A woman, whose comeliness today might have won her the crown at a beauty pageant and whose reckless escapades would have commanded the headlines in scandal, chose in the third century to serve Him who had worn a crown of thorns, and after exchanging a life of debauchery for the life of ascetism, commanded a respect that earned her sainthood. The story of St. Pelagia was not unlike that of countless others who have gone
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 19, 2014 Well, the firestorm has moved even to my host, Ancient Faith Blogs. There, you can find a response and a critique of my last article, The Unmoral Christian. I find nothing in the response with which I disagree. The author argues that externals are often important, certainly for beginners, and suggests that I have overplayed my hand in overemphasized the inner nature of our lives. That is perhaps true. Every child
The desert tradition offers a rich teaching of surrender, through contemplation, to the wonderful and always too-much mystery of God. The desert fathers and mothers are like the Zen Buddhist monks of Christianity; their sayings are often like koans that cannot be understood with the rational, logical mind. The desert mystics focused much more on the how than the what. Note that this is very different from the primary emphasis of Christianity in recent centuries–the
The biblical revelation, understood symbolically, confronts us with an uncompromising anthropocentrism, which is not physical but spiritual. Because Man is at once ‘microcosm and microtheos’, both a summing up of the universe and the image of God; and because God, in order to unite himself to the world, finally became a human being; humanity is the spiritual axis of all creation at every level, in every sphere. The saints see the universe in God, pervaded
DAY ONE 1. When the holy Father (Abba) Anthony was living in the desert he was afflicted with lethargy (“accidie” – despondency/melancholy), and attacked by many imaginations (“logismoi”- thoughts/imaginations). He said to God, “Lord, I want to be saved but these thoughts will not leave me alone. What shall I do in my afflictions? How can I be saved? A little later, when he went outside, Anthony saw a man like himself sitting at his
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