Stephen Freeman Archives - Page 3 of 4

The Sixth Friday of Great Lent. The Mystery of Holy Week

04/11/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 18, 2022 Among the more pernicious ideas that inhabit our contemporary world is the notion that we are all isolated, independent, and alone. Even when we gather, we think of ourselves as but one among many. Among the most glaring exceptions to this form of thought, however, are sporting events. People attend a football game and declare when it is finished, “We won!” or “We lost!” We feel genuine joy at the

The Sixth Thursday of Great Lent: The Bridegroom and Judgment

04/10/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 10, 2023 Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through the Theotokos, have

The Sixth Tuesday of Great Lent: Good Friday and Unbelief

04/08/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 22, 2022 Christmas and Easter are often difficult days for those who do not believe in God. Christians are more public about their faith than at other times of the year and this brings with it an annoyance. Christmas bespeaks the birth of God as a human being. Easter bespeaks a resurrection from the dead. For those who do not believe, such miracles, spoken of so glowingly and with such

Sunday of Saint Mary of Egypt. Finding God in the Heart of the Soul.

04/06/2025

By Father Stephen Freeman, March 12, 2020 The Prodigal Son is said to have “come to himself” when he was feeding the pigs in a foreign land. Hungry, lonely, having wasted his inheritance, it is said that he envied the pigs for their food. But, what does it mean that he “came to himself?” This is one of the primary stories of repentance in the Scriptures, as well as a primary story of forgiveness and

The Fifth Friday of Great Lent. The Frightful Path of Judas

04/04/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 7, 2023 I recall the first time the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” struck my heart. I was attending the evening service of Maundy Thursday at my Episcopal parish when I was a student in college. There was communion, followed by the “stripping of the altar” that symbolized the arrest and scourging of Christ. But the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” haunted

The Fourth Monday of Great Lent. The Church is the Cross through History

03/24/2025

By Father Stephen Freeman, April 14, 2023 St. Paul wrote that he had determined to restrict his preaching to the Cross. (1 Cor. 2:2) This was not an effort to diminish the gospel. Rather, it was an effort to rightly understand the gospel. One of the great temptations of Christianity is to allow itself to become a “religion,” that is, to serve whatever role that religions of any sort play within a culture and the

The Third Friday of Great Lent: The Eternal Cross-How Is the Lamb Slain from the Foundation of the World?

03/21/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, April 20, 2022 Among the many striking images in the book of Revelation, there is one that stands out in particular. In Chapter 13, vs 8, we read: “All who dwell on the earth will worship him [the beast], whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The passage is not unlike that in 1 Peter: “knowing that you

The Third Tuesday of Great Lent. A Modern Lent

03/18/2025

~By Fr Stephen Freeman, March 19, 2023 Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world. We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve how we look or how we feel. But changing how we eat in order to know God

Forgiveness for All the Sundays to Come

02/28/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, February 25, 2023 I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John17:20-21) The Elder Sophrony, together with St. Silouan, wrote about the “whole Adam.” By this, they meant all the human beings who have ever existed and those yet to come. For Silouan and Sophrony, this was something known in the present tense, a “hypostatic” knowledge of the fundamental unity of

The Temptations of Identity

02/24/2025

~By Father Stephen Freeman, March 13, 2023 “Who am I?” The question of who we are is deceptively simple. When we begin to press the question, almost every answer that we can give is something other than the self. When we leave the (ideally) intimate communion of our early years and begin to forge our way into a social setting, an uncertainty begins to be our social companion. This questioning of identity (which is fairly normal) becomes

Archive

The Sixth Friday of Great Lent. The Mystery of Holy Week

The Sixth Thursday of Great Lent: The Bridegroom and Judgment

The Sixth Tuesday of Great Lent: Good Friday and Unbelief

Sunday of Saint Mary of Egypt. Finding God in the Heart of the Soul.

The Fifth Friday of Great Lent. The Frightful Path of Judas

The Fourth Monday of Great Lent. The Church is the Cross through History

The Third Friday of Great Lent: The Eternal Cross-How Is the Lamb Slain from the Foundation of the World?

The Third Tuesday of Great Lent. A Modern Lent

Forgiveness for All the Sundays to Come

The Temptations of Identity

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