Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 21, 2024 The Lord seems to have been very mindful of the people he met. Men, women, children, the rich and poor, the well-positioned and even more the lowly, oppressed, needy and foreigners. The Mosaic Law was the overshadowing context of Jewish life and, after all, Jesus was a Jew, but people were more important to him than the Law. Today he meets a Centurion, a
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, October 12, 2016 Noise. The sound of the world around us generally qualifies as little more than noise. Almost nothing advertises itself as unimportant or something to be attended to later. The insistent cries of everything often raise the demands for our attention to a deafening pitch. “Do this! Read this! Buy this! Remember this! Believe this!” The world constantly presents itself to us as though it were teetering on the
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, March 7, 2016 There are many stories of saints in the Orthodox world, including contemporary ones. Their biographies are sometimes remarkable, sometimes not. Their stories are occasionally marked by miracles, but not always. I cannot think of a single characteristic that makes them like one another apart from their sanctity. And that quality does not make them so much like one another as so completely and truly themselves. I have had
Dearest Parishioners & Stewards, Given the state of emergencies and school closings called in DC, Maryland, and Virginia due to the outbreak of COVID-19, we have made the following changes to our activities. Starting Saturday, March 14, through Sunday, March 29, Saint Sophia Cathedral will suspend all non-liturgical activities. Specifically, there will be no activities, classes, or meetings for youth or adult programs, including Sunday School, Greek School, Little Angels, JOY, GOYA, Symposium, Philoptochos, Baking
In the monk’s relationship with the world, St Silouan distinguishes a double movement. First, through prayer the monk withdraws into himself, shutting out the world, gradually liberating himself from visual imagery and discursive thinking, and so entering into the image-free stillness of the heart. But then, within the depths of his own heart, he rediscovers his solidarity with all humankind and with the whole creation. So the monk’s flight from the world turns out to
The Father accepts the Son’s sacrifice “by economy”: “man had to be sanctified by God’s humanity” (St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 45, On the Holy Pascha). Kenosis culminates and ends with Christ’s death, to sanctify the entire human condition, including death. Cur Deus homo? Not only because of our sins but for our sanctification, to introduce the moments of our fallen life into that true life, which never knows death. By Christ’s resurrection, the fullness
In more ways than one, we are waiting in darkness. Isaiah prophesied Jesus’ birth, saying, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2). Yet, the darkness will never totally go away. I’ve worked long enough in ministry to know that moral evil isn’t going to disappear, but the Gospel offers something much more subtle and helpful: “the light shines on the inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome
THE FALLING ASLEEP IN THE LORD OF FATHER JOHN TAVLARIDES Dearest Parishioner and Friend, With a heavy heart I inform you that Saint Sophia Cathedral’s spiritual father, Father John Tavlarides, whose priestly ministry to the people of God and the Great Church of Christ spanned six decades, passed from us Monday evening, September 21, at 11:07 PM. We commend his immortal soul to Christ God, Whom he so fervently loved, and so dedicatedly served, throughout
Come, let us faithfully celebrate the annual commemoration of Abraham and those who are with him, the fathers that lived before the Law. Let us honor the tribe of Judah as it is meet; let us praise the youths in Babylon, who, as an image of the Trinity, quenched the flame of the furnace, together with Daniel; and holding fast to the prophecies of the prophets, let us cry aloud with Isaiah: “Behold, a Virgin
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