On the day after every Great Feast, the Orthodox Church honors the one through whom the Feast is made possible. On the day following the Nativity of the Lord, for example, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (December 26). On the day after Theophany, we commemorate St John the Baptist (January 7), and so on. Today we honor the all-Holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, Who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost in
On the day after every Great Feast, the Orthodox Church honors the one through whom the Feast is made possible. On the day following the Nativity of the Lord, for example, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (December 26). On the day after Theophany, we commemorate St John the Baptist (January 7), and so on. Today we honor the all-Holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, Who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost in
By Fr. Maximos (Constas) The metaphors used by Scripture and the Church are not random and arbitrary, and the deeper you dig into any particular symbol the more meaning it will generate. Those who work with plants and gardening, or maybe biologists who know about reproduction, and the activity of seeds and sperm will be able to unpack even more insight. But the thing about a seed is that seeds remain dormant until they are
St. Maximos the Confessor 1,400 years ago, St. Maximos the Confessor (580-662) brought the ‘Logos’ paradigm to new heights, creating an unsurpassed synthesis showing that all are representatives of one simple and supreme principle, the Logos Principle which underlies the deep structure of the cosmos. For Maximos, the perennial integrity paradigm of the cosmos was self-evident. It was the Church as the cosmic ‘living symbol’; the house of all horizons and perspectives. The Logos is
The Original Christian World-view A study of the lives and writings of the great spiritual masters of the First Millennium of the Christian Church — East and West — will show that a sacred cosmology was integral to the Church’s world-view. Salvation, or deification, as the ancient Church and the Orthodox Church of today calls the process of reconciliation with God, was cosmic as well as personal in scope. It included not only human beings
The Church calls Saint Constantine (306-337) “the Equal of the Apostles,” and historians call him “the Great.” He was the son of the Caesar Constantius Chlorus (305-306), who governed the lands of Gaul and Britain. His mother was Saint Helen, a Christian of humble birth. At this time the immense Roman Empire was divided into Western and Eastern halves, governed by two independent emperors and their co-rulers called “Caesars.” Constantius Chlorus was Caesar in the
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 11, 2015 The suggestion has been made several times recently that my criticism of moral progress is not supported by the example of the saints. Surely, it is said, the transformations we read about in the lives of the saints are clear examples of moral progress. A noted such example, perhaps the greatest story of repentance and asceticism known in the Church, is that of St. Mary of Egypt. It is worth
On the Leavetaking of the Feast of the Annunciation, the Church commemorates the Archangel Gabriel, who announced the great mystery of the Incarnation of Christ to the Virgin Mary. Mindful of the manifold appearances of the holy Archangel Gabriel and of his zealous fulfilling of God’s will and confessing his intercession for Christians before the Lord, the Orthodox Church calls upon its children to pray to the great Archangel with faith and love. The Synaxis
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 28, 2015 It has long been known that people tend to see what they think they are seeing. This is particularly the case where what we think is familiar and expected. The case of “mistaken identity” flows from our assumptions and expectations. This is nowhere more true than when we are reading Scripture. If a passage has years of associations, it is almost impossible to see anything else. I have noticed this
As humans we have struggled continually through time to answer the seemingly simple question; “Who am I?” Philosophers continue to wrestle with this question. Some popular psychology tells us that we are who people tell us we are. Others tell us that we are who we want to be. And of course pop-society advertising tells us that we are what we eat, drink, wear, drive, etc. So we go through life trying to define ourselves
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