Category: Conversion

The Gift of Hospitality

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 7 Leave a Comment on %s
This delightful gem from the Desert Fathers comes from Benedicta Ward’s The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers (157) There was a saint in Egypt who dwelt in a desert place. Far away from him there was a Manichean who was a priest (at least what they call a priest). Once, when this man was going to visit one of his confederates, night overtook him in the place where the orthodox saint wasā€¦

Healing the Tragic Soul of the Modern West

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 207 Leave a Comment on %s
Fr. Georges Florovsky did far more than forge a path back to the fathers for the Orthodox Church: he also mapped a route for the return of Western Christianity to its own Orthodox roots. Discussing the modern encounter of Orthodoxy with the churches of the West, he wrote: A historiosophical exegesis of the western religious tragedy must become the new ā€œpolemical theology.ā€ But this tragedy must be re-endured and relived, precisely asā€¦

The Kingdom Within

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 85 Leave a Comment on %s
In December of 1849, the Russian author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, stood waiting his turn for execution, having been found guilty of plotting against the Russian Tsar. At the last minute, under instructions from the Tsar, the sentence was commuted from death, to four years in a Siberian prison. Later that day, Dostoevsky wrote a famous letter to his brother, describing the experience. He was shaken and changed to the very core of hisā€¦

Faith and Rationality – Stumbling Into Paradise

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 45 Leave a Comment on %s
You have decided to buy a new computer. As the good and wise shopper that you are, you begin googling information and gathering recommendations for this so-important purchase. You are being rational. You learn, compare, question and weigh your options. When all is said, and done, you make a decision. Rationality is about our ability to weigh, sort, compare, judge, and the such like. I like to think of it as ourā€¦

The Doors of the Heart

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 32 Leave a Comment on %s
In the summer of 1952, an obscure event took place in London that would have a profound impact on the future of Orthodox Christianity in the English-speaking world. A seventeen-year-old English lad walked through the doors of St. Philip’s Russian Orthodox Church on Buckingham Palace Road (the Church has long since been torn down). Today he is known as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, one of the most important figures in the contemporary Orthodoxā€¦

Why Does God Hide?

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 74 Leave a Comment on %s
God hides. God makes Himself known. God hides. This pattern runs throughout the Scriptures. A holy hide-and-seek, the pattern is not accidental nor unintentional. It is rooted in the very nature of things in the Christian life. Christianity whose God is not hidden is not Christianity at all. But why is this so? In a previous article, I wrote: Our faith is about learning to live in the revealing of things thatā€¦

Food for the Soul

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 65 Leave a Comment on %s
I recently sat in on a meeting between my bishop and a young man looking to attend seminary. After getting the bishopā€™s approval, he asked a wise question: ā€œWhat should I be reading to prepare?ā€ I was as interested in the answer as he was. ā€œRead good literature,ā€ was the answer. This advice came from a bishop who is both a scholar and a monk (Archbishop Alexander Golitsyn). Read good literature. Thisā€¦

Humble and Meek and Middle-Class Morality

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 50 Leave a Comment on %s
  “He Will Exalt the Humble and Meek” There is an interesting historical pattern that has been repeated any number of times across the centuries. A group of the dispossessed and the poor come together within a religious movement. What begins with great enthusiasm succeeds. As it succeeds, those who were once poor and dispossessed manage to gather themselves into some sort of order. They learn to work hard, to avoid disaster,ā€¦

Saving Knowledge

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 51 Leave a Comment on %s
I have often used the example of riding a bicycle as an image of knowing God. Thereā€™s no difficulty learning how to ride if you donā€™t mind falling off for a while. But no matter how many years you have ridden, you cannot describe for someone else how you know what you know. But you know it. I also suspect that if you thought too much about riding a bicycle while youā€¦

Psychology as the New Sacrament

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 87 Leave a Comment on %s
The creation of the ā€œtwo-storey universeā€ was an unintended consequence of the Protestant Reformation. I have recently been enjoying Brad Gregoryā€˜s The Unintended Reformation, in which he traces the various historical currents and ideas that gave rise to the modern secular notion of the world. It is a magisterial treatment, and I recommend it to serious students of history, as well as anyone wanting to better understand our modern culture. I haveā€¦