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ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Friday of Pascha: Getting Your Mind Right

05/28/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 19, 2016 In the classic movie, Cool Hand Luke (1967), the lead character struggles in a Deep South prison chain-gang setting. Very cool towards authority, he is finally, at the Warden’s direction, beaten by the guards. There is a memorable bit of dialog: Luke (lying in a grave he’s been forced to dig): Oh God! Oh God! I pray to God you don’t hit me anymore. I’ll do anything you say, but

God by The Numbers

02/05/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 11, 2015 Math is very strange stuff. A serious question within the community of science and math is whether math is an invention or a discovery. Is it something that we have just made up out of our head, or is it something we observed and discovered (because it is already there)? This might sound like a silly thing to wonder about, but it is indeed most serious. The ancients

Christ and Nothing (Part IV)

06/25/2020

By David Bentley Hart, October 2003 The word “nihilism” has a complex history in modern philosophy, but I use it in a sense largely determined by Nietzsche and Heidegger, both of whom not only diagnosed modernity as nihilism, but saw Christianity as complicit in its genesis; both it seems to me were penetratingly correct in some respects, if disastrously wrong in most, and both raised questions that we Christians ignore at our peril. Nietzsche’s case

Second Tuesday after Pascha. Death and Resurrection: The Illusion of Separation

04/28/2020

Hopefully we begin life as “holy innocents” in the Garden, with a conscious connection to Being. The gaze of loving, caring parents can mirror us as the beloved and gives us a primal experience of life as union. But sooner or later we all have to leave the Garden. We can’t stay there. We begin the process of individuation, which includes at least four major splits, ways of forgetting our inherent oneness and creating an

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 16

02/12/2020

By Fr. Maximos (Constas) If I sit down to say the Jesus Prayer I will very quickly have certain kinds of thoughts running through my mind, usually very simple distractions such as “I think I left the oven on! I should leave my prayer and go check,” or “I forgot to call my mother,” or “I just got a great idea for a sermon!” All these superficial distractions are the first thing that happens to

Being, Keeping, Clinging, Focusing

02/04/2020

Being Joyful Witnesses To speak about Jesus and his divine work of salvation shouldn’t be a burden or a heavy obligation. When we go to people feeling that unless they accept our way of knowing Jesus, they are lost and we are failures, it is hardly possible to be true witnesses. It is a great joy when people recognize through our witness that Jesus is the divine redeemer who opened for them the way to

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 13

01/22/2020

By Fr. Maximos (Constas) I’d like to say a few words about the breathing practices that are associated with the Jesus Prayer because I think this is one of the most misunderstood things. People sometimes warn people about this, which I don’t agree with. As we’ve said over and again, it’s not easy to free ourselves from distractions. One priest friend said we can’t even say one single Jesus Prayer without being distracted. How wretched

The Second Wednesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Members of One Another (Part X): The Spiritual Value of the Human Body

05/08/2019

In St Silouan’s teaching concerning the bonds that unite us humans to the rest of creation, there are three points that I find particularly interesting: The Starets underlines the spiritual value of the human body. While he adopts a negative attitude towards the passions, he is fundamentally positive in his estimate of our human physicality. We are to hate, not our bodies as such, but the sinfulness that corrupts them. In its present fallen state

Law and Grace. An Economy of Grace

02/25/2019

God’s freely given grace is a humiliation to the ego because free gifts say nothing about being strong, superior, or moral. Thus only the soul can understand grace, never the mind or the ego. The ego does not know how to receive things freely or without logic. It likes to be worthy and needs to understand in order to accept things as true. The ego prefers a worldview of scarcity or quid pro quo, where

On Silence and Stillness (I)

09/04/2018

On Silence and Stillness (I) Although they are often used interchangeably, the terms “silence” and “stillness” are not synonymous. Silence implies in part an absence of ambient noise, together with an inner state or attitude that enables us to focus, to “center” on the presence of God and to hear His “still, small voice.” To silence, the virtue of stillness adds both tranquility and concentration. Stillness implies a state of bodily rest coupled with the

Archive

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fourth Friday of Pascha: Getting Your Mind Right

God by The Numbers

Christ and Nothing (Part IV)

Second Tuesday after Pascha. Death and Resurrection: The Illusion of Separation

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 16

Being, Keeping, Clinging, Focusing

Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 13

The Second Wednesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Members of One Another (Part X): The Spiritual Value of the Human Body

Law and Grace. An Economy of Grace

On Silence and Stillness (I)

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