Tag: religion of the heart

Why Does God Hide?

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 43 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 my previous article, I wrote: Our faith is about learning to live in the revealing of things that…

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…

The Restless Christian

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 39 Leave a Comment on %s
Fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. Thou hast made us for thyself and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. Augustine’s Confessions, 1.1 St. Augustine speaks of a restlessness within the human heart – an apparently timeless hunger of the soul. The story of his own life marks a wandering and a search. He did not think or reason his way…

Where Orthodoxy Stands

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 74 Leave a Comment on %s
Many of the postmodern challenges to the modern perspective are questions about the character and nature of knowledge. A particular focus has been on the concept of objectivity. When we view something objectively, we think of ourselves as standing outside the thing being observed. We are able to “walk around” it and examine it from all sides. We remove our prejudice and assumptions and simply observe. The result of this process is…

The Sacrament of the Heart

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 101 Leave a Comment on %s
Scholars of the New Testament occasionally conjecture about what is termed the ipsissima verba of Christ, the “very words themselves.” It is a term for those sayings that are considered historically authentic beyond question. One saying which in my opinion belongs to such a category are the so-called “words of institution” (“this is my body…this is my blood”). They are certainly the words with the earliest attestation of any spoken by Christ.…

The Long Journey Home

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 16 Leave a Comment on %s
It’s not getting to the land of the dead that’s the problem. It’s getting back. – Capt. Hector Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean at World’s End It is possible to speak in great detail about the origins and problems of the “false-self” (ego). Once the characteristics of the ego, it’s narrative, defenses, aggression, and unrelenting dominance of the mind are identified, it is not only easy to see, it is difficult not…

Is Anybody There? Speaking to the Heart

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 30 Leave a Comment on %s
“Talking to you is like talking to a fence post!” I can still hear the words. I don’t remember who said them – but I heard them sometime in my teenage years. The occasion was doubtless some sort of argument. There were many things to argue about: Love, Peace, War, Jesus, Drugs, Sex, Rock ‘n Roll. There was a great deal of talk and almost no conversation. But why was the experience…

Evangelism and the Ego

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 43 Leave a Comment on %s
Do I have a responsibility to rescue the ego-driven narrative of your life? Does the gospel of Christ exist to confirm your opinions and strengthen your arguments against the threats of a world-gone-mad? How should we evangelize the neurotic? I use the term “neurotic” lightly, under the assumption that we can all be described by the term to a greater or lesser extent. The ego, as used here, refers to a false-self,…

Evangelizing the Neurotic

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 45 Leave a Comment on %s
I greatly appreciate the response and questions to the article by Fr. Meletios on parish life and ego-driven needs. I am working on an article with reflections.  I will be focusing particularly on the question of how we evangelize those whose egos are the driving force in their lives. If the ego (as defined by Fr. Meletios) has no true existence – what is there to be saved? Most of us have…

When Taking Cover Is Not Enough

· Fr. Stephen Freeman 21 Leave a Comment on %s
The following article by Fr. Meletios Webber was originally published on the Website, In Communion. It is an extremelygood discussion and illustration of the work of the true self (heart) versus the false self (ego) – as seen in the action and life of a parish. I share it here with gratitude for Fr. Meletios’ work. +++ Get out of the head and into the heart. – St. Theophan the Recluse A…