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The Cell, Meeting God and Ourselves (Part III)

10/03/2024

The Cell “The anchorite leaves the world and travels toward the desert. There he builds the cell of his repentance, the place of his rebirth, where he settles.” [6] The Physical Environment of the Cell As we have seen, the cells of the desert monks, both male and female, were often caves or built onto caves, portions of abandoned forts or villages, tombs carved into rock cliffs, natural rock formations, simple hand-built dwellings within or

The Sacrifice of Worship

09/04/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 30, 2017  When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac (Genesis 22), there was no questioning on Abraham’s part about what was intended. He understood precisely what was involved in such a thing. There was wood to be gathered, an altar of stones to be constructed, the victim to be bound, and then the slitting of its throat with the gushing forth of blood, all consummated in the burning

The Communion of Friends

07/24/2023

By Stephen Freeman, August 4, 2021  You meet someone and like them. You slowly get to know them. Conversation and sharing, listening and learning, a picture or a reality begin to emerge. You think about them when they’re away. You’re aware that you matter to them as well. The thought of anything hurting them is painful. This is friendship. We easily reduce friendship to a set of shared emotions. Why we like someone else, we can

God Within Us

07/14/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 13, 2020  Popular New Age thought postulates that everyone has a “god within.” It’s a pleasant way of saying that we’re all special while making “god” to be rather banal. But there is a clear teaching of classical Christianity regarding Christ-within-us, and it is essential to the Orthodox way of life. We should not understand our relationship with God to be an “external” matter, as if we were one individual and God

The Fiction of Relationships and the Fullness of Life

01/09/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 20, 2017 It is very interesting that we use the word “relationship” to describe everything from God to our lifestyle. More interesting still, is that, used in this manner, the word dates back to only around the mid-20th century. There are older examples, but the psycho-social meaning that it carries today does not appear until around 1940. This also means that no one, prior to that time, spoke about having a

The Eighteenth Day of Christmas Advent: Blood Brothers of the Incarnation

12/02/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, August 8, 2016  My childhood in the 1950’s had the innocence of the time, fed by stories of our elders and the clumsy movies. We played soldiers (everyone’s father had been in the Second World War) and “Cowboys and Indians.” Despite the clear bias of the movies and the slanted propaganda that passed for history, almost everyone wanted to be an Indian. Cowboys never seemed terribly romantic, while the Indians clearly

The Communion of Friends

11/07/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 22, 2016  You meet someone and like them. You slowly get to know them. Conversation and sharing, listening and learning, a picture or a reality begin to emerge. You think about them when they’re away. You’re aware that you matter to them as well. The thought of anything hurting them is painful. This is friendship. We easily reduce friendship to a set of shared emotions. Why we like someone else, we

The Third Monday of Great Lent: The Contradictions of Scripture

03/21/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, June 29, 2016 We can, however, only express the Truth if we foresee the extreme expression of all the contradictions inherent in it, from which it follows that Truth itself encompasses the ultimate projection of all its invalidations, is antonymic and cannot be otherwise. -Pavel Florensky I wrote in a previous article about the importance of contradictions in the knowledge of God. The Orthodox faith utterly delights in paradox and contradiction

The Second Monday of Great Lent: A Truly Rational Faith

03/14/2022

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

Prayers for the Dead

02/25/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 21, 2016 The Orthodox pray for the departed. The most pressing prayer within the liturgies appointed for this purpose is for God to forgive their sins. We say, “For no one lives and does not sin, for You only are without sin….” This is easily misunderstood, but it goes to the very heart of the mystery of our relationship with God. The same sentiment, interestingly, is offered in the prayers

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