By Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis, December 24, 2018 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory. John 1:14 The Gospel accounts of the Nativity are limited to a mere forty verses. In the Gospel of Matthew, there are 19 verses about the Nativity. The Gospel of Luke has 20. The Gospel of Mark makes no mention of the Nativity. It begins with the Baptism of Christ. The Gospel of John
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 18, 2017 Children today are raised with dreams of greatness. Cultural affirmations of our limitless potential, well-intentioned, have not produced a generation of over-achievers, but have indeed brought forth hordes of great dreams. This is nothing new in American culture. We are the world’s longest sustained pep-talk. Ronald Reagan loved to quote the 1945 Johnny Mercer hit: You’ve got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the
By Fr. Stavros Akrotirianakis, December 11, 2018 Most movies have a villain. In fact, the storyline in many movies, as well as in life in general, is the conflict between good and evil. In Christian terms, church fathers and saints have written about spiritual warfare—the conflict between Godliness and things that are against God. In the Nativity story, we have our villain, and it’s King Herod. When the wise men came to Jerusalem asking King
By Fr. Michael Plekon “We like it when the “churching” of life is discussed, but few people understand what it means. Indeed, must we attend all the church services in order to “church” our life? Or hang an icon in every room and burn an icon-lamp in front of it? No, the “churching of life” is the realization of the whole world as one great church, adorned with icons— persons who should be venerated, honored,
By Father Stephen Freeman, August 6, 2016 My bishop recently shared the story of a young man whom he taught some years ago. He was Orthodox from Estonia. He grew up in the Soviet era and had come to hate all things Russian, including the Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, he saw an Orthodox procession in the streets of his city one year, a procession that included the Russian bishop (whom he also hated and believed to
…. we [have] explored the metaphor of a wedding to describe what God is doing—preparing and drawing us toward deeper intimacy, belonging, and union. The Eastern Fathers of the Church were not afraid of this belief, and called it the process of “divinization” (theosis). In fact, they saw it as the whole point of the Incarnation and the very meaning of salvation. The much more practical and rational church in the West seldom used the
“I am the Resurrection and the Life” (Part III) The very death of the Incarnate reveals the resurrection of human nature (St. John of Damascus, De fide orth., 3.27; cf. Homil. in Magn. Sabbat., 29). “Today we keep the feast, for our Lord is nailed upon the Cross,” in the sharp phrase of St. John Chrysostom (In crucem et latronem, hom. 1). The death on the Cross is a victory over death not only because
“I am the Resurrection and the Life” (Part I) The Incarnation of the Word was an absolute manifestation of God. And above all it was a revelation of Life. Christ is the Word of Life, ho logos tês zôês (I John 1:1). The Incarnation itself was, in a sense, the quickening of man, as it were the resurrection of human nature. In the Incarnation human nature was not merely anointed with a superabundant overflowing of
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 23, 2015 People gather at the end of Church for a “travel blessing.” A priest chants a prayer and sprinkles water over them with a brush. They cross themselves and have some sense that their travels will now be better. Many modern people watching this procedure would describe the process as “superstitious.” It appears to them that physical actions (sprinkling water) are expected to have some remote effect on later
The created order, according to Christianity, is not an illusion, not a vague representation of another perfect world, nor a dream that will one day vanish into oblivion when a sleeping deity awakens. No, it is a matter of something far more specific. God is the ground and basis of all reality—one might say that He is the ultimately real reality, alive and dynamic in everything that is. God provides the world and everything and
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