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Members of one another (Part VI)

02/07/2019

In the monk’s relationship with the world, St Silouan distinguishes a double movement. First, through prayer the monk withdraws into himself, shutting out the world, gradually liberating himself from visual imagery and discursive thinking, and so entering into the image-free stillness of the heart. But then, within the depths of his own heart, he rediscovers his solidarity with all humankind and with the whole creation. So the monk’s flight from the world turns out to

From Image to Likeness (Part I)

01/09/2019

Since we are in the image of God we are therefore in the image of Christ, and it is only in Christ that we discover the truth about ourselves. He alone is the one to whom the Beatitudes fully apply; the poor man who receives himself unceasingly at the hands of the Father and whose royal gentleness transforms the earth into a Eucharist, the ‘pure heart’ like a still lake in which each discerns his

The Disenchanted World

11/02/2018

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 6, 2015 A very apt word for the world we live in is: disenchanted. It was first used by Max Weber and a number of others to describe a certain aspect of the modern world – the absence of the sacred. Where people of earlier eras and other cultures have experienced the world around them as charged with divine power (of various sorts), we simply experience the world as inert. There

Abraham at the End of the World

07/20/2018

By Father Stephen Freeman, January 24, 2015 This is an exercise in the Orthodox reading of the Scriptures. My thoughts frequently return to this story and this line of thought. This article is greatly expanded from an earlier version. The habits of modern Christians run towards history: it is a lens through which we see the world. We see a world of cause and effect, and, because the past is older than the present, we look

Messiness in the Modern World

07/13/2018

By Father Stephen Freeman, January 26, 2015 Salvation can be messy. I believe this with all my heart and so I state it at the outset of this article. As such, it marks me as a heretic in Modernity. I not only believe that salvation is messy – I believe that messiness is pretty much inherent to salvation. And along with that, I believe that our aversion to messiness (in all things) is a peculiar affliction of

The Living God. The World in its Depths

07/12/2018

The Living God “O Lord of Love,” the soul replies, “if I call you Love, if I discover in you Love without limits, I do not seek in any way to deify a ‘feeling.’ Love without limits is not a ‘feeling of love’; is it not some subjective, human sentiment. “My Love, you are by no means some metaphysical attribute or psychological experience. Nor are you some moral imperative. You are not, either, an impersonal

“The World”

07/09/2018

Living in this consumer-driven world, we are all deeply infected by what some call “affluenza,” a toxic and blinding disease with the basic assumption that more is always better and more of self is always good. It is fair to say that such invisible assumptions of any culture are as toxic and as blinding as the so-called “hot sins” of drunkards and prostitutes, though they are much harder to recognize as “sin” because we are

What the Fathers Sought

06/12/2018

What the Fathers sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion in “the world.” They sought a way to God that was uncharted and freely chosen, not inherited from others who had mapped it out beforehand. They sought a God whom they alone could find, not one who was “given” in a set,

Monday of the Fourth Week of Great Lent: Loving your Neighbour in Need. Make your Love as Big as the World.

03/12/2018

Loving your Neighbour in Need A brother asked an aged monk: ‘There are two brothers: one of them leads a life of solitude six days a week and does much penance, while the other is dedicated to the service of the sick. Which of the two is behaving in the way that is more acceptable to God?’ The old man answered him: ‘The brother who is always making a retreat would never attain the heights

Society: Compassion (Part III)

02/08/2018

It is helpful to observe that repentance through compassion is perhaps nowhere more available to us than in our mediated relationships with society. Living in the world, we are surrounded constantly by stories of awful vice and sin, found in the news, on the web, told through friends and the like. Our usual instinct, which is one strongly encouraged in the secular world, is to sit in judgment of the wrongs we hear about on

Archive

Members of one another (Part VI)

From Image to Likeness (Part I)

The Disenchanted World

Abraham at the End of the World

Messiness in the Modern World

The Living God. The World in its Depths

“The World”

What the Fathers Sought

Monday of the Fourth Week of Great Lent: Loving your Neighbour in Need. Make your Love as Big as the World.

Society: Compassion (Part III)

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