boundaries Archives - Saint Sophia

The Walls of Paradise – and the Fire of God

01/26/2024

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 14, 2020 I love walls. Perhaps the most charming aspect of medieval cities are their use of walls. Some surrounded the city and served as protection. Others surrounded smaller areas and prevented easy access and egress (perhaps understandable in a world with lots of animals present). There were other walls that signaled “higher” boundaries. In a medieval world, the “order” of things was thought important: kings and commoners, high-born and

Faith is Love, Faith is Trust

01/16/2024

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 2, 2017 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (8:5-13) Today’s Gospel gives us the opportunity to talk about what faith is, what faith means. I will be drawing from the book AGAINST RELIGION by the renowned philosopher/theologian Christos Yannaras who makes the argument that faith is not what we think it is. Fr. Alexander

Beyond Narcissism – To Behold the Face of God

07/10/2023

By Stephen Freeman, July 11, 2018 Perhaps the most difficult personalities encountered in anyone’s life are those that can clinically be labeled “narcissistic.” It refers to a very describable disorder that can be diagnosed but treated only with difficulty. The narcissist is critically handicapped when it comes to recognizing and respecting boundaries. They want to run your life (and will). Everything in the world revolves around them simply because their own boundaries are so non-existent.

Are there limits to human kindness?

05/31/2023

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on November 15, 2021 Ioannis Karavidopoulos, Professor Emeritus of New Testament Hermeneutics, A. U. Th. It’s right and proper, if you’re in a hurry to get to work, to your office, or to go about your business that you should stop on the way and help somebody in need, even though you risk being late, losing out on something or even getting into trouble. Organization and the pace of life, a schedule and a

The Fifth Friday of Great Lent: Forgiveness – Give an Enemy a Cup of Cold Water

03/31/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 10, 2021 There is a story related in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov about an old woman who was quite wicked. She dies and goes to hell to the great distress of her guardian angel. The angel searches for any possible good deed to plead on her behalf and finds a rotten onion – something the old woman had given to a beggar. The angel takes the onion and, with it, begins to

Coercing Reality

02/04/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 10, 2016 One of the most comforting things about gravity is that you don’t have to argue about it. Now that might sound strange were we not living in a time in which ideas are increasingly used as assertions of reality. From gender politics to the multitude of psychological triggers, how our fellow citizens experience the world is being asserted as the world itself. In a society with a history

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Friday of Pascha: The Boundaries We Draw and the Boundaries God Draws

05/14/2021

By Stephen Freeman, May 1, 2008 I pushed the envelope a little in my last post, intentionally pressing against what I understand to be false boundaries created by an inadequate understanding of Scripture and a view of the world that establishes limits at places they need not be. I am not an enemy of boundaries – indeed – without them we would not exist – at least not as Persons. Even though the Orthodox faith

The Moral Path of Being

09/21/2018

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 9, 2015 If Christian morality is not a legal or forensic matter, how are we to think about moral behavior? Does the word have no use for Orthodox Christians? What do we think about when we confess our sins? If morality is ontological – a matter of being – what does that look like? To say that morality is ontological, a matter of our being, is to confess that the commandments of God are

Boundaries, Borders and the True God

09/07/2018

By Father Stephen Freeman, February 5, 2015 Years ago, as a young seminarian, I wanted to paint icons. I knew nothing about icons, only that I liked them and that they were holy. The vast wealth of books and materials on their meaning and even on the technique of painting them simply did not exist. My knowledge of painting was also non-existent. But rushing in like a fool, I bought materials (none of which were

Together, Yet Not Too Near

01/12/2015

There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes the relationship flat, superficial, empty and often very boring. When we try to shake off our loneliness by creating a milieu without limiting boundaries, we may become entangled in a stagnating closeness. It is our vocation

Archive

The Walls of Paradise – and the Fire of God

Faith is Love, Faith is Trust

Beyond Narcissism – To Behold the Face of God

Are there limits to human kindness?

The Fifth Friday of Great Lent: Forgiveness – Give an Enemy a Cup of Cold Water

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Second Friday of Pascha: The Boundaries We Draw and the Boundaries God Draws

The Moral Path of Being

Boundaries, Borders and the True God

Together, Yet Not Too Near

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