By Father Stephen Freeman, January 24, 2018 Somewhere along the years, I gained a useful insight about “doing nothing.” On the whole, it’s the lousiest strategy for living that can be found. We were not created to be passive creatures. Our life is a gift of a good God, but we are not called to be passive recipients. Anyone who has struggled with a “besetting sin” will understand what I’m saying. Trying to “not” do
By Father Stephen Freeman, January 15, 2018 It is a commonplace in the Fathers to describe despair or sadness as the result of failing to get what we want. It sounds quite simple, but it cuts to the very heart of our sadness. There is a melancholy of our age that is born from the expectations of modernity. The mantra of progress and our belief that no matter the problems confronting us, there is always
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
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