Glory to God for All Things

The Cross Within the Church

April 14, 2023April 14, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 19

The Church is the Cross through history. St. Paul wrote that he had determined to restrict his preaching to the Cross. (1 Cor. 2:2) This was not an effort to diminish the gospel. Rather, it was an effort to rightly understand the gospel. One of the great temptations of Christianity is to allow itself to become a “religion,” that is, to serve whatever role that religions of any sort play within a…

The Bridegroom and Judgment

April 10, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 15

Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse yourself crying: Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O our God. Through the Theotokos, have mercy on us. +…

The Frightful Path of Judas

April 7, 2023April 7, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 26

I recall the first time the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” struck my heart. I was attending the evening service of Maundy Thursday at my Episcopal parish when I was a student in college. There was communion, followed by the “stripping of the altar” that symbolized the arrest and scourging of Christ. But the phrase, “On the night in which He was betrayed,” haunted me through the rest…

Rest for Your Soul

April 3, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 46

If…then… Among the most alluring ideas in our lives are the notions of cause and effect, performance and award. Nothing seems more soothing than the simple promise that doing one thing leads to the reward of the other. It is predictable, subject to control, clearly delineates the rules of reward and punishment and makes obvious who deserves what. Nothing could be neater. The limit to this idea comes when we encounter living,…

The Limits of Holiness

March 30, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 18

I saw a commercical recently that proclaimed, “Freedom has no limits!” It sought to capture the modern imagination with what is a patently absurd statement. Everything in creation has limits – that is the nature of created things. It is nonetheless the case that we can imagine our life without limits – a shameless existence where nothing impedes our pleasure. This was the inner world of a young woman in Alexandria who…

To See Him Face to Face

March 24, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 27

“The self resides in the face.” – Psychological Theorist, Sylvan Tompkins +++ There is a thread running throughout the Scriptures that can be described as a “theology of the face.” In the Old Testament we hear a frequent refrain of “before Thy face,” and similar expressions. There are prayers beseeching God not to “hide His face.” Very clearly in Exodus, God tells Moses that “no one may see my face and…

A Modern Lent

March 19, 2023March 22, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 62

Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world. We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve how we look or how we feel. But changing how we eat in order to know God…

The Temptations of Identity

March 13, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 168

“Who am I?” The question of who we are is deceptively simple. When we begin to press the question, almost every answer that we can give is something other than the self. When we leave the (ideally) intimate communion of our early years and begin to forge our way into a social setting, an uncertainty begins to be our social companion. This questioning of identity (which is fairly normal) becomes the seedbed…

My New Book Has Been Released!

March 7, 2023March 8, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 41

I am pleased to announce that my new book, Face to Face, Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, has just been published and released by Ancient Faith. You can click on the link and order it. I hope to complete the audio version as soon as my voice comes back. This has been a long labor of love. Order the book here.

Forgiveness for All the Sundays to Come

February 25, 2023 · Fr. Stephen Freeman 73

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; (John17:20-21) The Elder Sophrony, together with St. Silouan, wrote about the “whole Adam.” By this, they meant all the human beings who have ever existed and those yet to come. For Silouan and Sophrony, this was something known in the present tense, a “hypostatic” knowledge of the fundamental unity of the human race.…