By the Very Reverend Stelyios S. Muksuris, Ph.D Recently, a woman shared with me a series of endearing stories of how she feels called by God to spend time with elderly men and women in nursing homes, whose only hope and joy is a smile or hug or good word. But more than such acts is the presence of another person in their lives who simply listens and stands by them in their suffering. Now
By the Very Reverend Stelyios S. Muksuris, Ph.D One of my favorite passages in all of Scripture is Psalm 46 (45 LXX):10, which reads: “Be still, and know that I am God.” This brief but powerful assertion, applicable to virtually any age in history, speaks to the uneasiness and distress every person or group experiences throughout life. Specifically, the Psalm addresses signs of violence in nature and the tumults that exist between nations which seek
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 15, 2017 The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (8:5-15) “…there are many ways of ‘being’ in a place.” This was written by the wonderful Catholic mystic Teresa of Avila. She was writing about entering the Interior Castle, the interior kingdom of heaven. By this she means the soul. Then she says, “But since we are already there, how can I speak of
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, October 26, 2019 In his On the Orthodox Faith, St. John of Damascus declares: “The Son is the image of the Father, and the Spirit the image of the Son.” Such statements are easily read and passed over as among the more obvious Trinitarian statements. I add to this statement another from St. Irenaeus: “That which is invisible of the Son is the Father, and that which is visible of the Father
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 4, 2018 The very heart of true prayer is desire, love. In the language of the Fathers this desire is called eros. Modern usage has corrupted the meaning of “erotic” to only mean sexual desire – but it is a profound word, without substitute in the language of the Church. I offer a quote from Dr. Timothy Patitsas of Holy Cross in Brookline: By eros we mean the love that makes us forget
By Father Stephen Freeman, March 22, 2016 “If only I had known…” These are, not infrequently, the words of an apology. They are also an explanation of why we are sometimes the way we are. Ignorance is, in the mind of the Fathers, a major cause of sin. Of course, if sin is understood in a legal/forensic framework, then ignorance would be nothing more than a form of innocence. Not knowing is excusable in most
Alone When God seems absent By Abbot Tryphon, January 26, 2020 We all have those moments in our lives when we feel as though God is absent, even perhaps nonexistent. Those times leave us feeling alone and abandoned, as though we are lost in an empty stadium. We feel as though we are on a boat that has been set adrift without an engine, floating further from shore, and heading to an uncertain future. Such
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 15, 2016 What does it mean to be alive? This is a question whose answer would seem so obvious that it is hardly worth asking. And yet. A recent comment drew attention to a different way of thinking about what is “alive.” I will offer some quotes from the comment and then some observations of my own. I give special thanks to Justin. Everything is alive. Everything. We encounter the
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 27, 2015 At some point in our history, we began to attribute a merely mental reality to anything that was not an object and reduced the importance of objects to what they could contribute to our mental reality. We live in a sea of psychology. Things, we believe, are only what we think they are. My “relationship” with you means nothing more than the set of inner experiences and dispositions I have towards
By Saint Gregory Nazianzen, the Theologian Clap your hands together, all people. For unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders. . . . Let John the Baptist cry aloud: Prepare ye the way of the Lord! And I too will cry aloud about the power of this Day. He who is without flesh has become incarnate. The Son of God becomes the
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