Daily Meditations

The First Thursday of Great Lent. Great Lent.

Great Lent: The journey of joyful sorrow in expectation of the Resurrection By Abbot Tryphon, February 28, 2020 The main reason Christianity spread so rapidly following the Resurrection of Christ, was the power behind the resurrection. The truth of Christ’s resurrection empowered believers to joyfully embrace martyrdom, knowing that they would be joined in eternal bliss with their resurrected Saviour. Although their martyrdom would involve both mental and physical anguish, they were almost joyful in

The First Wednesday of Great Lent. Balancing Great Lent

George Tsongranis Do you fast?  Give me proof of it by your works.  If you see a poor man, take pity on him.  If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him.  Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the feet, and the hands and all the members of our bodies.  Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice.  Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run

The First Tuesday of Great Lent. The Lenten Journey. Repentance.

The Lenten Journey: Transformation through the Lenten Journey By Abbot Tryphon, February 27, 2020 The Byzantine Court was filled with sycophants, busying themselves with building alliances that would help them rise in status and influence. During the thousand years of the empire, a few emperors were tricked into believing these sycophants were truly their friends, and could be trusted, when in actuality they were being played, and these flatterers were not their friends. These sycophants

The First Monday (Pure) of Great Lent: A Modern Lent

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 29, 2019  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

Friday of Cheesefare (Forgiveness) Sunday: Forgiveness for All the Sundays to Come

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 18, 2018  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

Noetic Science and Natural Science. Noetic Faculty.

Noetic Science and Natural Science: The theological vision of God and natural science By Abbot Tryphon, December 1, 2019 Orthodoxy does not exclude from the theological vision of God the findings of natural science. Science and faith can be in concert with one another and our desire to reinstate our communion with God can involve both natural science, and the science of the soul. An Orthodox Christian does not have to suspend scientific knowledge in

The Soul’s Objective Union with God

The Genesis story of the Judeo-Christian tradition is really quite extraordinary. It says that we were created in the very “image and likeness” of God, proceeding from free and overflowing love (Genesis 1:26). This flow is rediscovered and re-experienced by various imperfect people throughout the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. This sets us on a positive and hopeful foundation, which cannot be overstated. The Bible illustrates, through various stories, humanity’s objective unity with God, the total gratuity

The 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste

In the year 313 Saint Constantine the Great issued an edict granting Christians religious freedom, and officially recognizing Christianity as equal with paganism under the law. But his co-ruler Licinius was a pagan, and he decided to stamp out Christianity in his part of the Empire. As Licinius prepared his army to fight Constantine, he decided to remove Christians from his army, fearing mutiny. One of the military commanders of that time in the Armenian

On Forgiveness

SSCORRE! Saint Sophia Cathedral Online Resources for our Religious Edification Topic of the Week  On Forgiveness “… for too many people Lent means primarily, and almost exclusively, a change of diet, the compliance with ecclesiastical regulations concerning fasting. They understand fasting as an end in itself, as a “good deed” required by God and carrying in itself its merit and reward. But, the Church spares no effort in revealing to us that fasting is but a means, one

Jesus Is Not Your Imaginary Friend

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 27, 2015  At some point in our history, we began to attribute a merely mental reality to anything that was not an object and reduced the importance of objects to what they could contribute to our mental reality. We live in a sea of psychology. Things, we believe, are only what we think they are. My “relationship” with you means nothing more than the set of inner experiences and dispositions I have towards