Tag: Communion

Reading in Communion

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 63 Leave a Comment on %s
“Seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear…” (Matt. 13:13) This is Jesus’ description of those who encountered Him but did not understand. Just because we see something doesn’t mean we see it. Just because we hear something doesn’t mean we’ve heard it. This is particularly true of Holy Scripture. Just because we read it doesn’t mean we’ve read it. Why do we read the Scriptures? I assume that…

All In The Head

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 46 Leave a Comment on %s
Some questions are so obvious we fail to ask them. Is it all in the head? The question is whether the sense of spiritual, refers to anything other than ourselves. Is there any connection between myself and others, between myself and God, between myself and nature, or is such a perception only a set of ideas in my head? In classical theological/philosophical language, the question is between realism and nominalism. Nominalism, a…

The Communion of Saints in Prayer

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 19 Leave a Comment on %s
Biblical interpretation and doctrine based on Scripture have certain parameters that anyone rightly handling the word of truth must observe. The particular rule that I have in mind in this posting is the simple avoidance of anachronisms. That is, if an idea did not exist at the time of the New Testament, or shortly thereafter, but is, in fact, a modern development, then, whatever the writer might have meant, he could not…

The Intuition of Narnia

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 49 Leave a Comment on %s
A child, in a game of hide-and-seek, enters a large wardrobe. However, the wardrobe is more than furniture – it is a doorway into another world. That entrance is the introduction of the world of Narnia. C.S. Lewis’ children stories, beloved by one generation, are block-buster movies in today’s empire of Disney. In that wonderland of cinema, the books are overwhelmed in images of battling dwarves and unicorns. Echoes of Tolkien (and…

The Sacrament of Mercy

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 5 Leave a Comment on %s
There are many things that Christians think about that have been spiritualized out of existence. Our secular culture tends to grant two kinds of realities: the first is the reality of solid objects – or things we treat as solid objects. The second is the reality of thought and imagination. Of course, we do not really think that thought and imagination have any reality. This is one of the great weaknesses of…

Giving Thanks

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 6 Leave a Comment on %s
The act of giving thanks is among the most fundamental acts of love. It lies at the very heart of worship – in which, in the words of Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex, there is an exchange. In giving thanks we make an offering which itself is always inferior to what we have received – but which is itself an enlargement of the human heart. To live rightly in the presence and communion…

Religion as Neurotic Delusion

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 21 Leave a Comment on %s
From the Journal of Father Alexander Schmemann, Saturday, December 31, 1977 Father Tom gave me a circular Christmas letter from some Trappist in Massachusetts. In his monastery, all traditions meet (West, East, Buddhism), all rites, all experiences. Sounds rather barbarian. It is as if traditions were some sort of clothing. Dress as a Buddhist – and right away an “experience.” This cheap, murky wave of spirituality, this petty syncretism, these exclamations marks –…

Salvation, Ontology, Existential, and Other Large Words

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 56 Leave a Comment on %s
In recent posts I have contrasted morality with ontological, as well as existential, etc. I’ve had comments here and elsewhere in which people stumbled over the terms. The distinction offered is not a private matter. Orthodox theologians for better than a century have struggled to make these points as being utterly necessary to the life of the Orthodox faith. The following is a small article of mine that tries to do some…

The Day the Earth Stood Still

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 7 Leave a Comment on %s
Orthodox Christians (New Calendar) are currently observing a two-week fast in preparation for the Feast of the Dormition, a day which marks the death (“falling asleep”) of the Mother of God. For those for whom such feasts are foreign, it is easy to misunderstand what the Orthodox are about – and to assume that this is simply a feast to Mary because we like that sort of thing. Flippant attitudes fail to…

The Specific Truth

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The Truth, spoken in general, is, perhaps, the most easily spoken truth in all the world. It smooths over the rough edges of hard truth and says more easily that to which all can agree. If all can agree – it is not probably the truth – or it is not a truth worth speaking. As a priest of the Orthodox Church in America, I find the present time to be one…