Category: Fathers

Keeping It Real

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 16 Leave a Comment on %s
I have mentioned in earlier posts the new work by Aristotle Papanikolaou Being with God. It is not an easy read but brings its rewards. Papanikolaou offers the first comprehensive study of the works of Met. John Zizioulas and Vladimir Lossky, two of the 20th century’s most important Orthodox theologians, and offers a very helpful analysis and comparison. I was struck by his initial summary of the common assumption of both Zizioulas…

If We Walk in the Light…

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 15 Leave a Comment on %s
Some further thoughts beyond nature… In my previous post I quoted: “For the Fathers, indeed, personhood is freedom in relation to nature: it eludes all conditioning.” Perhaps my favorite and most reliable theological “buddy” is my wife. No one has the same shared history (we’ve known each other since I was 19 – we met in prayer group) and I can think of no one with whom I’ve shared more of my…

Who Am I?

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 34 Leave a Comment on %s
I ask a sensual man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I am I,” and he thinks of his body. I ask a thinking man, “Who are you?” and he replies, “I see two sides in myself and I make my way between them, associating first with one and then the other,” and he is thinking of his instinctive and conscious soul. I ask a spiritual man, “Who are you?” and he…

Saturday – the Most Holy Mother of God and the Faithful Departed

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 3 Leave a Comment on %s
On Saturdays, the Orthodox Church remembers the Most Holy Mother of God and the faithful departed. During Holy Week, the Church celebrates Christ’s descent to the dead and His trampling down death by death on Holy Saturday, just as a week before on Lazarus Saturday, it remembers Christ’s raising Lazarus from the tomb. Throughout the year, but especially during Great Lent, there are a number of Saturdays that are “Soul Saturdays,” or…

Thursdays – the Holy Apostles and Great Hierarchs

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 11 Leave a Comment on %s
Thursdays in the Orthodox Church are devoted to the Holy Apostles and the Great Hierarchs, especially St. Nicholas of Myra, the Wonderworker. As someone noted earlier, Thursday is the “twelfth” day of the week (if Sunday is eight) thus the association of the 12 Apostles – though which came first – the designation or the reckoning is known only to the angels – but that was Monday… St. Paul states: the Church…

A Little Child Enters the Temple

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 18 Leave a Comment on %s
The story in the gospel of Christ’s visits to the Temple in his childhood – the first at 40 days of age (marked by the Feast of the Presentation and the occasion of prophecy by the Elder Simeon and Hannah the Prophetess) and at age 12 when He is lost and later found giving instruction to the teachers and scribes, is a reminder of the importance of children in the Temple of…

Orthodoxy and Scripture – Fr. John Behr’s Lecture Revisted

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 27 Leave a Comment on %s
The earlier attempted debate (in the comments about St. Michael the Archangel) about Scripture and Orthodox understanding of the saints, prayers, etc., is rooted in an understanding of Scripture that is itself the very basis of the Christian faith. Attempts to remove the Bible from its proper Churchly context by the Reformation and modern day Protestants inevitably leads to a misunderstanding of the gospel and an attack on the very Church itself. Fr.…

Reading the Fathers

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 38 Leave a Comment on %s
I mentioned in a comment to a recent post that more people talk about the Fathers of the Church than actually read them. I also noted that good translations are hard to find. I wanted to offer some thoughts on reading the Fathers as well as some suggestions on how to begin that important task. First, you should understand that you will never read all the Fathers, or understand all that they…

Solidarity and Salvation

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 8 Leave a Comment on %s
Who is God? And what is man? What is wrong with man such that he needs to be “saved?” Is there more than one way of explaining this? The issue of salvation, of how man is brought back into a proper relationship with God, has been the primary concern of Christianity since its very inception. Christ himself begins His ministry with the proclamation, “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”…