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The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent. The Christmas When Everybody Was There.

11/29/2021

By Stephen Freeman, December 24, 2018 The soldiers were scattered across Europe with the loneliness of war. The world was caught up in a total struggle. Women had gone to the factories; children were collecting scrap metal. The “war effort” was universal. In many places, food was rationed. The madhouse of consumption belonged only to the war; everything else could wait. And there was Christmas. Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley were part of the effort

The Matter of our Salvation

10/15/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 18, 2016 Perhaps the most obvious thing for a visitor to an Orthodox Church are the presence and place of icons. They are literally everywhere. Some Churches are covered completely with iconography and no Orthodox Church is ever without them. That Churches are so decorated might not strike someone as unusual. After all, many Catholic Churches, particularly in Europe are highly decorated (think of the Sistine Chapel). But the difference

You Barely Make a Difference and It’s a Good Thing

06/28/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 1, 2015 You are not saving the world. In fact, you barely make a difference. These are harsh words. They are meant like a splash of cold water to wake us up from the dream in which we live. They are by no means meant to say that you don’t matter. In fact, you have infinite value. But your value is not based on saving the world or making a difference. I’ll

Eastern Christianity: The Patristic Period

11/03/2020

As I [have] shared …the desert fathers and mothers focused more on the how than the what. Their spirituality was very practical: virtue and prayer-based. Now we turn to its parallel, the Patristic Period, which emphasized the what—the rational, philosophical, and theological foundations for the young Christian religion. This period stretches from around 100 CE (the end of the Apostolic Age) to either 451 CE (with the Council of Chalcedon) or as late as the eighth century (Second Council of Nicaea

How did the Fall of Constantinople Change the Renaissance in Italy?

05/29/2020

The Byzantine Empire, also known as New Rome, was very influential on the history and culture of Europe during the Middle Ages. By the 15th century, the Empire was in terminal decline and had been for several centuries. At this time the various Italian city-states were experiencing a cultural flowering that is known by historians as the Renaissance. In 1453 the capital of Byzantium fell to the Ottoman Turkish army and this was the effective

Hope in the Darkness: Entering the Dark Wood

02/03/2020

The mystics of all the great religions, along with classic literature like Homer’s Odyssey, intuited that life was a journey involving completion of a first half and transition to a second half, sometimes called “a further journey.” Yet most of us were given the impression that life was a matter of learning and obeying the rules; and those who obeyed them won. Many of our pastoral problems and the foundational alienation from religion in Europe and

Singing the Lord’s Song

10/12/2018

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 18, 2015 Man is a musical composition, a wonderfully written hymn to powerful creative activity. – St. Gregory of Nyssa (PG 44, 441 B) In St. Gregory’s thought, man is not only a singer, but a song. We are not only song, but the song of God. Indeed, within one theme of the fathers, all of creation is the song of God, spoken (or sung) into existence. “Let there be light,” is more

The Fall of Constantinople Had Profound Consequences

05/29/2018

By Cody Carlson On May 29, 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks. The fall of this great city signaled the end of the Byzantine Empire, the medieval incarnation of the Roman Empire, and saw the armies of Islam spread into Europe from Asia for the first time. In A.D. 330, the Roman Emperor Constantine founded the city of Constantinople on the Greek village of Byzantine to be the new imperial capital. Sitting on the

Shaping Life Spiritually (Part IV)

02/18/2016

The monks have always practiced what many psychologists today talk about (for example in autogenous training), namely, finding comfort through expressions of trust. For the early monks spiritual life also meant the art of healthy living. It was no accident that so many of the monks got to be very old. Their asceticism didn’t deny life, it promoted it. For their spiritual life the monks adopted dietetics, the art of healthy living, which was the

The Impossible Synthesis

02/15/2016

Alongside this ‘critical’ process, and in reaction to it, for more than a century there have been attempts to make a synthesis of beauty. For the 19th century we need only recall the operas of Wagner. As this century opened, symbolism was codified according to philosophical systems. In every country of Europe, but especially in Germany and Russia, many of the intelligentsia felt regret for an organic age, when the highest values were mediated to

Archive

The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent. The Christmas When Everybody Was There.

The Matter of our Salvation

You Barely Make a Difference and It’s a Good Thing

Eastern Christianity: The Patristic Period

How did the Fall of Constantinople Change the Renaissance in Italy?

Hope in the Darkness: Entering the Dark Wood

Singing the Lord’s Song

The Fall of Constantinople Had Profound Consequences

Shaping Life Spiritually (Part IV)

The Impossible Synthesis

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