Daily Meditations Archives - Page 5 of 347

The Fifteenth Day of Christmas Advent. Shopping for God

11/29/2024

By Father Stephen Freeman I overheard a conversation between two blue-collar workers that encouraged my soul. In the aftermath of last week’s shopping frenzy (Black Friday, etc.), they were reflecting on the madness. “I had a friend who said he bought his mother-in-law a new TV. He was excited about the bargain.” The other worker nodded. “So I asked him, ‘Did she need a new TV?’” He said the man replied, “I never thought of

The Fourteenth Day of Christmas Advent. Happy Thanksgiving!

11/28/2024

What is So Orthodox at Thanksgiving? By Father Joseph Allen There is no “feast” that seems more “American” than Thanksgiving. Many of us Orthodox also recognize this holiday in some sort of way. Usually we say that it is a day in which “they” remember that the Pilgrims landed in this country. Of course, the “they” that we use in such a sentence refers to any of the non-Orthodox Americans that we live with. And

The Thirteenth Day of Christmas Advent: The Faith of the Three Young Men

11/27/2024

The story of the three young men in Babylon is especially loved in Orthodox liturgy. Not only is there the celebration of these Hebrew youths together with Daniel eight days before the feast of the Nativity, but their story is remembered and hymned on the two Sundays before Christmas which are dedicated to the memory of all the righteous of the Old Covenant who prepared the coming of Christ. In addition, the story of the

The Twelfth Day of Christmas Advent. Saint Stylianos, The Protector of Children

11/26/2024

Saint Stylianos was born in Paphlagonia, Asia Minor, between 400 and 500. He was blessed even from his mother’s womb. As he grew up, by the grace of God he increasingly became a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit. From childhood he displayed the rare qualities of his blessed life. When he was young and still an adolescent, although, of course, he was of the flesh, he never allowed desires to pollute his spirit and soul.

Eleventh Day of Christmas Advent, Great Martyr Catherine of Alexandria

11/25/2024

The Holy Great Martyr Catherine was the daughter of Constus, the governor of Alexandrian Egypt during the reign of the emperor Maximian (305-313). Living in the capital, the center of Hellenistic knowledge, and possessed of a rare beauty and intellect, Catherine received an excellent education, studying the works of the greatest philosophers and teachers of antiquity. Young men from the most worthy families of the empire sought the hand of the beautiful Catherine, but she

The Eighth Day of Christmas Advent. An Illegal Christmas

11/22/2024

By Father Stephen Freeman The great advantage to thinking about God in legal terms, is that nothing has to change. If what happens between us and God is entirely external, a matter of arranging things such as the avoidance of eternal punishment or the enjoyment of eternal reward, then the world can go on as it is. In the legal model that dominates contemporary Christian thought, the secular world of things becomes nothing more than

The Seventh Day of Christmas Advent. Entrance of the Theotokos to the Temple

11/21/2024

The second great feast of the Theotokos is the celebration of her entrance as a child into the Jerusalem Temple which is commemorated on the twenty-first of November. Like the feast of her nativity, this feast of Mary is without direct biblical and historical reference. But like the nativity, it is a feast filled with important spiritual significance for the Christian believer. The texts of the service tells how Mary was brought as a small

The Sixth Day of Christmas Advent. Ho, Ho, Holiness in the Simplicity and Purity of God (Part II)

11/20/2024

By Fr. Stelyios Muksuris Every year it seems the feast of our Lord’s Nativity in the flesh becomes more and more secularized. Atheists would advocate a humanistic approach to the festival of lights, seeking to “demythologize” the festival by stripping it of its Christocentric character. Christmas, they would claim, is about the magnanimity of the human spirit to transcend the fallen world by loving others and graciously giving to them. Any notion of a miraculous

The Fifth Day of Christmas Advent. Ho, Ho, Holiness in the Simplicity and Purity of God (Part I)

11/19/2024

By Fr. Stelyios Muksuris “THINK of shepherds who are made wise, think of priests who teach, of women who are delighted, when Gabriel teaches Mary joy, when Elisabeth has inside her own womb John kicking. Anna spreads the good news, Symeon opens his arms worshiping the great God inside a little infant, without despising what they see, but glorifying the greatness of His deity. His deity is revealed like light through hymens of glass, through

The Fourth Day of Christmas Advent. Fasting from the Sentiments of the Feast

11/18/2024

By Father Stephen Freeman I have a favorite Joni Mitchell song. In her very mournful style she sings about the season before Christmas: It’s comin’ on Christmas, They’re cuttin’ down trees, They’re puttin’ up reindeer and singin’ songs of joy and peace. Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on…I would teach my feet to fly! It is a melancholy tune, echoing the bittersweet experience of the culture Christmas. We love