Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 23, 2018 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA. As the Lord Jesus, the Incarnate Christ, opened his heart to us, let us also open our hearts and in the same way love without limits or boundaries. For there are no walls that we do not ourselves create, no closed doors or windows that we do not ourselves fabricate. St. Paul writes in Ephesians that
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 20, 2020 Here we are only a few days until Christmas. While we will be giving and receiving gifts, let’s take a moment to reflect on the greatest gift we have been given – the gift of union with God. I love the reading of the Genealogy. It reminds me of the poignant scene in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus laments over Jerusalem. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, December 19, 2021 The primary reason for making our way through Matthew’s Genealogy is to affirm that the Word and Son of God has a human face and human ancestry. A “human face” so that we can look upon him and a human history to confirm that the Son of God became truly one of us. This Gospel reading is a resounding proclamation of our belief in
At the very beginning of His ministry, Christ passed by two brother-fishermen casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee. He spoke very simple words to them: Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men (Matthew 4:19). They did just this, straightaway casting aside their entire former lives. These were Simon-Peter and Andrew. Why, then, has the Apostle Andrew – whose memory we celebrate today – received the title of the “first-called”? The brothers came
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 24, 2021 “This is good. This is bad.” In one form or another, we divide the world into light and dark. It might take the form, “I like this. I do not like that.” What we find easy are the things we see as good and the things we like. If a day is filled with such things, we are likely to be happy. If the day is marked by
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 20, 2021 Forgiveness is so terribly hard. On a psychological level, it feels dangerous. The shame engendered by any insult or injury is our experience of vulnerability, and we instinctively react to protect ourselves. That, we must understand, is not a sin, it is an instinct that is a gift from God. The example of Christ, who did not “turn His face from the spitting and the shame,” is also
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, July 6, 2017 Thinking is among the most misleading things in the modern world, or, to be more precise, thinking about thinking is misleading. For a culture that puts such a great emphasis on materiality, our thinking about thought is decidedly spooky. The philosophy underlying our strangely-constructed modernity is called nominalism (of which there are many formal varieties). Its imaginary construct of the world consists of decidedly separate objects, united only by our thinking
Feast Day: September 26 John was the son of Zebedee the fisherman and Salome the daughter of Joseph, the betrothed of the Holy Theotokos. Called by the Lord Jesus, John immediately left his father and his fishermen’s nets and, with his brother James, followed Christ. From then on, he was not separated from his Lord until the end. With Peter and James, he was present at the raising of Jairus’s daughter and the Transfiguration of
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 16, 2018 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA. The Reading is from the Gospel According to Mark 8:34-38; 9:1 Today’s Gospel reading from Mark chapter 8, marks a turning point in the Lord’s ministry. From chapter 8 to chapter 13 we read the account of Christ’s final journey to his crucifixion in Jerusalem. Jesus announces his death and meets with resistance. Peter rebukes him,
By Fr. James Kordaris Every September for the rest of our lives, we will remember the horrible events of September 11. And yet, as Orthodox Christians, we will also remember that three days later, the Church raises up before us the Cross of Christ. How provident that the commemoration of this horrible tragedy will always be followed by the commemoration of the great victory of the Cross [September 14]. We are reminded that what was
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