Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, June 21, 2020 Here is a lovely and telling story from the great story-teller Anthony DeMello. A man found an eagle egg in his yard and he put it in the nest of one of his backyard hens. The egg hatched with the chicken eggs and all the little birds learned the way of chickens. They scratched in the earth for insects and when they flew, if
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 6, 2020 In the year 313 AD an imperial edict proclaimed Christianity to be the preeminent religion of the empire. Something was lost in that moment. I am not the first to say it, nor will I be the last. What was largely lost was the prophetic voice of the Church. The Church was from the beginning a counter-cultural movement. It became an arm of the
Fr John Breck, July 2, 2009 An elderly woman recently broke down during Confession and began sobbing. She had attempted to offer to God what she felt was her sinful neglect in raising her son. Throughout his childhood and adolescence, she had taken him to church services on Sundays and feast days, and each day she had prayed with him and for him. Apparently, she had done all she could, gently and supportively, to lead
When we enter into communion with one another in the life of the Church, we come broken, and far from the image and likeness that God intended when He created us. We, to a one, are in need of the healing that comes from a life in Christ. Yet we often hinder ourselves from healing because we fear being who we are. This fear is sometimes based on what others may think of us, or
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,
In Living Prayer, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote, “The Greek Fathers set this silence, which they called hesychia, both as the starting-point and the final achievement of prayer.” What does this silence look like? Silence is a way, a state of soul, in which all the powers of the soul and the faculties of the body are completely at peace, quiet, and recollected, perfectly alert yet free from any turmoil or agitation. 2 In the Philokalia,
A Sermon by Fr. Antony Hughes In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! The Reading is from John 7:37-52; 8:12 “He who believes in me, as the scripture says, ‘Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive.” “Do you not know,” writes
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