By Father Stephen Freeman, September 17, 2019 Fr. Alexander Schmemann famously said that sacraments do not make things into something else so much as they reveal things to be what they are. We hear this in St. Basil’s Liturgy when we ask God to “show” the bread and wine to be the Body and Blood of Christ. The Baptismal liturgy does the same, asking God to “show this water…to be the water of redemption, the
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 3, 2016 The world ended [the] Sunday before last (Pascha). No. You weren’t “left behind.” But you might not have noticed. And our not noticing is, strangely, at the very heart of our problem. It is also at the heart of the Christian faith. What I am describing is the “apocalyptic” character of Christianity – the fact that it is a revealing of something hidden. And this is not a
14,000 Holy Infants were killed by King Herod in Bethlehem. When the time came for the Incarnation of the Son of God and His Birth of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, Magi in the East beheld a new star in the heavens, foretelling the Nativity of the King of the Jews. They journeyed immediately to Jerusalem to worship the Child, and the star showed them the way. Having worshipped the divine Infant, they did not
Righteous Simeon the God-Receiver was, according to the testimony of the holy Evangelist Luke, a just and devout man waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him (Luke 2:25). God promised him that he would not die until the promised Messiah, Christ the Lord, came into the world. Ancient historians tell us that the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.) wished to include texts of Holy Scripture in the
By David Bentley Hart, October 2003 It is worth asking ourselves what this tableau, viewed from the vantage of pagan antiquity, would have meant. A man of noble birth, representing the power of Rome, endowed with authority over life and death, confronted by a barbarous colonial of no name or estate, a slave of the empire, beaten, robed in purple, crowned with thorns, insanely invoking an otherworldly kingdom and some esoteric truth, unaware of either
All of Paul’s major themes are contained in seed form in his conversion experience, of which there are three descriptions in Acts written by Luke (chapters 9, 22, and 26). Paul’s own account is in the first chapter of Galatians: “The Gospel which I preach . . . came through the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:11-12). Paul never doubts this revelation. The Christ that he met was not the Christ in the flesh (Jesus); it
THIS DAY is set aside as a memorial of Stephen, the first Christian. Once again, the church seems to take a counter-intuitive approach, reminding us of sin and suffering hard on the heels of the joyful celebration of the Nativity. But it is possible to see the reason behind this decision. In Advent we were reminded that our longing for the light of Christ is conditioned by the darkness that often surrounds us. In remembering
Bright Thursday On Bright Thursday the Gospel reading is John 3:1-15, which mentions the Pharisee Nicodemus who came by night to speak to Christ. The Lord told him that a man could not see the Kingdom of God unless he were born again. Nicodemus, taking Him much too literally, could not understand how such a thing was possible. The Savior then clarified His words, saying that one must be born “of water and the Spirit”
Tears, not Sorrows When you hear me speak of tears, you need not think of sorrow. The tears of which I am speaking bring more joy than all the laughter of the world can gain for you. Do you doubt my words? Then listen to St Luke who tells us how the apostles, after being beaten with rods by order of the Sanhedrin, were filled with joy. [Acts 5:41] Clearly that joy was not the
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