By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 8, 2015 A bad man cannot make a good world. “Something must be done!” If there were a possible slogan for the modern world, this would be it. Its power lies in its truth. Some things are tragic and unjust, broken and dysfunctional. Any analysis that suggested that nothing should be done will fall on deaf ears – and should. However, this is where the great temptation of modernity begins. Something must
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, August 8, 2015 Everyone likes things for various reasons. This is perhaps my favorite piece that I’ve done this year. I’m not entirely certain why. I think that in some way it touches on the fragility of our existence and even of our belief. I hope that rereading it might be a blessing for you as well. From a Facebook conversation: Though I wish I believed otherwise, in the depths of my being,
By David Bentley Hart, October 2003 It is true of Aristotle too: the dialectic of act and potency that, for sublunary beings, is inseparable from decay and death, or the scale of essences by which all things—especially various classes of persons—are assigned their places in the natural and social order. Stoicism offers an obvious example: a vision of the universe as a fated, eternally repeated divine and cosmic history, a world in which finite forms
We cannot love God unless we love God’s world. Christians [should] have always known this, because an incarnate God is a world-loving God; but now it takes on new meaning and depth as we realize the radical interrelationship and interdependence of all forms of life. . . . In sum, we are not called to love God or the world. Rather, we are called to love God in the world. We love God by loving the world. We love God through and with the world. But this turns out
By Abbot Tryphon, April 26, 2020 Let us allow this pandemic to be the force that transforms the world Entertainment has come to take on a central role in many people’s lives, becoming so important as to have replaced personal interaction with neighbors and friends. I’m old enough to remember the day when neighborhoods were filled with homes sporting large front porches. On hot summer nights families would be sitting on their porches, sipping lemonade
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 27, 2014 Listening to the Nativity collection of readings for the Vespers of Christmas Eve (there were eight of them), my mind drifted to the “jumbled mess” that is the Old Testament. We speak of it as if it were a single thing, when, it is many things (over 40), and some of those things are jumbled concatenations of other jumbled things. I can only imagine what someone coming to
By Fr. Michael Plekon “We like it when the “churching” of life is discussed, but few people understand what it means. Indeed, must we attend all the church services in order to “church” our life? Or hang an icon in every room and burn an icon-lamp in front of it? No, the “churching of life” is the realization of the whole world as one great church, adorned with icons— persons who should be venerated, honored,
When the desert monks left the inhabited world, every monk brought parts of his or her former life with them. Memories, thoughts, fantasies, regrets, old lusts, pride, unfulfilled desires, anger, fear, unresolved conflict and a host of other remnants of the “world” were present in their cells. At the same time, they found a new “world” in the desert in the lives of other monks, visitors, local towns and villages and the rich, yet austere
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 27, 2015 From a Facebook conversation: “Though I wish I believed otherwise, in the depths of my being, I do not believe any part of us survives death. I am, at the center of my consciousness, a materialist, and a reluctant atheist still. I fight this disposition daily, and it is becoming an enormous burden that I wish I could throw off. There are days where my doubt and despair
By Fr. Christopher Makiej Beloved in Christ, we have to see ourselves as being different than the world around us! As Christians we are called to be “in the world, but not of the world.” (John 15:19). The Scripture says “come out and be separate….” (2 Cor. 6:17) Yet this can be very difficult in a world that pressures us to conform to its ways and to be connected to it at all times. We
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