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The Sixth Tuesday of Pascha. When Miracles Ceased

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! ~By Father Stephen Freeman, May 10, 2023 One of the stranger ideas that accompanied the Reformation, was the notion that miracles had ended at the time of the New Testament’s completion. Never stated as a doctrinal fact in the mainstream of Protestantism, it remained a quiet assumption, particularly when joined with an anti-Roman Catholicism in which the various visions, weeping statues, and saints’ lives were considered to be fabrications of

The Tenth Day of Christmas Advent: Thanksgiving as Mystical Communion

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 24, 2021  “This is good. This is bad.” In one form or another, we divide the world into light and dark. It might take the form, “I like this. I do not like that.” What we find easy are the things we see as good and the things we like. If a day is filled with such things, we are likely to be happy. If the day is marked by

An Artist’s Eye and the Kingdom of God

Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 29, 2015  Eyes they have but do not see. I have a daughter who is an artist. Her art is a gift that eludes me. The wonder is not so much in the skill of her hands but in her eyes. For having watched this phenomenon grow up and mature, I am certain of one thing: she sees the world in a way I do not. It is not so much that she sees

The Tenth Day of Christmas. The Created Order.

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

The Remembrance of Death (Part I)

By Father Steven Kostoff In the Orthodox Prayer Book under the heading “Before Sleep,” we find “A Prayer of Saint John of Damascus, said pointing at the bed.”  This particular prayer begins, “O Master Who lovest mankind, is this bed to be my coffin?  Or wilt Thou enlighten my wretched soul with another day?” As Saint John was a monk, we could, of course, dismiss or ignore such a prayer as “monastic excess,” or even