Old Testament Archives - Page 7 of 11

Making Sense of a Jumbled World. Christmas Eve, 2019

12/24/2019

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 27, 2014 Listening to the Nativity collection of readings for the Vespers of Christmas Eve (there were eight of them), my mind drifted to the “jumbled mess” that is the Old Testament. We speak of it as if it were a single thing, when, it is many things (over 40), and some of those things are jumbled concatenations of other jumbled things. I can only imagine what someone coming to

Transfigured Life (Part I)

08/06/2019

The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ Transfiguration differ in some small but significant details. With typically colorful language, St Mark emphasizes Jesus’ garments, describing them as “glistening, intensely white, as no fuller on earth could bleach them.” St Luke adds that “the appearance of his countenance was altered”; and St Matthew declares, “his face shone like the sun.” Each of these narratives makes the point that Jesus manifests what came to be called the shekinah, a

Face to Face

07/05/2019

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, May 2, 2015 Nothing about the human body is as intimate as the face. We generally think of other aspects of our bodies when we say “intimate,” but it is our face that reveals the most about us. It is the face we seek to watch in order to see what others are thinking, or even who they are. The importance of the face is emphasized repeatedly in the Scriptures. In

The Second Monday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Job the Prophet, Holy Week, Holy Friday, Great Friday, Savior, Septuagint, Cross, Satan

05/06/2019

The righteous Job (whose name means “persecuted”), God’s faithful servant, was the perfect image of every virtue. The son of Zarah and Bossorha (Job 42), Job was a fifth-generation descendent of Abraham. He was a truthful, righteous, patient, and pious man who abstained from every evil thing. Job was very rich and blessed by God in all things, as was no other son of Ausis (his country, which lay between Idoumea and Arabia). However, divine

The Thirty-Sixth Day of Great Lent. Holy Week Meditation and Study Guide (Part I)

04/15/2019

The services of Holy Week transform us into eyewitnesses and direct participants in the awesome events of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In readings taken from both Old and New Testaments, in hymns, processions, and liturgical commemoration, we see the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies, and the mighty acts by which God Himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, grants us forgiveness for our sins, and rescues us from the pain of eternal

The Seventeenth Day of Great Lent. FASTING & PARTICIPATION IN LENTEN SERVICES

03/27/2019

[Not everyone] can attend the entire cycle of Lenten worship. Everyone can attend some of it. There is simply no excuse for not making Lent first of all the time for an increased attendance of and participation in the liturgy of the Church. Here again, personal conditions, individual possibilities and impossibilities can vary and result in different decisions, but there must be a decision, there must be an effort, and there must be a “follow-up.”

From Image to Likeness (Part I)

01/09/2019

Since we are in the image of God we are therefore in the image of Christ, and it is only in Christ that we discover the truth about ourselves. He alone is the one to whom the Beatitudes fully apply; the poor man who receives himself unceasingly at the hands of the Father and whose royal gentleness transforms the earth into a Eucharist, the ‘pure heart’ like a still lake in which each discerns his

FEAST OF THE ARCHANGELS

11/08/2018

On the 8th of November, the Orthodox Church celebrates the Feast of Synaxis of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and the rest of the archangels. The word synaxis means the gathering of believers to celebrate a feast, or to make a remembrance of a saint. This feast also has a special meaning; it is the gathering of the humans with the angels, “their union, their gathering and standing in fear in front of the Creator.”(1)

On Silence and Solitude (I)

08/21/2018

On Silence and Solitude (I) In the New Testament little is said of silence as such. The examples that do exist, however, are striking and significant. The people are reduced to awe-filled silence as they witness Christ’s ability to silence his adversaries (Lk 20:26). Jesus, in the presence of His disciples, displays the authority to still the waters and silence the thundering of the waves as a great storm threatens to swamp their boat. He

Transfiguring Practices

08/06/2018

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,

Archive

Making Sense of a Jumbled World. Christmas Eve, 2019

Transfigured Life (Part I)

Face to Face

The Second Monday after Pascha. CHRISTOS ANESTI! CHRIST IS RISEN! Job the Prophet, Holy Week, Holy Friday, Great Friday, Savior, Septuagint, Cross, Satan

The Thirty-Sixth Day of Great Lent. Holy Week Meditation and Study Guide (Part I)

The Seventeenth Day of Great Lent. FASTING & PARTICIPATION IN LENTEN SERVICES

From Image to Likeness (Part I)

FEAST OF THE ARCHANGELS

On Silence and Solitude (I)

Transfiguring Practices

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