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The Third Monday of Great Lent: Mystery as Reality

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 13, 2018  C.S. Lewis once discussed the question of how angels (and such things) could pass through a wall. His response was intriguing: he suggested that they could do so not because they were less substantial, but because they were more substantial. Just as a rock is more substantial than water or air, so, he posited, an angel (or such) is more substantial than our materiality. Of course, this is completely arguable and unprovable.

The Second Friday of Great Lent: The Mystery of “Mystery”

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 9, 2018  Few words can be more misleading to the modern ear than the Orthodox use of the word “mystery.” It’s a fine New Testament word and is (technically) the proper name for the sacraments in Orthodoxy (though we most often say ‘sacrament’ in English). Its root meaning is that of something “hidden.” In our culture’s language, mystery is more a matter of a who-done-it or a reference to something

The Second Thursday of Great Lent: Metanoia and Repentance

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 20, 2020 Knowing, as we do, that scripture for one person can be a call to an exemplary life of love, self-sacrifice, and compassion and for another an invitation to the exact opposite, it is very important not only that we read scripture, but also how we translate it. That is why I love the old adage that scripture is not in the reading, but in

The Second Wednesday of Great Lent: Fasting

Published by Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis on January 31, 2022 Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than

The Second Tuesday of Great Lent: Let’s Stop Pointing Fingers and Examine Ourselves

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA on Sunday, October 18, 2020. The Reading is from Luke 10:16-21 I want to focus on the first verse of today’s Gospel reading from Luke. The Lord said to his disciples, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” The bottom line is this. Our words

The Second Monday of Great Lent. The Mystery: Up-Borne, Fulfilled

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 31, 2017 Orthodoxy has a number of “favorite” words – all of which fall outside the bounds of normal speech. Though we commonly use the word “mystery” (for example), popular speech never uses it in the manner of the Church. I cannot remember using the word “fullness,” or even “fulfilled,” in normal speech. More contemporary words have come to replace these expressions. This doesn’t mean that an English speaker has

The First Friday of Great Lent: Getting to the Point

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 20, 2017  English is a great language, except when it isn’t. We have an incredible range of vocabulary, both as a legacy of the many languages that have invaded the homeland, as well as its incredible propensity to borrow words. The English vocabulary exceeds 200,000 words, the most of any language in the world (I am told). Thus, it is interesting when English doesn’t quite have a word for something.

The First Thursday of Great Lent: Depth Spirituality

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 First Wednesday of Great Lent: Forgiveness and the Whole Adam

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John17:20-21) The Elder Sophrony, together with St. Silouan, wrote about the “whole Adam.” By this, they meant all the human beings who have ever existed and those yet to come. For Silouan and Sophrony, this was something known in the present tense, a “hypostatic” knowledge of the fundamental unity of the human race. Sophrony described it as

The First Tuesday of Great Lent: Recommitting to the Gospel

Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 6, 2020 In the year 313 AD an imperial edict proclaimed Christianity to be the preeminent religion of the empire. Something was lost in that moment. I am not the first to say it, nor will I be the last. What was largely lost was the prophetic voice of the Church. The Church was from the beginning a counter-cultural movement. It became an arm of the