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The Second Monday of Great Lent. The Communion of Tradition

~By Father Stephen Freeman, June 15, 2023 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life–the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us–that which we have seen and heard we declare to

The First Wednesday of Great Lent. The Nature of Repentance

~Sermon preached by Dn. James Wilcox on Sunday, January 12, 2025 Matt. 4:12-17; Eph. 4:7-13 [Seven weeks ago] we witnessed the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry which began with Christ’s baptism in the Jordan…. [and] the first declaration of His public ministry, which is the call to “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Now when we hear the likes of such a statement — this call to “Repent!” — it often conjures up

ON THE PRESENTATION OF CHRIST IN THE TEMPLE

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Feast has no fewer than four different names. Each name recalls a different aspect of this Feast. What are they? First of all, today’s Feast is called the Presentation of Christ. This is because it commemorates the Presentation of Christ by His Mother in the Temple at Jerusalem exactly forty days after His Birth. As we can see from

Memory of Saint Timothy the Apostle

The Church commemorates Saint Timothy the Apostle. Saint Timothy was a faithful disciple of Saint Paul the Apostle and is addressed as the recipient of the First and Second Epistles to Timothy. These two books are a group of three books of the canonical New Testament, which are called pastoral epistles, because they addressed not to Christian communities but to spiritual shepherds-bishops with pastoral oversight of local churches, such as Timothy, who shepherded with ardor

The Synaxis of St. John the Baptist and Forerunner of Christ

The Synaxis of St. John the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord is an Orthodox feast day established in honor of this saint. The Church has a custom of glorifying those righteous servants of God who most closely served in a celebrated event on the day following certain great feast days. On the next day after Holy Theophany, or the Baptism of the Lord, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Forerunner and Baptist John, who

The Sixth Day of Christmas. The Incarnation of God, the Good News of the New Testament and the Mother of God

Alexandros Christodoulou With His incarnation, His humanization, God entered the innermost core of our lives in the most obvious way. He entered our circulatory system, our heart, the centre of everything, the centre of the universe. After He’d been expelled from our world, our body and our soul through our voluntary sin, He returned, through His incarnation, to our world, our body and our soul, becoming completely human and working for us as a human

The Seventeenth Day of Christmas Advent. A Virgin Gave Birth

~By Father Stephen Freeman, December 28, 2022 I was browsing through some online material recently and came across a conversation between a non-believing sceptic and a Christian apologist. The question was asked (right off the top): “Why a virgin birth?” The apologist did a decent job of responding, giving a fairly common explanation of “why Christ had to be born of a virgin.” Something about it left me empty. Thinking about it – I believe

The Hidden Gospel

~By Father Stephen Freeman, July 20, 2023 There is a genre of Scriptural writings that are described as “apocalyptic.” The book of Revelation, in Greek, is called “The Apocalypse.” Ezekiel and Daniel also have very strong passages described as apocalyptic. The term is very straightforward: it means “revealing what is hidden.” These books are described as “making known hidden things,” because their message is disguised under rather outlandish descriptions: beasts with ten horns, heavenly cities,

‘We Shall Be Saved through His Life’

Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos ‘For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life’ (Rom. 5, 10) In our spiritual tradition, the attitude of people towards God is often portrayed as being hostile. God and human beings seem to be two different worlds, between which there’s no love or co-existence, but rather a yawning chasm. It may

Are We Connected?

~By Father Stephen Freeman, August 30, 2023 How connected are we? Do your actions, thoughts, feelings, have an effect on me even if I am unaware (or on the other side of the world)? Is my existence bound within the existence of other human beings, or are we simply sharing the same planet for a period of time? Connections between people, particularly of a spiritual nature, were declared to be mere superstitions in the march