By Father Stephen Freeman According to St. Basil, God is the “only truly Existing.” Our own existence is a gift from God who is our Creator. None of us has “self-existing” life. We exist because God sustains us in existence – in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Sin is the rejection of this gift of God – a movement away from true existence. +++ Much of our attention in the modern world is
Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos In the minds of people today, Lent’s a period of cleansing, of nutritional detoxification, preparation for Easter, not in terms of a change of life but of diet. This time seems to them more like a memory from the past, perhaps linked to grandparents. It leads them to church on Friday evenings to hear ‘Hail, Bride Unwedded’, to take communion at the first weekend, to be given flowers at the Veneration of
~Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, January 12, 2025 Matt. 4:12-17; Eph. 4:7-13 [Seven weeks ago] we witnessed the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry which began with Christ’s baptism in the Jordan…. [and] the first declaration of His public ministry, which is the call to “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Now when we hear the likes of such a statement — this call to “Repent!” — it often conjures up
~Elder Ephraim in Arizona † At this time, we’re entering the great spiritual arena of the blessed Great Lent. Holy and Great Lent is a time of compunction, for repentance, for tears, for a change in ourselves, for a new stage in the spiritual life. Like an affectionate mother caring for her children, us Christians, the Church has designated this time of Lent as dedicated to the struggle, in order to help its children, fight
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 29, 2019 Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world. We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve how we look or how we feel. But changing how we eat in order to know God
~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, February 18, 2007 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! There is only one way to know forgiveness and that is by forgiving. We may have an idea of what forgiveness is, but an idea is only an idea. We may have an idea of who God is, but an idea is
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 18, 2018 I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John17:20-21) The Elder Sophrony, together with St. Silouan, wrote about the “whole Adam.” By this, they meant all the human beings who have ever existed and those yet to come. For Silouan and Sophrony, this was something known in the present tense, a “hypostatic” knowledge of the fundamental unity of
Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos ‘It’s important that we set boundaries, but they should be accompanied by a vision’ (Professor Vasilis Karapostolis). We live in a time where everything’s allowed. Parents readily excuse their children for their missteps by saying ‘They’re children, what can you do?’. Love makes our heart tolerant, sometimes excessively so. Tolerance has nothing to do with the feeling that what other people do doesn’t matter because we’ll be patient anyway. In this way,
~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 8, 2006 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever! I want to speak about radical compassion, the kind that encompasses everything and everyone. Not only do we see an example of it in the Gospel today, of Jesus toward the widow who had lost her only son, but there
February 17 Life of the Saint This holy, glorious Martyr of Christ came from Amasia in Pontus and was a Roman legionary at the time of Maximian’s great persecution (c. 303). He had been a Christian since childhood but kept his faith secret, not out of cowardice but because he had not yet received a sign from God to present himself for martyrdom. While his cohort was stationed near the town of Euchaïta (Helenopontus), he
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