The second sacred image that the cross echoes is the “Lifted-Up One,” and it comes from the bronze snake in the desert. YHWH tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and “anyone who has been bitten by a serpent and looks upon it will be healed” (Numbers 21:8). It is like a homeopathic symbol. The very thing that is killing the Children of Israel is the thing that will heal them! It
The ancient fathers continually advise the monks to remain in their kellion, to hold out and not run away from themselves. Stabilitas — constancy, holding on, staying by oneself — is the condition for every kind of human and spiritual progress. St. Benedict sees in stability the cure for the sickness of his day (the time of the great tribal migrations), of uncertainty and constant movement. Stabilitas means remaining in the community that one has
THIS DAY is set aside as a memorial of Stephen, the first Christian. Once again, the church seems to take a counter-intuitive approach, reminding us of sin and suffering hard on the heels of the joyful celebration of the Nativity. But it is possible to see the reason behind this decision. In Advent we were reminded that our longing for the light of Christ is conditioned by the darkness that often surrounds us. In remembering
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, February 9, 2015 If Christian morality is not a legal or forensic matter, how are we to think about moral behavior? Does the word have no use for Orthodox Christians? What do we think about when we confess our sins? If morality is ontological – a matter of being – what does that look like? To say that morality is ontological, a matter of our being, is to confess that the commandments of God are
Turning Back (Part II) ‘The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Master, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such. What do you say about her?”… But Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him,
By Aristotle Papanikolaou, PhD What happened on the day of our Lord’s Transfiguration? On this day, Jesus took with him three disciples, Peter, John and James, three of the better-known disciples. He took them to a ‘high’ mountain, the Bible tells us (Mt 17:1-9; Mk 9:2-8; Lk 9:28-36). They are at the ‘high’ mountain, which is often a place of revelation in the Bible, and at this mountain Jesus is transfigured. St. Matthew tells us,
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, January 17, 2015 How is an allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures possible? In the fourth chapter of Galatians, St. Paul invokes the story of Abraham and his two sons, one born of a bondwoman (Hagar) and the other of a freewoman (Sarah). As he prepares to draw a lesson from the story he says of it: “These things are an allegory.” He then proceeds to draw a very authoritative (for him)
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, November 12, 2014 There are things that children understand instinctively. And the things that children know and understand are worth consideration. They have much to teach us. Among the most natural things children do is play. Depending on how you define play, it is among the first activities in which we engage. It comes to dominate the lives of children and is the hallmark of their existence. Play is what children do. It
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 30, 2016 The Swedish Lutheran theologian, Gustav Aulen, publish a seminal work on types of atonement theory in 1930 (Christus Victor). Though time and critique have suggested many subtler treatments of the question, no one has really improved on his insight. Especially valuable was description of the “Classic View” of the atonement. This imagery, very dominant in the writings of the early Fathers and in the liturgical life of the
You Cannot Live with Feet Only Those who are pursuing the same objective, if they live together, will find many advantages in this sharing of their life. In the first place, none of us is self-sufficient when it is a question of material needs. We all need one another to procure the necessities of life. The foot, for example, is capable of doing certain things on its own. If the absurd could happen and it
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