Archive

Pentecost Sunday: Pentecost Is Not the Church’s Birthday

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 28, 2018 It is a commonplace in some circles to celebrate Pentecost as the Church’s “Birthday.” It is well-intentioned, perhaps even true in some sense, but tends to render the Church as something it is not. St. Paul calls the Church the “pillar and ground of truth.” The sort of institutional concept that would mark some date in 33 AD as a founding date (like the founding of Rome or

The Second Wednesday of Great Lent: On Humility and the Humble Outlook (Part 2)

Published by Pemptousia Partnership, November 4, 2014 By Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi Βlessed and favoured people who are humble are meek, calm, serene, attached to virtue, opposed to evil, untroubled by any circumstance or threat. They live in the bosom of the faith, like infants in the maternal embrace of grace. They never live for themselves, because they’ve forgotten what that is. They’ve become one with the others; they become all things to everyone, in

The Fourth Wednesday of Great Lent: Ten Suggestions for Lent

By His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios, Geron of America Meditate on the History of Salvation Think of the Lenten period as a time of meditating on the history of salvation.  Think about the creation of the universe and of Adam and Eve as the beginning of human life on earth.  Think about the fall of Adam and the entrance of sin in humanity.  We see in the hymnology of the liturgical book of Lent, the Triodion,

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Saint Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts (Second Sunday in Lent)

Pavlos Mouktaroudis The second Sunday in Lent is devoted to Saint Gregory Palamas (14th century), a hesychast from the Holy Mountain and later Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Saint Gregory Palamas defended the hesychasts of the Holy Mountain who were being mocked and attacked by the person who expressed the spirit of the Western Church, the monk Barlaam, from Calabria in Southern Italy. When Saint Gregory defended these monks, he set out the Orthodox faith regarding God,

The Cruciform Human

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 23, 2015 In my March lecture in San Francisco, I made an assertion that is worth isolating for an article. That assertion is that we are created in the image of the Crucified Christ, and that this is essential in understanding what it means to be human. I have been asked where I got such an idea. The most simple answer is: the Scriptures. Arguably, the first reference to the Crucified Christ

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 3

By Fr. Maximos (Constas) Man is a creature of great depth, created by God, but after the Fall we are easily distracted from the depths, being enamored with mere surface appearances. What in our world today serves to distract us from the depths, and what can we do about it? It’s hard not to hark back to the saint of the day—Isidore of Pelusium, for a very famous quote that merits repeating. Despite that he

Thoughts on Our Faculty of Reason. Thoughts on Spiritual Blindness

By Michael Haldas Thoughts on Our Faculty of Reason, June 1, 2016 “… as a human faculty, faith is unlike, but in a way connected to, the act of reasoning, by which we make sense of the world around us. It is an “understanding” of that which is beyond understanding. Just because something is beyond understanding does not make it unreasonable. Like music and art, faith is not opposed to human intellect, but rather makes

The Search for the ‘Place of the Heart’: Transfiguration

We were created naked but clothed with light, light that shone upon the world to transfigure it. But at the Fall God clothed us with ‘garments of skins’ (Genesis 3.21) to protect us from a world become hostile. And now, in our fallen state, our own skin has become a barrier setting us apart from the universe, and signaling that the organism hidden within is a machine for consuming everything outside until its inevitable death.

To Be or Not To Be – A Moral Question?

By Father Stephen Freeman, February 3, 2015  As I continue this series on morality (or unmorality) the conversation continues to push me back to basics. There are deeply important reasons for unthinking the morality of the modern world and rethinking its place in our relationship with God. The most important reason is because it is incorrect to think of us as primarily moral beings. So what would constitute a moral being? A Moral Being A

Pray!

Pray in the evening, the morning, and at other moments during your daily life. Pray for the others in the community. It is only by unity in the Holy Spirit that you will be capable of building your salvation. Pray for your neighbors, and ask God to bless you by their prayers. When we pray for someone who is ill, we say his name and we think of him, asking God to heal him. This