Daily Meditations Archives - Page 60 of 361

Not a Single Individual Will Be Saved

06/12/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 24, 2018 Perhaps the most striking thing about human beings is that we don’t actually come into existence by ourselves. There are parents (two of them when the laws of biology are allowed to work). The parents themselves are points of contact to a much larger world of the family and the culture itself. Human beings do not come without cultures. In a relatively short time, we acquire language and

The Ladder of Your Daily Life

06/09/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 19, 2018 Perhaps the most prominent ladder in our culture is the one associated with careers. It is an image of the American road to success. We begin at or near the bottom and, step by step, make our way towards the top. It is a metaphor that works well with our modern notions of hard work, persistence and reward. It also serves as a justification for many of the

Getting to know You

06/08/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 4, 2021. I came across a quote by Marcus Borg in his book “MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME”. That is a provocative title because it assumes that we have much to learn about Jesus, things we do not know and maybe things we will never know. After all the God-man is a mystery beyond the power of thought. We can learn much through historical

The Radical Nature of Christianity (1)

06/07/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on February 23, 2022 George Mantzarides, Professor Emeritus of the Theological School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki The Gospel of Christ doesn’t come from this world, nor is it compatible with the spirit of the world. Moreover, the Gospel of Christ isn’t usually preached intact in the world, nor has it ever been applied in its true dimensions by humankind as a whole or by any particular people over the course of history.

The Light in Silence

06/06/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 11, 2021. From time to time the image of God becomes blurred and almost forgotten. People forget what God “looks like,” how he sounds, how he is, and in the resulting vacuum create idols like the children of Israel and their Golden Calf. The search for an earthly savior always ends in the creation of an anti-Christ. I truly believe our abuse of the earth is

Monday of the Holy Spirit: The Orthodox Church as Continuous Pentecost

06/05/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on June 23, 2021 Saint Justin Popovich Who is Jesus Christ, who is both God and human? What in him is God and what is human? How do we recognize the God in him and the human? What did God grant us in the person of Jesus? All of this is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, the ‘Spirit of Truth’. In other words, he reveals the truth about Jesus, about the God

Pentecost and the Liturgy of Hades

06/04/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, June 21, 2021 Pascha (Easter) comes with a great note of joy in the Christian world. Christ is risen from the dead and our hearts rejoice. That joy begins to wane as the days pass. Our lives settle back down to the mundane tasks at hand. After 40 days, the Church marks the Feast of the Ascension, often attended by only a handful of the faithful (Rome has more-or-less moved the

Why did the Church Establish the Saturdays of the Souls?

06/03/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on March 1, 2022 Fr. Ioannis Sourlingas The Saturday before Meat-fare Sunday is called the ‘Saturday of the Souls’. It’s the first of two, the other being the Saturday before the Sunday of Pentecost. Even though every Saturday is dedicated to the departed, the Church established the Saturdays of the Souls for the following reason: because there were occasions when people died alone, at unknown times and places, at sea, on mountains, precipices and

The Kingdom Within

06/02/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 12, 2019 In December of 1849, the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, stood waiting his turn for execution, having been found guilty of plotting against the Russian Tsar. At the last minute, under instructions from the Tsar, the sentence was commuted from death, to four years in a Siberian prison. Later that day, Dostoevsky wrote a famous letter to his brother, describing the experience. He was shaken and changed to the

Projecting

06/01/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 4, 2016 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA. “Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there.