Before being received into the Church, I was searching for a patron Saint. I met a monk named Arsenios in a monastery in Halkidiki, Greece. He had a profound effect on me and also gifted me the life of St Arsenios the Cappadocian book and an icon - at the time I had no idea who he was. However after my meeting with the monk and reading of his life, it was clear that God was pointing me to Saint Arsenios. ☦️
Thanks for the upload father, I love the new format and I hope to see more videos about the lives of the saints. I also appreciated the clips you used of the Protestants, it got a laugh out of me haha. God bless you and your family!
All my videos will be pretty consistent with using better editing (keeps it interesting) and I will also be using this format as whole in terms of lives of saints. It’ll be a little late but I’ll have one on St Sergius of Radonezh coming out soon
God bless you father, and your family, for your Orthodox sermons. Ex- Protestants like yourself, together with father Josiah Trenham, father Peter Heers, Abbot Tychon, father Spyridon, the blessed Kallistos Ware, all of you have given us born in Orthodoxy, through your evangelism, the urge to strive harder, to pray more, to remain closer to Christ, through His Grace, closer through participation in the life- giving holy sacraments. You are all in our prayers.
I realized, father, that for me its easier to kinda ask those saints, who i see their real photo of. I don't like that about me. Well.. there is one exception. st. Maria of Egypt.
Photographs are good. Icons are better because they peel back the layer of raw materiality and allow us to peer into the spiritual and physical reality of God’s grace.
Father bless: Are we allowed to pray for heretics, heathens, unbelievers etc? I heard conflicting views..I've always wondered this, especially with what's going on in the middle east now. Thanks you Father
Hello yes we can pray for them. There are liturgical prayers and specific prayers for them that we cannot. For example we can’t pray the orthodox prayers for the departed for non-orthodox and we can’t use any prayers that would refer to them as servants of God if they’re not in the Church. We can’t offer molebens or panikhidas for them either. But you can most certainly pray for peace and that God would have mercy on them according to His great mercy
