Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, November 26, 2017 The lawyer had eyes and he could not see. He stood before God incarnate and did not know him. “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear,” Jesus often says. The same is true, of course, of eyes. The lawyer had healthy eyes and could not see and healthy ears and could not hear. He did hear something with his ears and saw
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Sunday, August 6, 2017 It is very important that we wrap our minds around the two truths when we are drawn to speak of the Holy Trinity. One, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the beating heart of our faith. Without it there is no Christianity. And Christianity where the Trinity is not central or has been forgotten or ignored has lost
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on the Feast of the Transfiguration, Sunday, August 6, 2017 It is very important that we wrap our minds around the two truths when we are drawn to speak of the Holy Trinity. One, that the doctrine of the Trinity is the beating heart of our faith. Without it there is no Christianity. And Christianity where the Trinity is not central or has been forgotten or ignored has lost
The Genesis story of the Judeo-Christian tradition is really quite extraordinary. It says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God, proceeding from free and overflowing love (Genesis 1:26). This flow is rediscovered and re-experienced by various imperfect people throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This sets us on a positive and hopeful foundation, which cannot be overstated. The Bible illustrates, through various stories, humanity’s objective unity with God, the total gratuity
The Eastern Christian spiritual tradition is not composed of “schools” as in the West, where they are typically associated with a particular religious order (for example, Benedictine, Carmelite, or Franciscan). Yet there is more than one approach in the East. The one favored on Athos is known as hesychasm, from the Greek word hesychia, translated as “stillness.” It flourished especially in the fourteenth century on Athos, at a time when a controversy arose over the
Around the year 300 the first signs of the monastic movement began to appear. Monks settled down in various places, first in uninhabited regions, and then in the desert. Scholars are still arguing over the origins of monasticism. Obviously there were some non-Christian sources. The Bible itself issues no call to monastic life. Monasticism is a broadly human movement that can be found in all religions, a primordial longing to live for God alone, to
Rudolph Otto in his book The Idea of the Holy says that when someone has an authentic experience of the Holy, they find themselves caught up in two opposite movements at the same time: the mysterium tremendum and the mysterium fascinosum, a scary mystery and a very alluring mystery. We both draw back from and are pulled forward into a kind of liminal space where we are not at home at all and yet totally
The final word for mysticism, after the optimistic explosion that we usually call hope and the ensuing sense of safety, is an experience of deep rest. It’s the verb I’m told that is most used by the mystics: “resting in God.” All this striving and this need to perform, climb, and achieve becomes, on some very real level, unnecessary. It’s already here, now. I can stop all this overproduction and over-proving of myself. That’s Western
God always entices us through love. Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change, is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. If the mystics say that one way, they say it a thousand ways. But because most of
The Eastern Christian spiritual tradition is not composed of “schools” as in the West, where they are typically associated with a particular religious order (for example, Benedictine, Carmelite, or Franciscan). Yet there is more than one approach in the East. The one favored on Athos is known as hesychasm, from the Greek word hesychia, translated as “stillness.” It flourished especially in the fourteenth century on Athos, at a time when a controversy arose over the
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