child Archives - Saint Sophia

The Thirty-Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. The Child Who Came Among Us

12/19/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, December 12, 2024 Few things seem as confusing to our culture as the feast of Christmas. For many, it is the great feast of sentimentality. As such, it is our culture’s feast of feeling. We want to have the “spirit of Christmas.” It is identified with snow, with trees, with family, with giving and receiving of gifts. It is a remembrance, for many, of a magical point within childhood, likely out

Love and Freedom

08/25/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, August 29, 2018 The most difficult aspect of love is the freedom it inherently requires. Love, in its ultimate and proper form, only exists between equals. There can be a sort of benevolence and nobility towards another who is not equal, but never love. This makes it difficult to understand the God-who-is-love. It will quickly be said by most that God is not our equal, and that we can never be

The Twenty-Third Day of Christmas Advent: The Power of Mystery

12/07/2023

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 24, 2021 There are estimated to be 10s of billions of galaxies in our solar system. 100 billion stars are thought to inhabit each galaxy. 200 billion trillion stars are thought to be in the universe. It is estimated that 100 billion stars are in our galaxy alone. And planet earth is an insignificant ball of dust in a small solar system in the Milky Way

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

The Fifth Day of Christmas: 14,000 infants (Holy Innocents) slain by Herod in Bethlehem

12/29/2022

December 29 Reading The infant-slaying Herod mentioned here is the same one that ruled at the time of Christ’s Nativity. In those days, certain Magi, who were wise and noble men, perhaps even kings, set forth from the East, and came to Jerusalem, seeking the King of the Jews, Who had been born; and they said that in the East, where their homeland was, an unusual and strange star had appeared two years before, which,

Parents’ Grief. Love and the Pain of Leaving. Remembering the Dead.

08/20/2020

Parents’ Grief Many parents have to suffer the death of a child, at birth or at a very young age. There probably is no greater suffering than losing a child, since it so radically interferes with the desire of a father and mother to see their child grow up to be a beautiful, healthy, mature, and loving person. The great danger is that the death of a child will take away the parents’ desire to

Thursday of the Second Week of Great Lent: The New People are a People of Children. Gentleness, the Face of Love.

03/01/2018

The New People are a People of Children Paul shows great wisdom when he says: ‘We never sought glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were babes among you.’ [1 Thess. 2:7] A child is charming, gentle, simple-minded, without cunning or hypocrisy, in short, straightforward in thought and speech. He is therefore the personification of simplicity. A child has a sensitive

Thursday of the First Week of Lent. We Must Become Like Children

03/02/2017

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ”Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant; and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast brought perfect praise’?” Matthew 21: 15-16 (Gospel of Orthros on Palm

The Sixth Day of Christmas. Promises Kept

12/30/2016

But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the Child and His mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the Child and His mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he

The Destiny of Eros: The Nuptial Way (Part II)

02/13/2014

Marriage is chaste because it integrates the erotic relationship of the two persons into their communion within the Church; as their mutual love is expressed through their complementary natures, each gives the other to the world. For nine centuries there was no distinctive rite of marriage for Christians. The couple would marry, then go together to communion. For a man and a woman whose life is rooted in Christ, their love is something they have

Archive

The Thirty-Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. The Child Who Came Among Us

Love and Freedom

The Twenty-Third Day of Christmas Advent: The Power of Mystery

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

The Fifth Day of Christmas: 14,000 infants (Holy Innocents) slain by Herod in Bethlehem

Parents’ Grief. Love and the Pain of Leaving. Remembering the Dead.

Thursday of the Second Week of Great Lent: The New People are a People of Children. Gentleness, the Face of Love.

Thursday of the First Week of Lent. We Must Become Like Children

The Sixth Day of Christmas. Promises Kept

The Destiny of Eros: The Nuptial Way (Part II)

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