Category: The Journey of Faith

“Do You Know Jesus?”

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 12 Leave a Comment on %s
I have written in numerous posts about various aspects of conversion to the Orthodox Christian faith. Oftentimes there is an unspoken agreement between myself as writer and those who read in which we assume that we understand each other – that when I say “conversion” we all know what I mean. On reflection there are several very distinct kinds of conversions – though each has a relationship to the other. There is…

Conversion Amidst Family Strife

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 28 Leave a Comment on %s
My posting yesterday spoke of things we could do as a family to strengthen ourselves in the common mind of Christ, allowing for the possibility of greater unity, particularly when considering something as major as conversion to the Orthodox faith. Sometimes, all efforts to the contrary, no peace or common mind arise. If someone believes the Orthodox faith to be the true faith, then finally, it would be a tragic sin not…

An Orthodox Family

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 22 Leave a Comment on %s
Yesterday, at least two of the comments on the post about my son’s birthday asked questions about the family and Orthodox conversion. This is extremely close to my heart – both because of the blessings we have enjoyed in our family – and the blessings and difficulties I have seen in others. I should quickly add that my own family then and now faces issues. In 1998, myself, my wife, my three…

Twenty Years Ago Today

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 19 Leave a Comment on %s
Twenty years ago today, I witnessed the birth of our third child, our son, James. Always a joy to our heart and those of others he has become a young man of whom I am proud and whose company is a delight. He was ten years old when I announced to the complete family that we were converting to Orthodoxy. He had heard nothing of this before and had been blissfully enjoying…

Solidarity and the Christian Life

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 3 Leave a Comment on %s
I commend the collection The Inner Kingdom, volume 1 of Bishop Kallistos Ware’s collected works. Writing in essay on martyrdom, Bishop Kallistos, offers the following observation and stories: This notion of exchange, of solidarity in suffering, forms one of the master-themes of Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. It is said of one of the most attractive of the Hasidic teachers, Rabbi Zusya, “He felt the sins of the people he met…

On the Other Hand

· Fr. Stephen Freeman
On the other hand – irony is probably too much to ask of youth. If I can remember myself in my college years, the most I could muster was sarcasm. Irony required more insight. There is a deep need for the appreciation of irony to sustain a Christian life. Our world is filled with contradiction. Hypocrisy is ever present even within our own heart. The failures of Church and those who are…

Reminder – I Am an Ignorant Man

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 8 Leave a Comment on %s
Last January I posted a note on Ignorance and God. It has since been translated and posted in both Romanian and French. My first thought was, “Great. My first taste of international recognition will be because I am an ignorant man.” That, of course, is a kindness from God. I would be in danger should I be known for something else. Within that first article I included a quote from Father Sophrony…

The Choices We Make

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 14 Leave a Comment on %s
Our culture celebrates the ability we have to choose – and so we think a lot about choices. We are told every four years that we get to “choose” our leaders (though the choices given to us might not be suitable in either direction). As I look back and think of my preaching over the years I can see a change – and not just a change wrought by my conversion to…

Reflections on Florovsky

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 4 Leave a Comment on %s
The following is from my earlier post of Florovsky on Ecumenism:  The entire western experience of temptation and fall must be creatively examined and transformed; all that “European melancholy” (as Dostoevsky termed it) and all those long centuries of creative history must be borne. Only such a compassionate co-experience provides a reliable path toward the reunification of the fractured Christian world and the embrace and recovery of departed brothers. It is not…

You Must Be Born From Above – John 3

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 14 Leave a Comment on %s
Absolutely one of the strangest conversations to occur anywhere in the gospels takes place between Jesus and the inquiring Nicodemus in the third chapter of John. Of course, at least one of its verses (or at least its Stephanus Pagination verse number) has become nationally famous as an attendee at almost all televised American sporting events (3:16). The language of being “born again” has passed into American Evangelical popular parlance for probably…