encounter Archives - Saint Sophia

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Thursday of Pascha: On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

05/30/2024

Sermon Preached by Father Antony Hughes on Sunday, May 9, 2004 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Christ is Risen! Each encounter with Christ in the New Testament is unique. Each encounter is open and free. Nothing with God in His dealings with humanity is formulaic or pre-planned. Never is anything forced. Some come away from meeting the Lord happy and some go

The Act of Veneration

08/16/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 17, 2016 No spiritual activity permeates Orthodoxy as much as veneration. For the non-Orthodox, veneration is often mistaken for worship. We kiss icons; sing hymns to saints; cry out “Most Holy Theotokos, save us!” And all of this scandalizes the non-Orthodox who think we have fallen into some backwater of paganized Christianity. It is not unusual to hear Orthodox who more or less apologize for this activity and seek to

“Showing Up” to Pray

10/15/2019

By Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis, May 31, 2108 My Spiritual Father (the priest who I go to confession to, who also serves as a mentor and confidant) has taught me many things over the years. One phrase he has used that I always try to remember, in prayer, worship and other things is: “Eighty percent of life is just showing up.” In other words, eighty percent of the effort we make in doing something is just showing up.

Community as an Inner Quality

07/01/2016

This experience explains what Rainer Maria Rilke meant when he said, “Love . . . consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other”· and what Anne Morrow Lindbergh had in mind when she wrote, “I feel we are all islands in a common sea.” It made me see that the togetherness of friends and lovers can become moments in which we can enter into a common solitude which is not

Keeping our Faces in a Facebook World (Part II)

07/29/2015

By Father Lawrence Farley The truth is that real communication and authentic communion with another always involves face to face encounter—that is why there is so much hugging at airports when people are physically reunited after being separated for a time. Did those people who greet each other at the airport not keep in touch by Facebook while they were gone? Did they not phone each other? Did they not exchange e-mails? I’ll bet they

He neither Exists nor doesn’t Exist. He is!

06/12/2014

In the end, it often seems that our search for God resembles a vain attempt to get through to Him via the wall rather than the door. And when we don’t make it, we deny Him. That’s what these young people have been trying to do. But you can’t just approach God superciliously, anyhow and anyway you want. The locus of His mystery has its entryways through which you have to gain admittance with circumspection

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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Thursday of Pascha: On the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

The Act of Veneration

“Showing Up” to Pray

Community as an Inner Quality

He neither Exists nor doesn’t Exist. He is!

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