death Archives - Page 8 of 15

The Twenty-Ninth Day of Great Lent. Love, Not Atonement

04/08/2019

All the great religions of the world talk a lot about death, so there must be an essential lesson to be learned here. But throughout much of religious history our emphasis has been on killing the wrong thing and avoiding the truth: it’s you who has to die, or rather, who you think you are—your false self. It’s never someone else! Historically we moved from human sacrifice to animal sacrifice to various modes of seeming self-sacrifice, usually

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 First Day (Pure Monday) of Great Lent: The Journey to Pascha

03/11/2019

By Alexander Schmemann When a man leaves on a journey, he must know where he is going. Thus with Lent. Above all, Lent is a spiritual journey and its destination is Pascha, “the Feast of Feasts.” It is the preparation for the “fulfillment of Pascha, the true Revelation.” We must begin, therefore, by trying to understand this connection between Lent and Pascha, for it reveals something very essential, very crucial about our Christian faith and

Death and Humility

02/05/2019

A pilgrim to the Holy Mountain of Athos asked an old hermit, “Father, how can I attain my salvation?” The venerated holy man replied, “Every day at dusk go to the cemetery and for an hour hurl insults to the dead. Do that for a month and pay attention to everything that happens around you. Then come and report to me.” After a month the pilgrim returned. “Father, I have done what you told me

The Twenty-Ninth Day of Christmas Advent. The Significance of Our Days.

12/13/2018

THE SLOWEST OF PILGRIMS, I have come to see how my own faith, fragile as it is, is assisted and sustained by the calendar, by the lectionary—by the seasons of the Church. I want to share my growing understanding that our participation in this cycle is one way we might, as they say, redeem the time. “The days are evil,” writes Saint Paul, imploring us to do something about it. By deliberately attaching our given

The First Day of Christmas Advent: The Fast of Advent

11/15/2018

The Fast of Advent, by Father Leonidas Contos If there is one central idea in Paul, a kind of link that binds his theology to his ethics, that is his doctrinal theology and his moral theology; it is the idea of “newness of life.” Again and again he makes this emphasis: that when a person became a Christian, he literally renounced a former way of life and adopted a wholly new way. In baptism the

Heaven: The Home of Love

09/03/2018

Only love can move effectively across boundaries and across cultures. Love is a very real energy, a spiritual life force that is much more powerful than ideas or mere thoughts. Love is endlessly alive, always flowing toward the lower place, and thus life-giving for all, exactly like water. In fact, there is no form of life that does not need water. No wonder water is such a universal spiritual symbol. When you die, you are

To Be or Not To Be – A Moral Question?

08/31/2018

By Father Stephen Freeman, February 3, 2015 As I continue this series on morality (or unmorality) the conversation continues to push me back to basics. There are deeply important reasons for unthinking the morality of the modern world and rethinking its place in our relationship with God. The most important reason is because it is incorrect to think of us as primarily moral beings. So what would constitute a moral being? A Moral Being A

The Cross. The Universal Pattern: Loss and Renewal

08/27/2018

I believe that the Mystery of the Cross is saying that the pattern of transformation is always death transformed. Death and life are two sides of one coin, and you cannot have one without the other. The theological term for this classic pattern of descent and ascent was coined by Saint Augustine as “the paschal mystery.” We now proclaim it publicly at every Eucharist as “the mystery of faith.” But why? The pattern of down and up, loss and renewal,

The Gift of Silence III

07/19/2018

The Gift of Silence (III) From the time of Elijah through the period of classical prophecy, God continued to reveal Himself through His Word of blessing and judgment. At the same time, silence was increasingly perceived as something negative: the absence of God’s voice and thus of His presence. “The land of silence” became synonymous with Sheol, the place of the dead where, by definition, the life-giving God is not to be found (Ps 88:11-13;

Tags

The Twenty-Ninth Day of Great Lent. Love, Not Atonement

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

The First Day (Pure Monday) of Great Lent: The Journey to Pascha

Death and Humility

The Twenty-Ninth Day of Christmas Advent. The Significance of Our Days.

The First Day of Christmas Advent: The Fast of Advent

Heaven: The Home of Love

To Be or Not To Be – A Moral Question?

The Cross. The Universal Pattern: Loss and Renewal

The Gift of Silence III

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