Metropolitan Athanasios of Lemessos Often when we go to sad events, we all say, with the best will in the world- and we’re partially right- that it’s God’s will. And, of course, if we can understand properly, those are, indeed, words of comfort, words that give us strength. Since it’s what God wants, since God decided this was to happen, we trust in his providence. But to be precise, these words aren’t strictly true. God
Saint Mary Magdalene is the most outstanding person in the circle of Christ’s women disciples, and, indeed, the most significant female figure in the Christian Church, after the Mother of God. Her importance for the Church is expressed in the lengthy references to her in the Lives of the Saints. We have very little information concerning her life. She was born in Magdala, a town to the west of the Lake of Gennesaret and south
~By Stephen Freeman, July 7, 2018 The English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, described the world as composed of autonomous, competing self-interests. We are at war with one another, a reality, he said, that can only be controlled through external force. The state serves as the enforcer of a negotiated peace agreement, a social contract, in which we legitimize its use of force in order not to kill one another. Hobbes himself preferred a strong monarchy. Certain
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, February 6, 2022 No one is “outside” of God, nor can be. Olivier Clement writes that “not one blade of grass grows outside the Church.” The Syro-Phoenician Woman was outside the Jewish fold, yes, but that did not mean she was disconnected from God. Jesus calls her a woman of great faith. Therefore, she must have been very connected with God indeed for all good things, like
ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! ~Professor Mihaïl Tritos, School of Theology A.U.Th. No other text is able to express with such force and fullness the redemptive, existential and metaphysical dimension of the resurrection so well as the incomparable canon by Saint John the Damascan. It’s a masterpiece of Byzantine poetry and one of the most wonderful texts in the whole of world literature. Full of lyrical expressions of sublime spirituality and messages of salvation, the
On Holy Wednesday [Matins celebrated by anticipation on Holy Tuesday evening] the Church invites the faithful to focus their attention on two figures: the sinful woman who anointed the head of Jesus shortly before the passion (Matthew 26:6-13), and Judas, the disciple who betrayed the Lord. The former acknowledged Jesus as Lord, while the latter severed himself from the Master. The one was set free, while the other became a slave. The one inherited the
~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 7, 2023 I recall the first time the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” struck my heart. I was attending the evening service of Maundy Thursday at my Episcopal parish when I was a student in college. There was communion, followed by the “stripping of the altar” that symbolized the arrest and scourging of Christ. But the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” haunted
By Father Stephen Freeman The great advantage to thinking about God in legal terms, is that nothing has to change. If what happens between us and God is entirely external, a matter of arranging things such as the avoidance of eternal punishment or the enjoyment of eternal reward, then the world can go on as it is. In the legal model that dominates contemporary Christian thought, the secular world of things becomes nothing more than
By Father Lawrence Farley The Jordan River does not just flow through the length of Palestine. It also flows through the length of the Christian Church. The Orthodox especially love the Jordan, since all our baptisms take place in it: when the priest prays for the water in which the candidate is to be baptized, he prays that God may “grant unto it the grace of redemption, the blessing of Jordan”. Thus wherever the church
By Fr. Stephen Freedman, January 12, 2018 The imagery of a cosmic battle with chaos…is properly the foundation for the Christian life. “Chaos” is a metaphor for so much that threatens God’s good creation and makes war against His saints. It is also an understanding that is almost completely lost in the modern world. We generally fail to notice that modernity is a phenomenon of the “first world.” It is an understanding that presumes the
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