Daily Meditations Archives - Page 161 of 349

The Nineteenth Day of Great Lent. Good News – Your Debt is Being Cancelled

03/29/2019

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 27, 2016 Recent conversations on the blog have bounced around the imagery of debt in the Scriptures. Contemporary Protestant thought often likes to express the notion of a “sin debt.” The idea runs that God’s righteousness and justice have proper demands. When we fail to keep the commandments, we create a debt for which God’s justice demands payment. Christ’s innocent self-offering on the Cross is seen as the payment for

The Eighteenth Day of Great Lent. A Lenten Meditation, by Saint Leo the Great

03/28/2019

Dear friends, at every moment the earth is full of the mercy of God, and nature itself is a lesson for all the faithful in the worship of God. The heavens, the sea and all that is in them bear witness to the goodness and omnipotence of their Creator, and the marvelous beauty of the elements as they obey him demands from the intelligent creation a fitting expression of its gratitude. But with the return

The Seventeenth Day of Great Lent. FASTING & PARTICIPATION IN LENTEN SERVICES

03/27/2019

[Not everyone] can attend the entire cycle of Lenten worship. Everyone can attend some of it. There is simply no excuse for not making Lent first of all the time for an increased attendance of and participation in the liturgy of the Church. Here again, personal conditions, individual possibilities and impossibilities can vary and result in different decisions, but there must be a decision, there must be an effort, and there must be a “follow-up.”

The Sixteenth Day of Great Lent. Synaxis in Honor of the Archangel Gabriel

03/26/2019

On the Leavetaking of the Feast of the Annunciation, the Church commemorates the Archangel Gabriel, who announced the great mystery of the Incarnation of Christ to the Virgin Mary. Mindful of the manifold appearances of the holy Archangel Gabriel and of his zealous fulfilling of God’s will and confessing his intercession for Christians before the Lord, the Orthodox Church calls upon its children to pray to the great Archangel with faith and love. The Synaxis

The Fifteenth Day of Great Lent. The Annunciation of the Theotokos.

03/25/2019

THE ANNUNCIATION of the THEOTOKOS On the twenty-fifth day of this month we celebrate the Annunciation of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Verses The Angel announced to the Virgin the Great Son of the Father’s great Counsel. The Angel said, “Rejoice”, to Mary on the twenty-fifth. Synaxarion God, Who is merciful and loves mankind, is ever solicitous about the race of men. When, as a loving Father, He saw the work of

The Twenty-Second Day of Great Lent. The Death of Christ and the Life of Man

03/22/2019

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 15, 2016 Several years ago, someone wrote and asked, “Why did Christ have to die on the Cross?” It is the question that prompted this article. Recently, we have been having a discussion regarding the atonement within the comments section of the blog. I have pointed out that the notion of Christ being punished by the wrath of God for our sakes is not, in fact, found in the Scriptures. Sin

The Eleventh Day of Great Lent. Being Separate in a Connected World…a Digital Lenten Message

03/21/2019

By Fr. Christopher Makiej Beloved in Christ, we have to see ourselves as being different than the world around us! As Christians we are called to be “in the world, but not of the world.” (John 15:19). The Scripture says “come out and be separate….” (2 Cor. 6:17) Yet this can be very difficult in a world that pressures us to conform to its ways and to be connected to it at all times. We

The Tenth Day of Great Lent. Lent in Our Life (Part II)

03/20/2019

In regard to Lent, instead of asking fundamental questions—”What is fasting?” or “What is Lent?”—we satisfy ourselves with Lenten symbolism. In church magazines and bulletins appear recipes for “delicious Lenten dishes,” and a parish might even raise some additional money by means of a well-advertised “tasty Lenten dinner.” So much in our churches is explained symbolically as interesting, colorful, and amusing customs and traditions, as something which connects us not so much with God and

The Ninth Day of Great Lent. Lent in Our Life (Part I)

03/19/2019

We have [spoken] of the Church’s teaching about Lent as conveyed to us primarily by Lenten worship. Now these questions must be asked: How can we apply this teaching to our lives? What could be not only a nominal but a real impact of Lent on our existence? This existence (do we need to recall it) is very different from the one people led when all these services, hymns, canons, and prescriptions were composed and

The Eighth Day of Great Lent. The Cross. The Cross as Cure

03/18/2019

The second sacred image that the cross echoes is the “Lifted-Up One,” and it comes from the bronze snake in the desert. YHWH tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and “anyone who has been bitten by a serpent and looks upon it will be healed” (Numbers 21:8). It is like a homeopathic symbol. The very thing that is killing the Children of Israel is the thing that will heal them! It