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The Second Monday of Great Lent: A Truly Rational Faith

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, June 20, 2016 St. Paul notes that “faith works through love” (Gal. 5:6). This describes the very heart of the ascetic life. Only love extends itself in the self-emptying struggle against the passions without becoming lost in the solipsism of asceticism for its own sake. It is love that endures the contradictions of reality without turning away or reducing them. And it is love that finally comprehends the reality hidden within

Members of One Another (Part VIII): The Total Adam

The sin of Adam is cosmic in its effects, destroying as it does the primal harmony that prevailed between humans and the rest of creation. So Adam exclaims in his ‘Lament’: In paradise was I joyful and glad: The Spirit of God rejoiced me, and suffering was a stranger to me. But when I was driven forth from paradise cold and hunger began to torment me. The beasts and the birds that were gentle and

Members of One Another (Part VII): Adam, Our Father

St Silouan’s consuming desire for the salvation of all stands out in yet sharper relief when we take into account his teaching about what may be termed the ‘total Adam’. This is not, I think, a phrase that he himself employs, but it accurately sums up his point of view. For St Silouan, Adam is ‘our father’, the ‘father of all mankind’. Following St Paul (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45), the Starets sees Adam the first-formed

Mary-Mother of God (Part III)

RECAPITULATION Irenaeus (+202) treats of this analogy in great detail and can be considered the first Marian theologian. The analogy that he uses of Mary as the New Eve is intimately connected with his fundamental theological principle of recapitulation. In the setting of Christ, as the new head restoring the human race to its former state of divine friendship, Mary takes her place in this process of restoration. “Just as Eve, wife of Adam, yes,

The Second Thursday of Great Lent: The Presumptuous Bat & More True than the Truth?

The Presumptuous Bat The light allows the eye to distinguish, for example, gold from silver, copper from iron and tin. Moreover, it allows us to note the difference between colours and shapes, between the plants and between the animals. But only for those who have sound eyesight. The blind gain no advantage from the rays of the sun: they do not even see the brightness of the light! There are people who do not want

The First Tuesday of Great Lent

God does not Need us, But He Longs to Shower us with Gifts God created Adam in the beginning, not because he needs the human race, but so that he might have a recipient of his generosity. Moreover, God commanded us to follow Christ, not because he has any need of our service, but because he wants to give us salvation. To follow the saviour is to share in salvation, just as to follow the

The First Monday of Great Lent

Seek to be like God The main aim of all rational creatures, defined by many philosophers as the greatest good, is to become like God. Actually this is not so much a discovery of the philosophers as something derived from Holy Scripture. The book of Genesis illustrates it when it describes the original creation of the human race….that the human race received the dignity of God’s image at the beginning of its creation, whereas the

Members of One Another (Part VIII): The Total Adam

The sin of Adam is cosmic in its effects, destroying as it does the primal harmony that prevailed between humans and the rest of creation. So Adam exclaims in his ‘Lament’: In paradise was I joyful and glad: the Spirit of God rejoiced me, and suffering was a stranger to me. But when I was driven forth from paradise cold and hunger began to torment me. The beasts and the birds that were gentle and

Members of One Another (Part VII): Adam, Our Father

St Silouan’s consuming desire for the salvation of all stands out in yet sharper relief when we take into account his teaching about what may be termed the ‘total Adam’. This is not, I think, a phrase that he himself employs, but it accurately sums up his point of view. For St Silouan, Adam is ‘our father’, the ‘father of all mankind’. Following St Paul (1 Corinthians 15:22, 45), the Starets sees Adam the first-formed