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The End of the Modern World

09/21/2026

~By Fr. Stephen Freeman, October 7, 2024 “Welcome to the 21st Century!” Pick your issue, and if its outcome conforms to a popular, desired norm you are likely to hear such a greeting. The greeting also implies that a less than desirable outcome is wrong because it doesn’t belong to our time. It might be characterized as “medieval,” “outmoded,” “out-of-date,” “primitive,” “Neanderthal,” “reactionary,” etc. None of which actually describe anything. Such labels are value judgments and

The First Friday of Great Lent: Get Real for Lent

02/27/2026

By Father Stephen Freeman According to St. Basil, God is the “only truly Existing.” Our own existence is a gift from God who is our Creator. None of us has “self-existing” life. We exist because God sustains us in existence – in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). Sin is the rejection of this gift of God – a movement away from true existence. +++ Much of our attention in the modern world is

Grace and the Handbasket

02/04/2026

~By Father Stephen Freeman, July 4, 2023 A difficulty arises when making cultural observations – things rarely turn out as expected. The Roman Empire fell once upon a time, although the fall wasn’t nearly as clean and final as Gibbons imagined and it wasn’t really the Roman Empire that fell. But ever since the “Roman Empire fell” people have been rehearsing the lessons learned and expecting its repeat. Yet the empires (or whatever is expected to fall)

The Fifth Monday of Great Lent: A Full Life

04/15/2024

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 15, 2018 What constitutes a full life? In a consumer culture, I would suppose a full life to be one of maximum consumption, enjoyment, and productivity. We like being happy. Would a full life include suffering? The answer to such questions, for Christians, are found in Christ Himself. Christ alone fulfills what it means to be truly human. So, what does that mean? Christ does not flee from suffering. We are

The Secular Mind Versus the Whole Heart

10/02/2023

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 6, 2017  Thinking is among the most misleading things in the modern world, or, to be more precise, thinking about thinking is misleading. For a culture that puts such a great emphasis on materiality, our thinking about thought is decidedly spooky. The philosophy underlying our strangely-constructed modernity is called nominalism (of which there are many formal varieties). Its imaginary construct of the world consists of decidedly separate objects, united only by our thinking

Living in the Real World

09/02/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, August 21, 2016  Nothing exists in general. If something is beautiful or good, it is manifest in a particular way at a particular time such that we can know it. And this is our true life. A life lived in a “generalized” manner is no life at all, but only a fantasy. However, this fantasy is increasingly the character of what most people think of or describe as the “real world.”

The Secular Mind versus the Whole Heart

06/03/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 19, 2016 Thinking is among the most misleading things in the modern world, or, to be more precise, thinking about thinking is misleading. For a culture that puts such a great emphasis on materiality, our thinking about thought is decidedly spooky. The philosophy underlying our strangely-constructed modernity is called nominalism (of which there are many formal varieties). It’s imaginary construct of the world consists of decidedly separate objects, united only by our

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Third Monday of Pascha: Knowing God – After Pascha

05/09/2022

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 10, 2007  We approach things so differently in our modern world (as opposed to the ancient world). All of us have access to a great deal of information, although the information that comes to us when we are in the passive mode is less than useless (here I mean television and popular media). Thus I would paraphrase Our Lord and say, “How hard it is for a couch potato to enter the

Living in the Real World

03/01/2021

By Stephen Freeman, November 24, 2015  Nothing exists in general. If something is beautiful or good, it is manifest in a particular way at a particular time such that we can know it. And this is our true life. A life lived in a “generalized” manner is no life at all, but only a fantasy. However, this fantasy is increasingly the character of what most people think of or describe as the “real world.” A

The Elves Have Left the Building

02/25/2021

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 3, 2015  Children, at their best, have an amazing ability to wonder. The world is fresh and new for them, with many things being seen and encountered for the very first time. They sometimes come to wrong conclusions, but even their wrong conclusions can be revealing to adults. Adults often fall into habit when it comes to experiencing the world. We drive to and from work by the same routes

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