Adam Archives - Saint Sophia

The Seventeenth Day of Christmas Advent: You Are Not Alone – And Neither Is God

12/01/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 16, 2021 I consider it both a strange mystery and a settled matter of the faith that God prefers not to do things alone. Repeatedly, He acts in a manner that involves the actions of others when it would seem, He could have acted alone. Why would God reveal His Word to the world through the agency of men? Why would He bother to use writing? Why not simply communicate

Choices

11/07/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, November 7, 2021. Our faith teaches us to take the foundational moment of Christian history seriously. By this I mean the Incarnation. Since we are approaching the season of the Nativity Fast, I’ve been reflecting on it. We have a very broad, inclusive and cosmic view in the Orthodox Church. Let’s think about it for a few moments. I begin by offering this insight from St. Theresa

Get Your Soul Back

09/29/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 24, 2017 When was the last time you heard someone express concern for their soul? When was the last time you listened earnestly as a friend lamented a psychological or emotional struggle? The reason for the difference is simple: we have become a “soul-less” psychologized society. The classical concern for the soul has been replaced by an overwhelming interest in psychological and emotional “health.” We are becoming a “well-adjusted” society. The soul

Saving My Neighbor – Just How Connected Are We?

09/25/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, June 9, 2017 If you are in the “helping professions,” confronting problems in people’s lives, it doesn’t take long to realize that no one is purely and simply an individual. The problems we suffer may occasionally appear to be “of our own making,” but that is the exception rather than the rule. Whether we are thinking of economic or genetic inheritance, or the psychological and social environment, almost all the issues

The Tree Heals the Tree

09/13/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, September 14, 2017 Readers of the New Testament are familiar with St. Paul’s description of Christ as the “Second Adam.” It is an example of the frequent Apostolic use of an allegoric reading of the Old Testament (I am using “allegory” in its broadest sense – including typology and other forms). Christ Himself had stated that He was the meaning of the Old Testament (John 5:39). Within the Gospels Christ identifies His own

The Loneliness of Shame

08/25/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 13, 2017 …shame thoughts are quintessentially alone thoughts. They are produced by the felt impossibility of communion, and they produce realities that have no primary communion in them. Patricia DeYoung, Understanding and Treating Chronic Shame +++ What does it mean to be lonely? We could pool our collective experience and quickly generate our own Wikipedia entry on the topic. There is probably no one who is a complete stranger to loneliness.

Image and False Image

08/03/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 18, 2016 at St. Mary Orthodox Church. Holy Orthodoxy has a vision of human nature than is unrelentingly positive. This vision originates in the biblical reference from Genesis 1:26, “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Because this is so, to know the truth of who we are, is to know God. St. Clement of Alexandria wrote that, “…if one

Hidden from the Eyes of Modernity

07/28/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 13, 2020 “No one will know what you’re doing.” I recently took an evening for a movie – a fairly rare undertaking. The movie was Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, which depicts the story of a Catholic man and his family who refused to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler during World War II. He dies a martyr. The story is based in truth. Living in a small valley in

No More Secrets

06/27/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 27, 2020 In every Gospel there are multitudes of meanings obvious and hidden. You couldn’t possible uncover them all in a sermon or series of sermons. There is something infinite and ineffable about Holy Scripture. The more we look and the more we allow them to speak to us in the quiet temple of our hearts, not projecting our own meanings on them, the more they

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

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The Seventeenth Day of Christmas Advent: You Are Not Alone – And Neither Is God

Choices

Get Your Soul Back

Saving My Neighbor – Just How Connected Are We?

The Tree Heals the Tree

The Loneliness of Shame

Image and False Image

Hidden from the Eyes of Modernity

No More Secrets

Why did the Church Establish the Saturdays of the Souls?

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