Fathers Archives - Saint Sophia

The Elevation of the Precious Cross

09/14/2025

Fr. Gennadios Manolis, Theologian The Lord’s Precious Cross is the supreme symbol of sacrifice and sanctification for the Church of Christ, Who was crucified and then rose, because the Cross, together with the Resurrection, are the two pillars which support the life for the Church and its members. The honour paid by the Orthodox Church to the Precious Cross on 14 September (though not only on that day) began in the very first, Apostolic years,

The Dormition Fast: The Mystery of the Mother of God

08/08/2025

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, August 3, 2010 The 15th of August is the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (her death). Orthodox Christians fast for two weeks prior to this great feast and celebrate it with great solemnity. A question was recently placed by a reader about the “perpetual virginity” of Mary. I am offering this small post to address that question and to look at the place of the Most Holy

The Tangled Web

07/31/2025

~By Stephen Freeman, August 9, 2022 Sir Walter Scott (1808) famously wrote: “O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” A modern pundit has rephrased it: “Always tell the truth…it’s easier to remember.” Lies inevitably create a web of false narratives. In many ways, it’s a metaphor for sin itself. Sin begets sin that begets sin and the web ensnares us into a world of un-truth. A single thread of

Truth, Lies, and Icons

06/06/2025

~By Stephen Freeman, May 17, 2023 As verbal beings, we live in a world of icons. We experience the world in an iconic fashion. A major difficulty for us is that we have lost the vocabulary of iconic reality. We have substituted the language of photography. The dissonance between reality and our photographic assumptions has led us to doubt both. Man is an iconographer and needs to re-learn what that means. +++ Franz Kafka famously

The Friday of the Fourth Week of Pascha. What Happens When We Play (Pray)

05/16/2025

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! ~By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 13, 2014 In my previous article I compared children’s use of play to the place of ritual words and actions in the life of the Church. I absolutely did not mean to imply that one thing is like the other. I mean to say clearly that they are very much the same thing. And I say this both to change how we understand play as

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Great Lent: An Empirical Journey into the Depths of Our Being

03/13/2025

~ By Elder Patapios Kavsokalyvitis, Superintendent of the Skete of the Holy Trinity, Mount Athos By fasting, we learn to say ‘No’ to our desire for food and also learn to say ‘No’ to our often self-destructive will. We also learn to say ‘Yes’ to God, which is always redemptive. We’ve begun the Triodio, this blessed period of the liturgical year, with repentance, because we’ve felt deeply, existentially, within us the need to return from

The Second Wednesday of Great Lent: Depth Spirituality

03/12/2025

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 25, 2020 Let me begin today by reading from Paul’s letter to the Galatians chapter 5, vs. 22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Let’s focus on self-control today since one of the hallmarks of what we call “possession” is the loss of it. Our Holy Fathers and Mothers were not acquainted as

The Sunday of Orthodoxy

03/09/2025

~By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 7, 2009 The first Sunday of Great Lent is always observed as the “Sunday of Orthodoxy” in our Churches. It marks both the return of the icons to the Churches following the end of the Iconoclast Controversy, but also as a summation of all the Holy Teachings of the faith which Orthodoxy holds and for which many have died. Most of our parishes will have a procession around the Church

The Mystery of Christ’s Baptism

01/06/2025

By Stephen Freeman This week, the Church moves from the feast of Christmas to the feast of Theophany – the celebration of the Baptism of Christ. The intent of this feast is not to celebrate a succession of historical events (the Baptism of Christ is at least 30 years later than His birth). Rather this feast takes us into the depths of the mystery of Christ and His salvation of the world. Many Christians, reading the gospel accounts of

We are God’s Workshop

09/25/2024

Reading the patristic texts is not always easy. And sometimes, at first sight, it seems disagreeable. The view of the physical world is rudimentary, simplistic. Some dissertations on the human faculties, on the five senses or on the structure of the body are deadly boring. Certain ‘genealogical trees’ of the virtues, certain ‘slotting-in games’ of the vices are even irritating. Certain notes on clothes and certain rules of behaviour are a nuisance or make us

Archive

The Elevation of the Precious Cross

The Dormition Fast: The Mystery of the Mother of God

The Tangled Web

Truth, Lies, and Icons

The Friday of the Fourth Week of Pascha. What Happens When We Play (Pray)

The Second Thursday of Great Lent. Great Lent: An Empirical Journey into the Depths of Our Being

The Second Wednesday of Great Lent: Depth Spirituality

The Sunday of Orthodoxy

The Mystery of Christ’s Baptism

We are God’s Workshop

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