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Prayer of the Heart in an Age of Technology and Distraction, Part 1

By Fr. Maximos (Constas) I was intrigued by the organic connections that the feast of the Presentation which we’re still celebrating and obviously of the Mother of God with the Crucifixion and Resurrection, largely through the prophecy of Symeon, who at this remarkable moment in the Temple says that this Child is a sign that will be spoken against and is set for the rising and falling of many in Israel, and turning to the Theotokos he

Why the Orthodox Honor Mary

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 30, 2015  The most difficult part of my Orthodox experience to discuss with the non-Orthodox is the place and role of the Mother of God in the Church and in my life. It is, on the one hand, deeply theological and even essential to a right understanding of the Orthodox faith, while, on the other hand, being intensely personal beyond the bounds of conversation. I am convinced, as well, that

Monday of the Holy Spirit

On the day after every Great Feast, the Orthodox Church honors the one through whom the Feast is made possible. On the day following the Nativity of the Lord, for example, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (December 26). On the day after Theophany, we commemorate St John the Baptist (January 7), and so on. Today we honor the all-Holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, Who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost in

The Ascension of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

Jesus did not live with his disciples after his resurrection as he had before his death. Filled with the glory of his divinity, he appeared at different times and places to his people, assuring them that it was he, truly alive in his risen and glorified body. To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:3). It

The Sixth Wednesday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Persons in Communion: From Individual to Person (Part I)

The Body of Christ is not only unity but interchange, by which the ‘movement of love’ of the Trinity is conveyed to humankind. This movement, in which each effaces himself in order to give, is the transition from individual to person, a growing to maturity certainly, but only achieved by means of a succession of death-and-resurrections, in the course of which we are stripped down and recreated. We become unique, escape the repetitive character of

The Fourth Friday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Paschal Gift

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 18, 2017  It is impossible to describe the joy of Pascha, particularly as I experience it as a priest. This year, I was deeply aware that I stand in a place that was both created for me, and for which I am unworthy. The joy of such a combination is the realization of the Gift. When you are trying to find a gift for someone, the most difficult part, it

The Third Friday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! A Pascha of Beauty – In a Soviet Prison – 1928

Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 8, 2018  Serge Schmemann, son of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his wonderful little book, Echoes of a Native Land, records a letter written from one of his family members of an earlier generation, who spent several years in the prisons of the Soviets and died there. The letter, written on the night of Pascha in 1928 is to a family member, “Uncle Grishanchik” (This was Grigory Trubetskoi who had managed to emigrate

RENEWAL FRIDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! OF TIME AND ETERNITY: THE RESURRECTION (Part II)

In the passages in which it addresses the Resurrection, then, the New Testament witnesses not to the resuscitation of a corpse, and certainly nothing like a return to the life of this world. It addresses rather the entire passage of Jesus from earthly mode of existence to a spiritual and eternal mode of existence. The Jesus whom faith proclaims as the Lord of the universe is no longer defined and limited by time and space,

RENEWAL THURSDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! OF TIME AND ETERNITY: THE RESURRECTION (Part I)

Nothing about Jesus is so misunderstood, misrepresented, trivialized and falsified as the Resurrection. Everything in the Gospels has to be understood in light of the Resurrection. Christian faith takes its meaning from the Resurrection—every claim about Jesus, every notion of what it means to live in trusting hope, every view of the world, every take on reality. What the Christian knows of God—with “knowledge” that is qualitatively different from knowledge about anything or anyone else—comes

RENEWAL WEDNESDAY. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! HUMAN NATURE IS HEALED

CHRISTOS ANESTI!  CHRIST IS RISEN! One has to distinguish most carefully between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. Nature is healed and restored with a certain compulsion, by the mighty power of God’s omnipotent and invincible grace. One may even say, by some “violence of grace.” The wholeness is in a way forced upon human nature. For in Christ all human nature (the “seed of Adam”) is fully and completely cured