Your egoic false self is who you think you are, but your thinking does not make it true. Your false self is a social and mental construct to get you started on your life journey. It is a set of agreements between you and your parents, your family, your school chums, your partner or spouse, your culture, and your religion. It is your “container.” It is largely defined in distinction from others, precisely as your separate and
In the Gospel and hymns of the Church for Holy Wednesday, we hear about the sinful woman who broke an alabaster box of costly ointment, wept at Jesus’ feet, and dried them with her hair. She broke the box – i.e. saved nothing for herself – and poured it out as her offering. It cost 300 denarii, which was 300 days’ wages! This latter fact enrages the disciple who sits in a place of honor
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 27, 2016 Recent conversations on the blog have bounced around the imagery of debt in the Scriptures. Contemporary Protestant thought often likes to express the notion of a “sin debt.” The idea runs that God’s righteousness and justice have proper demands. When we fail to keep the commandments, we create a debt for which God’s justice demands payment. Christ’s innocent self-offering on the Cross is seen as the payment for
Sin and salvation, however, are not merely human in scope, but they also involve the entire created order. When Adam fell, the whole creation fell with him; and by the same token our human salvation will inaugurate the salvation of the total cosmos. As Fr Sophrony puts it, ‘Every saint is a phenomenon of cosmic character’. We are not saved from but with the world. This cosmic understanding of sin and salvation has a firm
But sin turns this diverse unity into a hostile multiplicity, so that space becomes a separator, time a murderer, and language good only for expressing juxtaposition or possession. Whence the slogan of May 1968, ‘Love one another’; this is facile blasphemy, because the erotic encounter itself is given us as a symbol, a foretaste of personal communion. In the universe of sin solitary individuals devour one another. There is a besetting tendency today, when faced
There is ongoing tension between what has been accomplished and what is still to be done, between the “already” and the “not yet.” The “end time” is already present; the Kingdom is in our midst in the person and work of the Son of God. Yet its fulfillment lies in the future, when the Lord’s reign will summon all people to a final judgment, and lead the “righteous” into that eternal Realm in which God
I LOVE THESE LINES IN ISAIAH; the sweetness of their assurance is absolute: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. And my heart is broken by the verses that follow. O that you had hearkened to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; Your offspring would have been
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,
By Fr. Stephen Freeman, December 8, 2014 Many readers have never before heard that there is no such thing as moral progress – so I am not surprised that I have been asked to write in more depth on the topic. I will start by focusing on the question of sin itself. If we rightly understand the nature of sin and its true character, the notion of moral progress will be seen more clearly. I
This descent, this final and ultimate penetration into the realm of the dead, is accomplished once and for all. It frees patriarch, prophet, and king. But at the same time it frees us, liberating us from the consequences of death. The hand that reaches out to grasp the hands of Adam and Eve reaches out to embrace their descendants as well: every “Adam” who responds to His gesture with longing and with faith. We, like
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