The grace of God is not in the man who does not love his enemies."

It is time for a public confession from the chief hypocrite.

The movement of thoughts in a man originates from four causes.

Someone recently asked me about how to understand the evil thoughts they experience.

What will we finally say when death visits us - and not for coffee?

One of the problems with vainglory, according to St. Isaac the Syrian, is that “it hands that person over to” either fornication or pride. But before we can talk about how vainglory hands one over to either fornication or pride, we need to understand what vainglory is. Nowadays the word vain means to have a high opinion of oneself, but that is not what it originally meant, nor what it means in the...

There is strength in humility.

"How could God let his representatives get away with such things?"

We live in a generation that has been taught to tie their personal identity to their imagined sexual preferences. Consequently, it is difficult to help people who struggle with sexual passions to find hope and repentance. However, the teaching of holy fathers such as St. Isaac the Syrian and St. Barsanuphius of Gaza provide a very helpful alternative to the world’s way of thinking about such passi...

"We have to read with discernment and humility."

Just about any discipline that has to do with the body, if you really think that discipline is important, is mostly just a matter of making yourself do it; but forgiveness is not merely a bodily matter. Forgiveness is a matter of the soul, of the heart. Forgiveness is not so easy. On its most basic level, forgiveness means that you will not seek revenge. It means that you are letting go of your ri...

Is there a difference between men and women in regard to theosis? Short answer: No. Long answer: Every human being is unique. Gender is part of that uniqueness.

Acknowledging the ugliness in our heart is like taking out the garbage. When we pretend it’s not there, it doesn’t go away. It just festers. But when we confess our sin by acknowledging before God the ugliness of our heart, a ray of light shines there and we take a step toward healing.

For those of us who are still working on getting that first few rows of stones around the foundation of faith, focusing on acquiring a little bit of every virtue helps us to keep picking up the stone (of virtue) that is needed at a given moment and putting it down at the correct place in our spiritual house. Baby steps for baby Christians. May God grant that we are all found to be children in His...

Just as surely as there is a time of sowing, there is a time of reaping. God changes us and touches the hearts of others through our prayers, our giving and our service to others. Seeds become trees and trees change the environment. Sowing is hard. Trees grow slowly, almost imperceptibly. It requires faith and often tears.

The work of the Holy Spirit in our lives always takes place on two levels, both on the level of what is outside us or what comes to us, and on the level of what is within us or how we receive what comes to us.

Fr. Michael Gillis answers the question of “how to overcome thoughts of pride in our hearts that inevitably come after labouring on good works for our families and people around us.”

Fr. Michael Gillis reflects on the life and writings of 20th century Catholic author, Flannery O’Connor. "Good in this broken world is always something under construction. The grotesque—physical, moral and spiritual—that presents itself to us as the terribly deformed face of a cancer ridden child very often hides from us the Grace of God at work constructing good in that person’s life. How many pe...

Fr. Michael examines Jesus's exhortation to "take heed that you do not despise the little ones."

Fr. Michael talks about the difference between inwardly-focused spiritual zeal and outwardly-focused emotional zeal.

In St. Paul’s famous passage about spiritual warfare in 2 Corinthians 10, he specifically mentions arguments as one of the high things that must be cast down because they exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. Arguments, St. Paul tells us, along with every other “high thing” must be brought into obedience to Christ. Forcing myself to turn away from the argument in my mind and to return to...

To begin with, we must remind ourselves that salvation is a mystery, and that discerning principles and rules in the scriptures and self consciously applying them to ourselves is no guarantee that we will find salvation. In fact, it seems that this approach to seeking to discover and apply the correct formula or law to his life is exactly the approach used by the ruler who fails to find salvation.

Fear and anger, however, seem to trump common sense and faith in God. Fear and anger open in us a floodgate of animal passions making it seem appropriate to demonize (or de-humanize) those we disagree with. Fear and anger release our inner muskox ready to trample those who are less clear thinking than we are, less concerned for liberty or the common good than we are, less eager to create a just an...

Self-importance is a tricky disease to diagnose, not in others, but in oneself. The problem lies in the fact that often (but not always) those who suffer from the spiritual sickness of self-importance are in positions that are actually important. Those of us who teach and/or lead in the Church or in politics or in education or in medicine or in business are indeed in positions of importance. Howev...