grace Archives - Saint Sophia

The Thirty-Second Day of Christmas Advent. The Manifestation of God’s Infinite Love

12/16/2025

Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou † Christmas, which by God’s Grace we’re celebrating again this year, gives us the opportunity to delve deeper into the mystery of God’s love. His gifts to us are manifold and priceless. The greatest of them, however, is the incarnation of His Only-Begotten Son, without which we would still be hopeless prisoners of the devil and of death. Saint Gregory Palamas says: ‘What depth of

The Dormition of Saint Anna

07/25/2025

Saint Anna (also Ann or Anne, from Hebrew Hannahחַנָּה, meaning “favor” or “grace”) of David’s house and line, was the mother of the Virgin Mary and grandmother of Jesus Christ according to Christian Tradition. St Anna is the Greek rendering of her Hebrew name Hannah. Mary’s mother is not named in the canonical gospels. Christian view: According to the Gospel of James, a document of the New Testament apocrypha, St Anna and her husband St

The Desert Struggle

06/20/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 10, 2022 One of the best-known sayings to have come from the Desert Fathers is: “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” To a large degree the saying extols the virtue of stability. Moving from place to place never removes the problem – it only postpones the inevitable. Somewhere, sometime we have to face the heart of our struggle and by the grace of God overcome.

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman: The Sixth Hour

05/18/2025

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, May 14, 2023 When we are troubled, God draws nearer to us (if one can say God is ever not “near”) it can certainly seem that way. Actually, as Rebbe Barukh taught, “Faith and the abyss are next to one another.” Carl Jung added his two cents writing that mystics swim in the same water in which psychotics drown. Before the dialogue

The Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas: Unmediated Grace

03/16/2025

~By Stephen Freeman, March 30, 2013 This Sunday the Orthodox Calendar commemorates St. Gregory Palamas – perhaps the most significant theologian and teacher of the late Byzantine period. He particularly is important when considering the nature of the Christian experience of God. Orthodoxy believes that it is truly possible to know God though He remains unknowable. The mystery of this true knowledge constitutes the heart of St. Gregory’s work. I first encountered St. Gregory’s writings

A Single Moment

02/21/2025

By Father Stephen Freeman, May 19, 2018 Grushenka, a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, relates a now-famous fable about an old woman: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I

The Twelfth Day of Christmas Advent. Saint Stylianos, The Protector of Children

11/26/2024

Saint Stylianos was born in Paphlagonia, Asia Minor, between 400 and 500. He was blessed even from his mother’s womb. As he grew up, by the grace of God he increasingly became a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. From childhood he displayed the rare qualities of his blessed life. When he was young and still an adolescent, although, of course, he was of the flesh, he never allowed desires to pollute his spirit and soul.

The Fourth Thursday of Great Lent: God Tells Us a Story

04/11/2024

Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, April 3, 2016 The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark. (8:34-9:1) Human beings love stories. We need them. Our lives are populated with them. Christianity is built on them. If they are in the New Testament we call them parables. Raised as a Southern Baptist child in the hills of Eastern Tennessee, we learned and memorized the stories of Adam and Eve, Moses and

The Third Wednesday of Great Lent: Saint Silouan, the Great Spiritual Figure of the 20th Century

04/03/2024

Published by Pemptousia Partnership on September 25, 2021 Alexandros Christodoulou Saint Silouan the Athonite Saint Siouan- Symeon Ivanovich Antonov, before his tonsure- was born in 1866 into a peasant family in the Tambov region of Russia. From the age of four he began wondering: ‘Where is this God? When I grow up, I’ll travel the whole world looking for Him’. When he was a little bit older he heard about the life of a holy

The Third Tuesday of Great Lent: Ego and Humility

04/02/2024

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 3, 2017 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (21:33-42) The Lord spoke this parable: “There was a householder who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it, and built a tower, and let it out to tenants, and went into another country. When the season of

Archive

The Thirty-Second Day of Christmas Advent. The Manifestation of God’s Infinite Love

The Dormition of Saint Anna

The Desert Struggle

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman: The Sixth Hour

The Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas: Unmediated Grace

A Single Moment

The Twelfth Day of Christmas Advent. Saint Stylianos, The Protector of Children

The Fourth Thursday of Great Lent: God Tells Us a Story

The Third Wednesday of Great Lent: Saint Silouan, the Great Spiritual Figure of the 20th Century

The Third Tuesday of Great Lent: Ego and Humility

Categories

Archives

View Our Live Stream Services

Keep In Touch

Stewardship Application

Daily Meditations

Worship Schedule

Light a Virtual Candle

Text-to-Give in 2 easy steps!

1) Text 202-899-7801 to include your donation amount

2) Follow the link to complete the one-time registration