~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
By Father Stephen Freeman, May 11, 2018 Our culture changes things. One of its myths is that changing things results in a better world. And so we endure unending advertisements for the newest, the latest, and the improved. Very few things, apart from medications, are tested for their consequences. As such, we are a society in perpetual experiment. It reminds me of a local joke. The last words of a redneck … “Hold my beer.
By Father Stephen Freeman, August 4, 2014 “Becoming human” is a baffling phrase. Surely we are simply born as human beings. Of course this is true, but the nature of the modern world allows us to configure our lives in ways that can be described as “less than human.” When we visit a zoo and see a tiger pacing in its cage, we are not seeing a “true” tiger, but a distortion of the animal. Tigers cannot
By Father Stephen Freeman, July 31, 2014 Being human is a cultural event. No one is human by themselves and no one becomes human without the help of those around them. This is so obvious it should not need to be stated, but contemporary man often imagines himself to be his own creation. The exercise of individual freedom is exalted as the defining characteristic of our existence: “I am what I choose to be.” To suggest that
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 30, 2018 We live in a world of practicality, a fact that has produced the marvels of technology that power us along and connect the world in its web. I have a nearly two-year-old grandson who has grasped some of this connection for many months now. He loves buttons – not the ones on your shirt – but the ones on any device. If there is a button in reach,
Sermon preached on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women, May 4, 2014 by Fr. Antony Hughes Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen. I always ask myself these days, when preparing a sermon, why does anyone need to hear this? How can I bring something out of the text that will help people understand more and live more beautiful lives? What do the Myrrh-bearing Women have
Published by Pemptousia Partnership on November 8, 2021 Metropolitan Panteleimon of Antinoes The Synaxis of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and all the Heavenly Powers The love of Almighty God is a quality which is externalized through the creation, from non-being, of both the invisible world, or that of the angels, and the creation of the material and visible universe. The culmination of the whole creative love of God was expressed with the formation of human beings and
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 19, 2017 A young man imagines that the mistakes he is making are, with more effort, things that he will correct. An older man knows better. It can be a source of humility, or a source of painful regret. Humility is to be preferred. I wonder if this by itself is the reason why the spiritual life is not populated with wise young people. If you are young and holy,
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
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, September 26, 2016 Catholic philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue), has presented perhaps the most cogent account of our modern cultural landscape. It is not an account of how one set of ideas gave way to another set of ideas, but how a once-upon-a-time consensus gave way to our current collection of competing truth-claims and world-views. Indeed, he demonstrates (Whose Justice, Which Rationality) that our present confusion is not primarily represented by
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