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Christ and the Social Problem

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, December 13, 2017 † Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou The more that people are cleansed of the passions, the greater their capacity for real communion with God and other people. Those who take a romantic and external view of the human person transfer wickedness from the person onto society, which is why they proclaim that any improvement in society will bring with it an improvement in

The Fourth Friday of Great Lent: The Ladder of Divine Ascent and Moral Improvement

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 4, 2019  The Fourth Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church, is dedicated to St. John Climacus, the author of the ancient work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. It is a classic work describing “steps” within the life of the struggling ascetic. There is an icon associated with this work, picturing monastics climbing the rungs of a ladder to heaven, battling demons who are trying to pull them off. However,

You Don’t Mean a Thing

By Stephen Freeman, September 3, 2015  I have continued to meditate this past week on the quote from Stanley Hauerwas that I shared previously: The project of modernity was to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they choose when they had no story. Such a story is called a story of freedom – institutionalized economically as capitalism and politically as democracy. That story, and the institutions that embody it,

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 14

By Fr. Maximos (Constas) As we begin to enter into the practice of the Jesus Prayer to engage the presence of the Spirit within ourselves we began to encounter both passing and deeper, recurring thoughts that work to distract us from calling upon the name of the Lord. What is the origin of these thoughts, and what do they show us about ourselves and how we interact with the world? How does the Church teach