Chief of Sinners ☦️🎷📚

“Oh, fear the LORD, you His saints! There is no want to those who fear Him” (Psalm 34:9). Holy fear cures the soul of lesser tyrannies. When God is feared rightly, other fears begin to shrink into their proper size before the Almighty.

Why do I delight in God's Law? Because it tells me how to love God and neighbor. theorthodoxscribe.substack.c…

"In the immense cathedral which is the universe of God, each man, whether scholar or manual laborer, is called to act as the priest of his whole life—to take all that is human, and to turn it into an offering and a hymn of glory." ~Paul Evdokimov Rating: 5⭐️

"'Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you' (Jas 4.8). It is for us to begin. If we take one step towards the Lord, he takes ten towards us—he who saw the prodigal son while he was yet at a distance, and had compassion and ran and embraced him." ~Tito Colliander

If the Church is a body, it necessarily follows that she has a mind. If the Church is the family of God, it necessarily follows that she has Tradition, which not even godless families go without.

"Certainly God is able to save those who have never been baptized. But while God is not bound to the sacraments, we are bound to them." ~Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 152

"Ignorance and sin are characteristics of isolated individuals. Only in the unity of the Church do we find these defects overcome. Man finds his true self in the Church alone; not in the helplessness of spiritual isolation but in the strength of his communion with his brothers and his Savior." ~Fr Alexander Elchaninov

"No one is saved alone. He who is saved is saved in the Church, as a member of her and in union with all her other members. If anyone believes, he is in the communion of faith; if he loves, he is in the communion of love; if he prays, he is in the communion of prayer." ~Aleksei Khomiakov

"There is no life without prayer. Without prayer there is only madness and horror. The soul of Orthodoxy consists in the gift of prayer." ~Vasilii Rozanov

My autism trying to decide if I should make dinner or keep reading.

"The Lord lives among people who love peace, for peace is truly dear to Him, but He keeps His distance from the quarrelsome" (The Shepherd of Hermas 109.2). "One who has violated the love of Christ by faithless dissension cannot attain to the reward of a Christ who said, 'This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you' [John 15:12]" (Cyprian, The Unity of the Catholic Church §14). "Abba Didymus of Alexandria declared, 'If you would walk in the life of excellence and in the love of God, remove yourself from contention'" (The Histories of Holy Men, by Palladius 1.2). "Those who strive to live the Christian life with great zeal must above all else develop with greatest care their soul's faculty of understanding and discerning so that, having acquired an exact discernment between good and evil, always distinguishing those things with which nature has been unnaturally tainted, we may conduct ourselves properly and without offense" (Pseudo-Macarius, The Fifty Spiritual Homilies 4.1).

"In the immense cathedral which is the universe of God, each man, whether scholar or manual laborer, is called to act as the priest of his whole life—to take all that is human, and to turn it into an offering and a hymn of glory." ~Paul Evdokimov

"It has truly been said that there was a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted outside Jerusalem; and though the cross of wood has been taken down, the cross in God's heart still remains." ~Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, p. 89

A haiku on the most quintessential human delusion. theorthodoxscribe.substack.c…

"The purer the heart becomes, the larger it becomes." ~St John of Kronstadt

The passion of ambition—love of power, to be first—can unleash a force of murderous intent. Review incoming at theorthodoxscribe.substack.c… Rating: 5⭐️

Whereas Magnus flees the mortal world, Christ enters it so that the world may be transfigured in Him. theorthodoxscribe.substack.c…

BOOK REVIEW: "Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get back home" (p. 423). It took me a whole-ass month to read this enormous book (1,296 pages), having started it in the spirit of my favorite holiday: Halloween. Essentially, a super-flu virus wipes out 99% of the population, and people of two opposing spirits attempt to rebuild society: One belongs to a peaceful, 108-year-old black woman named Mother Abagail, and the other belongs to a nefarious man named Randall Flagg, also known as "the Dark Man." Its length takes you through the grueling impartiality of the plague as it makes quick work of human civilization's fickleness. Some people might not like its length and King's incredible attention to detail, but as I always say when it comes to his books: How well you get to know the characters only accentuates the horror. Not to mention that it's excellent worldbuilding. Reading it post-COVID-19 fills one with retrospective dread, of course, and I got really sick TWICE while reading it, which can make you paranoid 👀 But I'm really glad I found this recommendation on TikTok of all places. This is one of the books where Stephen King was at his best. I'm really glad I DNFed "Holly" to read this instead (which is funny, because that book takes place during covid, but I DNFed it because it just felt like I was reading Stephen King's Twitter). It also made me feel something for the first time when reading a book: "Hatred" for the author when... certain things happen to certain characters. That's just how excellent the character development is. In other books, I can accept... certain things... because I see them as reasonable. Not in this book... If the idea of a contagion outbreak, rebuilding society, good vs. evil, light vs. dark, and excellently done Christian-apocalyptic allusions with your usual Stephen King-y supernatural elements sounds interesting to you, this is a book you should read. Rating: 5⭐️

Ironically, the historical record shows that Protestantism is to blame for the paganizing of the Christian holiday, Halloween. theorthodoxscribe.substack.c…

I don’t understand why gay socialists keep following me when I consistently write against these things.

A haiku on despondency. theorthodoxscribe.substack.c…