Eucharistic Archives - Saint Sophia

Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women: The Point of It All Is Joy

05/04/2025

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, April 30, 2023 The women who went to the Lord ‘s Tomb on Sunday morning “while it was still dark” Were frightened and, sad, and very likely angry at what had happened to the Lord in Jerusalem on the one hand. On the other hand, they were driven by love for Jesus and responsibility to fulfill the proper Jewish burial rites for

The Second Monday of Pascha. Identity and the Resurrection of Christ

04/28/2025

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! ~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 20, 2023 There is a strange moment described in the gospels regarding the resurrection of Christ (in fact, there are several such moments). When Mary Magdalen first encounters the risen Lord, we are told that she “took Him for the gardener.” But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in

Singing the Lord’s Song

02/19/2024

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 27, 2020 In my first parish as an Anglican priest, I approached my first Midnight Mass with eager anticipation. I was trained “High Church,” with a very traditional liturgical emphasis – but I was serving in a “Low Church” parish. I was the first priest in their history to wear Eucharistic vestments as a normal practice. But it was common, even in Low Church areas, for the Midnight Mass to

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Christ is our Pascha, the Resurrection of All!

04/16/2023

As we celebrate Pascha, we confess in Church that the Kingdom of God “has been already inaugurated, but not yet fulfilled.” In the light of the Resurrection, earthly things assume new significance, because they are already transformed and transfigured. Nothing is simply “given.” “Everything lies in motion toward eschatological perfection”, notes the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in his Easter message. The Ecumenical Patriarch also stresses that “Holy Pascha is not merely a religious feast, albeit the

The Disenchanted World

07/18/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 22, 2016 A very apt word for the world we live in is: disenchanted. It was first used by Max Weber and a number of others to describe a certain aspect of the modern world – the absence of the sacred. Where people of earlier eras and other cultures have experienced the world around them as charged with divine power (of various sorts), we simply experience the world as inert. There

People as Liturgical Beings, Part 1

06/07/2022

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, October 23, 2014 By Abbot George Kapsanis of Gregoriou We usually characterize people as rational and independent beings. These attributes are correct enough, but don’t convey human nature in its completeness. Through the liturgical experience, we feel that, more than anything, people are liturgical beings. They were made to serve, to offer themselves and the whole world to God with gratitude, praise and worship, to unite with God, to be sanctified,

The Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent. Thanksgiving Day! Catherine the Great Martyr of Alexandria

11/25/2021

A day set aside for giving thanks to God By Abbot Tryphon, November 28, 2019 Thanksgiving has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when during the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving. The word Thanksgiving has its roots in the Greek word, eucharistia, where the Church gets the word Eucharist. For we Orthodox Christians the ultimate giving of thanks to God comes when we offer the Eucharistic sacrifice, and enter into

Do You Know God?

10/29/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 29, 2016 My childhood was surrounded with very committed Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christians. Street preaching was quite common and even expected. In the downtown, the bus stopped in front of the Dollar Store before it made its trip to the Southside where I lived. Those waiting for buses were a captive audience. Saturdays especially brought bright young men with floppy Bibles and crew-cuts. They were largely students from Bob Jones University.

Begotten of the Father

06/22/2020

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 27, 2015 No revelation is more central to the Christian faith than God as Father. Some might immediately respond that the Trinity should be seen as the central revelation. But, in Orthodox understanding, the Trinity has its source (πηγή) in the Father. We should understand this not only as a matter of Trinitarian thought, but as the proper grounding of the spiritual life as well. To be a Christian in the proper sense, to

Focusing On One’s Own Sins. The Corporate Life of the Church.

06/17/2020

By Abbot Tryphon, October 10, 2019 If you are to win the battle, focus only on your own sins When we take our eyes off our own sins we focus only on the sins of the other. As we allow their sins get our attention, we fail to struggle with the passions that keep us from the wholeness that God intended, and we move ever closer to the abyss of our own fall. Ignoring our

Archive

Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women: The Point of It All Is Joy

The Second Monday of Pascha. Identity and the Resurrection of Christ

Singing the Lord’s Song

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Christ is our Pascha, the Resurrection of All!

The Disenchanted World

People as Liturgical Beings, Part 1

The Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent. Thanksgiving Day! Catherine the Great Martyr of Alexandria

Do You Know God?

Begotten of the Father

Focusing On One’s Own Sins. The Corporate Life of the Church.

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