No Man's Land - the Problem for Converts

[@Panda-jv7tt]

On Sunday the 24th of November, I became a Cathecumen! My Name is Climacus! Pray for me! ☦️

[@VladBuciu]

What means cathecumen brother?

[@joshevans4322]

I was baptized two and half years ago at the age of 40. I spent 40 years in that wilderness of nothingness. Glory to God for all things!☦️

[@aetasaurea1274]

My exact situation is adressed in this video. Thank you, Fr. Josiah! Your words always convey the hope of Christ and God the Almighty. Greetings and prayers from Germany.

[@Buecherwurm_8]

Alle Heiligen der deutschen Lande betet für uns!

[@timmiller7338]

2024 A.D. for A.I. ! , what year is it in Heaven? 5785! Father Time original first love, Creator!

[@jasoncutugno8577]

Fr Josiah I am an Orthodox inquirer from Syd Aus under the Antiochian archdiocese. Thank you for sharing your videos and I just finished Rock and Sand, currently reading Becoming Orthodox. Please keep me in my prayers along with my family I am working on bringing them all to the church. Thank you for this content it helps more of us than you realize. God bless you and your efforts. God bless your family as well.

[@themorrow3547]

Father, I've been wanting to attend your church, but my work will not allow me to have the days off during your services. I have a 14 month old son and a beautiful wife. I would love all of us to be baptized and enter into your beautiful church one day.

[@KealaniAlexandra]

Just in case this is helpful... In the weeks before Easter/Pascha, Orthodox churches are having services just about every evening and closest to Pascha daytime services, too. Maybe you can find something that fits your schedule by considering these other services. It's sometimes lots of evening services before Christmas too. I'm praying for your family and know God will find a way for you.

[@campomambo]

@@KealaniAlexandraat St. Andrew we have daily orthros and vespers and liturgy on Saturday and Sunday. No need to wait until great lent to attend services during the week.

[@EcclesiastesBede]

God bless you on your journey, may heaven consume you. IC XC NI KA 🙏🏻☦️❤️

[@OrthoBro28]

Glory to God ☦️

[@Visibletoallusers12]

Good morning Fr. It’s 1:28am in England at the moment. Tonight I accidentally missed the weekly session for my conversion course. I feel awful, I never want this to happen again. I do love God, I really do, sometimes it’s hard to feel, but I do. Thank you for your words always, my future brother.

[@arianarubytemple6008]

As a very disillusioned Protestant Christian I would love to join the Orthodox Church but where I live in rural New Zealand there is nowhere to go. 😢

[@ScarletHemingway]

Wow that sucks, I’m in New Zealand too but in my area there is a teeny tiny Romanian Orthodox Church with a lovely priest. Move! Go and find a church it’s worth it x

[@danielcetina5790]

Fr. Josiah thanks for sharing this teachings with us, may the Lord bless you

[@joshbaxter1301]

Thank you, Father, this is exactly where I find myself and this video was very encouraging

[@johnsambo9379]

I have no family and the holidays are a terrible time for me because I can't celebrate with anyone. I wish God would help me.

[@PrayersfromtheRedwoodForest]

Try a 12 step meeting we have marathon meetings on holidays to get thru it

[@locomotive9000]

The only problem now, in my own No Man's Land, is discerning which church is the Church: Rome or the East. And I fear for the consequences of such a discernment: will I embrace the Truth or heresy, and how will I know?

[@annalynn9325]

Down the Rabbit Hole has a video on that exact topic. Then there’s prayer and fasting

[@Arkoudeides.]

Greek orthodox

[@erinhenninger341]

One thing that helps me, as I discern between staying in an excellent, nourishing community as a roman Catholic, which I have never desired to leave, and becoming Orthodox, having a marriage united in faith, and going where there is peace is this thought: God is not looking for reasons to damn me! He is doing everything possible for my salvation, up to and including His crucifixion. There are good, holy, God loving people on both sides of the Catholic Orthodox broken brotherhood! We do the best we can, and we trust God to draw us to Himself. God never wants us in a place of constant anxiety about our salvation. That is what the devil wants - to keep us prisoner to fear. It also helps me to attend actual services and liturgies (of both for a while, now just Orthodox) and see it lived vs on paper

[@kirstenapgar9190]

You should read Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy by Fr. Damick. It might help you decide. He also has a podcast series on the book.

[@nuns8126]

​@@annalynn9325 Seek guidance from an Orthodox Church priest.

[@googlemonopoly]

I’m Catholic and you referred me to the Unseen Warrior. Anyone who isn’t against you is for you. All can be our brothers in Christ.

[@koolertrek]

Rest assured the Catholic faith is rich with the Lord’s truth so much authentic personal journeys to show us and help us walk the difficult road to God’s eternal heaven. Don’t let anyone question your faith in the Catholic faith. I never could have imagined I’d ever be totally transformed and closer to the triune God than I ever imagined.

[@Val.Kyrie.]

We have completely different theology and understandings of the nature of God. That’s important.

[@koolertrek]

@@Val.Kyrie. spend your energy trying to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This will keep you busy until you take your last breath.

[@nuns8126]

​@@koolertrek I was RC for 62 years & a nun. The Catholic church has become corrupt & perverted, filthy & misled. Listen to God & seek truth. Attend catechism in the Orthodox church.

[@nageldev]

Hardest part is being married to a Protestant Evangelical spouse with kids and not knowing how to proceed when they are not yet on the same path.

[@PrayersfromtheRedwoodForest]

Just go to the Orthodox Church on Sundays they will follow eventually

[@kazb6526]

I thought this was gonna be about how the male to female ratio is towards men greatly

[@Hunter-zp5hd]

I feel like a Christian with no church. I was baptised Roman Catholic and later in life moved into more Traditional Catholic. In the current state of the Roman Catholic Church, I cannot align myself with it. You can’t call yourself the True Catholic Church if you’re changing foundational and traditional Catholic teaching. The current Roman Catholic Church is in the process of rejecting the traditional beliefs of being a Roman Catholic. There’s something dreadfully wrong here. How can you say that a Church that was correct in 1900 is still correct in 2024? They are two different churches. There are two things that stop me from moving to Orthodoxy; the Immaculate Conception, and Purgatory. So that leaves me with no real church. I can’t participate in a Vatican 2 church, yet those two particular items stop me from pursuing Orthodoxy. I hope something gives at some point in my life.

[@annalynn9325]

You might be curious to look into the Orthodox view on “original sin,” which is different than Roman Catholic, such that Orthodox not having a doctrine of the immaculate conception of BVM might make more sense. And in terms of Purgatory, there is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in the gospel. I’m NO expert! But it seems to me there is Hades, we know the final judgment is yet to come, and maybe there’s an overlap to what Orthodox would refer to as Hades and Roman Catholic would refer to as Purgatory? (And there’s Toll Houses, which I understand is not a dogma but is a widespread belief among Orthodox.) Orthodox pray for and commemorate the dead just as Catholics do

[@bioeless]

Purgatory and the immaculate conception were both ideas that were also created by the Catholic church. If the church that teaches those doctrines is most definitely not the true church, and the church that has kept the Holy Tradition does not teach those things, which church would be the one with the correct doctrine?

[@erinhenninger341]

@@annalynn9325 and then the idea of purgatory as some soft of process/need for a final burning away of our impurities, or disordered attachments. Because nothing unholy can tolerate being in God's prescence, and most of us are not fully holy before our death. So even if it's not a metaphysical location as Catholic teaching articulates it, there is some purgation, purification, refining fire.

[@Apolytrosis.000]

I Converted One Year And Half Ago, There Are No Eastern Orthodox Churches Here, Who Receive "Local" (Tunisian) Converts, So, I Joined A Protestant Church, One Day I Was Suspected By Police Forces To Be A Terroris*, So, They Took Me To A Near Police Station To Be Questioned, Once They Asked Me About Religion I Stood Up And Showed My Cross To The Entirety Of People Whom Were There And Start Talking About "Jesus Christ", So, They Kicked Me Out, And Later That On That Very Day, I Found Out That My Protestant Church Kicked Out Of Their Church Too 😂😂😂, It Was Painful I Even Turned To Self-Destructive Behaviors, But, I Can't Deny That, That Day Specifically Was A Hell Of A Funny Day 😂😂😂

[@siabaa]

Father, why are you making videos just for me? I know the Lord protects me. He's saved my live many times... many continents... through many people sure... I've also been saved by, something that should not have been.

[@anastunya]

Bishop Irenei should do a Repentance seminar in Moscow for Putin and Kirill.

[@joshevans4322]

Then hop over to Ukraine and get zelensky to stop persecuting the REAL Ukrainian Orthodox church?

[@BaikalTii]

Fr Josiah addresses you at 12:56

[@mayachico9766]

Please don't try to pull him into your political issues.

[@PUARockstar]

​@@mayachico9766 that is way more than political issues. What they do have something to do with sins such as schism, murder, filetism heresy, heretical theological sayings of Kirill (putin's sexton as one person cleverly put) among other things and breaching other churches canonical territory. Yes, those are grave accusations that is sinful to attribute wrongly, but I'm doing it as you see.

[@lopaka79]

Odinism? Tell us you're a Marine without telling us you're a Marine.

[@timmiller7338]

The man should still persue teaching, protestant even, but up the standards. We should all appreciate the strengths of the different churches. Orthodox, to me, is more dedicated, keeps more of the story, is less secular, more tribal, more heritage, and longer beards!! Less likely to take medication religiously! A.D. 2024 A D. For A.I. !

[@stevanstevan763]

I am watching documentary on Amish people their faith and their life they put us orthodox to shame i wish i was born Amish then in my Rothen Serbian -Orthodox culture

[@MyLittleTierList-nz5vo]

Culture does not mean truth.

[@hannahbaker3080]

They don’t put us to shame, they are a cult

[@joshevans4322]

I joined a Serbian Orthodox church. I have found them to be the salt of the earth ☦️

[@countryboyred]

The Amish are very pious but their theology is heretical. They are anabaptists.

[@johnsambo9379]

@hannahbaker3080 That's what they said about early Christians.