By Father Stephen Freeman, May 19, 2018 Grushenka, a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, relates a now-famous fable about an old woman: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of fire. And her guardian angel stood thinking: what good deed of hers can I
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 25, 2020 I have written from time to time about the concept expressed in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, “Forgive everyone for everything.” It is a quote taken from the fictional Elder Zosima, but it is certainly a sentiment well within the bounds of Orthodox Christian thought. I have been challenged from time to time by people arguing that we cannot forgive those who have not sinned against us – that this right
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 10, 2021 There is a story related in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov about an old woman who was quite wicked. She dies and goes to hell to the great distress of her guardian angel. The angel searches for any possible good deed to plead on her behalf and finds a rotten onion – something the old woman had given to a beggar. The angel takes the onion and, with it, begins to
The sin of Adam is cosmic in its effects, destroying as it does the primal harmony that prevailed between humans and the rest of creation. So Adam exclaims in his ‘Lament’: In paradise was I joyful and glad: The Spirit of God rejoiced me, and suffering was a stranger to me. But when I was driven forth from paradise cold and hunger began to torment me. The beasts and the birds that were gentle and
Members of One Another (Part I) ‘Love all creation,’ says Starets Zosima in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov: ‘Love all creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand within it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.’ This ‘divine mystery’ of which Starets Zosima speaks is precisely the interdependence, the reciprocal
Introduction: Creation and the Virtue of Silence In the Philokalia, St. Anthony of Egypt describes nature as a book that reveals the beauty of God’s creation: “Creation [he says] declares in a loud voice its Maker and master.” Or, as St. Maximus the Confessor claims in the 7th century, the whole world is a “cosmic liturgy.” What, then, is the Orthodox theological and spiritual vision of the world? As a young child, accompanying the priest
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