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The Fourth Day of Christmas Advent. The Significance of the Birth of Christ for the Human Race

Every year, in an atmosphere of joy and delight, the Church celebrates the Birth of Christ, and sings wonderful hymns to God Who became incarnate and re-formed our degenerate human nature. Orthodox hymnography and theology emphasize the great anthropological significance of the divine incarnation: we have been saved from hopeless degradation and from the chaos of destructive hatred by the love of God, which took on flesh and bone within history through the person of

Love the Lord

~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, November 12, 2006 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen Glory to Jesus Christ! It is significant that when the lawyer asks Jesus what he must do to “inherit eternal life” he answers the question by removing the future emphasis. Life is to be lived now. Jesus says that if we want to live, that is,

Only Love Knows Anything

~Father Stephen Freeman, August 15, 2023 There’s a part of us that is wired to be careful. It senses danger and hunkers down. It looks for danger. It can easily become the dominant mode of our life. Anxiety and depression, are among the most common noises of this internal warning system. When it comes to dominate, we see the world through fear-colored glasses. In the classical language of the Church, we describe such an experience by the voices

What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter

~By Stephen Freeman, September 18, 2023 I’ve been slowly making my way through the book, An Empire of Things. It’s subtitle, How We Became a World of Consumers from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, describes the fascinating journey outlined in the text. It tracks the gradual evolution of the modern world as seen in our acquisition of stuff. The average citizen in the 1400’s would have been lucky to have a change of clothes and the

What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter

~By Father Stephen Freeman, September 18, 2023 I’ve been slowly making my way through the book, An Empire of Things. It’s subtitle, How We Became a World of Consumers from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, describes the fascinating journey outlined in the text. It tracks the gradual evolution of the modern world as seen in our acquisition of stuff. The average citizen in the 1400’s would have been lucky to have a change of clothes and

Love and Mourning in the Human Race (Saint Mary Magdalene, II)

Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti Grief has its own stages. According to the psychological approach [1], we need to pass through them with care and support. We need time to begin to discover meaning in everything that’s happening to us. With Magdalene, it didn’t take much time. Christ appeared to her and told her about the resurrection. With this faith, she then continued her life, which had acquired a different

Love and Mourning in the Human Race (Saint Mary Magdalene, I)

Sister Parakliti, Holy Skete of Saint Mary Magdalene, in Liti This year, we’d like to dedicate the great virtue, that of love, to the memory of Saint Mary Magdalene. In volume two of the Philokalia, we find the ‘Four Hundred Texts on Love’ by Saint Maximos the Confessor. There are many sayings by the saint, but we shall focus on the first two of the first hundred: ‘Love is a holy state of the soul,

For God So Loved the World

~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, September 11, 2005 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! When we want to express love to a special person we often tack on the little word “so”. I love you soooo much and, of course, the more you want to express it the longer you stretch the word. St. John uses

Do Unto Others

~Sermon Preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, October 2, 2005 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Glory to Jesus Christ! And just as you want men to do to you, do also to them. But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to

Discourse on Love

Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou † Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ handed down to us the perfect teaching on salvation. And he himself was the first to implement what he taught. It is he who ‘practices and teaches’ (Matth. 5, 19). He also gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan as an example of real love. But the most outstanding Good Samaritan is Christ himself, who took upon