Category: Family

No Wedding Vows

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 165 Leave a Comment on %s
Few things differ more clearly between Eastern and Western Christianity than the service of Holy Matrimony. There are things found in Western Christian Marriage ceremonies that cannot be found in the East just as there are things in the East that cannot be found in the West. In many languages of the Eastern Churches, the service for a marriage is referred to as the “Crowning” – named for the central act within…

My Daddy’s Demon

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 25 Leave a Comment on %s
I hesitated before I wrote “My Daddy’s Demon,” as a title for this article – I mean no disrespect for my father. But it is a reference to my own life, for as I’ve grown older, I discover that the things I wrestle with are not very different than those with which my father wrestled. Perhaps his father wrestled with them as well. Recently I wrote that “we are all connected.” This…

Wake Up!

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 44 Leave a Comment on %s
God wants man to attend chiefly to two things: To eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience which [God] has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Despite the fact that…

Hate Your Father?

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 35 Leave a Comment on %s
Do you hate your father? Do you hate your mother? Christ says: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:26). Of course, any Christian with a modicum of understanding knows that such a verse is not to be taken literally. Christ does not mean that we should hate anyone.…

The Greatest Generation

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 12 Leave a Comment on %s
A recent conversation within the comments gives the occasion for this post. The heart of the question – which is more difficult – marriage or monasticism? My own thoughts are that everything is extremely difficult. In our modern world, even the most fundamental structures of society have been eroded. In American culture we have re-imagined the family – with the result that today a majority of children grow up in a non-traditional…

The Hypostatic Nearness of You (A Repost)

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 5 Leave a Comment on %s
Originally posted in February 2007. I have updated a few things. It is a piece that is quite relevant as my youngest child graduates high school this week. The fullness only grows. Sometimes I sit down to write with an idea and I know that I am either getting ready to write something good, or something really bad. That is how I feel about this particular topic. I have good feelings about…

Blue Highways

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 16 Leave a Comment on %s
A few years back there was an American travel book called Blue Highways. The title referred to American maps on which the smaller roads are printed in blue, while the major arteries, the Interstate System, are printed in red. The book was about a trip across America on the “blue” highways. It was almost time-travel since America prior to the 1960’s was largely without an Interstate system. Blue highways are the land…

Letter from Butyrskaya Prison – Pascha 1928

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 4 Leave a Comment on %s
Serge Schmemann, son of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his wonderful little book, Echoes of a Native Land, records a letter written from one of his family members of an earlier generation, who spent several years in the prisons of the Soviets and died there. The letter, written on the night of Pascha in 1928 is to a family member, “Uncle Grishanchik” (This was Grigory Trubetskoi who had managed to emigrate to Paris). This…

Turning Points

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 49 Leave a Comment on %s
On February 15, 1998, on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, my family and I were received into the Orthodox Church by Chrismation, bringing both the end to a very long pilgrimage, and the beginning to one far longer. It is significant to myself and my family, that this year the calendar has come back around to where it was 11 years ago. Thus this Sunday, February 15, will be exactly eleven…

Prayers By the Lake XCV – Children and Saints

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 4 Leave a Comment on %s
XCV     Children and saints cling to You, O Lord, the rest rebel against You. Children and saints are the boundary between the Kingdom of existence and the shadow of nonexistence.1   Guardians call themselves parents and cast Your children off crags into chasms.   Guardians presume that they are parents, and so they direct Your children as though they were their own property. Truly, they are directing nothing but aberrations…