St. Acacius of Kavsokalyvia: Spiritual Sensitivity

 Saint Acacius taught that whoever desires to see Christ in eternity must acquire here below, by the access of grace within him, a spiritual sensitivity that would allow him to contemplate spiritual and heavenly realities as naturally as he sees material things.

+St. Acacius of Kavsokalyvia, from his entry for April 12 in The Synaxarion, volume 4.

St. Paisios of Mount Athos: On the joy of accepting injustice

 There's nothing as sweet as being treated unjustly. The most beautiful moments of my life have been times I suffered injustice. Anyone who accepts injustice accepts into his heart Christ, Who was treated unjustly. People start arguing because everyone thinks of himself as being more justified that he really is. But someone with a lot of love takes injustice for himself and leaves justice for other people. Only Christ, lifting up the Cross for us, has accepted all injustice.

+St. Paisios of Mount Athos, from Saint Paisios of Mount Athos, He loved Righteousness

Fr. Stanley Harakas: We are united with Christ in the Divine Liturgy

 

The Divine Liturgy... becomes the location where we are at the most intense level united with Christ and growing in the image and likeness of God. It is the place of "remembering" and actually sharing in the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, as well as His whole incarnate life. It is that action which most of all characterizes us as the Church, emphasizing our real existence as members of God's Kingdom, beginning in this life and extending into eternity. It is the location where time past, time present, and time future are gathered up for us in ultimate meaning and significance.

+Fr. Stanley Harakas, from Living the Liturgy, Chapter 1, Liturgical Living

Columba Graham Flegg: The moral content of the Seven Letters of the Apocalypse

 [We should not] try to make specific identifications with the particular churches to which the letters [in the book of Revelation] were addressed, but rather than we should measure ourselves, both as individuals and as communities, against all those things singled out for condemnation. We can summarize them as follows: failing to live up to the promises of baptism in faith and works, becoming primarily consumers of the things of this world; corrupting the church and the faith with secular ideas; seeking worldly instead of heavenly objectives; tolerating the presence of false prophets or even following them; failing to watch for the Lord's coming; having pride in worldly things and achievements; allowing our faith and our love to become lukewarm. Let us not delude ourselves by thinking that our Orthodox churches are not guilty of any of these things. But, remember that the overall message of the Apocalypse is also reflected in these seven letters. The message is that the victory has already been won, that Christ is enthroned on high, and that a share in that throne is offered to all who turn away from the world, repent, set their hearts on the things above, and live in Him.

+Columba Graham Flegg, from An Introduction to Reading the Apocalypse, chapter 4, The Letters to the Seven Churches.

St. Justin Popovich: Man in the God-Man

 Everything that man is and everything that is of man perfectly lives, works, thinks, feels, is human, immortal, divine, and eternal only and solely in the God-man and through the God - man. Only through the God-man Christ is man a divine majesty and the highest value next to God in all worlds. For this reason God became man, and has remained the God-1nan for all eternity. With the God-man Christ, all that is God’s has become 1nan’s, human, ours, so that each of us individually and all of us assembled

together in the Divine-human body of Christ, the Church, might become god-men, having attained “to the perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:12-13).

+St. Justin Popovich, in Man and the God-Man

St. Nicholas Cabasilas: on the reality of our adoption as sons of God

 This is the reality of our adoption as sons of God. Unlike human adoptions, it does not consist in the mere name, nor does it confer honor merely to the extent that those who have been adopted share the name of those who have been naturally born and have the same father as they, without having undergone the same birth and its pangs. In this case, however, there is a real birth and a sharing with the only-begotten Son not of the surname only, but of His very Being, His Blood, His Body, His Life. What, then, is greater than that the Father of the only-begotten Son Himself recognizes in us His members and finds the very form of the Son in our faces? It says, "He predestined them to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom 8:29).

+St. Nicholas Cabasilas, from The Life in Christ, book 4, #9. How the Eucharist makes us sons of God.

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom): On God and Man

 Marx says that the proletariat has not need of a god because man has become his god. And St. John Chrysostom: "If you want to measure the greatness of man, raise your eyes towards the throne of God and you will see the Word Incarnate, the bearer of our humanity, seated at the right hand of glory." 

+Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) from God and Man, a talk on Holiness and Prayer

St. Gregory the Theologian: Our renewal in Christ's Resurrection

 Today  is salvation come unto the world, to that which is visible, and to that which is invisible. Christ is risen from the dead, rise ye with Him. Christ is returned again to himself, return ye. Christ is freed from the tomb, be ye freed from the bond of sin. The gates of hell are opened, and death is destroyed, and the old Adam is put aside, and the New is fulfilled; if any man be in Christ he is a new creature; be ye renewed... The Lord's Passover, the Passover, and again I say the Passover to the honor of the Trinity. This is to us a Feast of feasts and a Solemnity of solemnities.

+St. Gregory the Theologian, from Festal Orations Discourse 45, 1-2.

St. Niphon of Constantiana: On humility and life with Christ

 Place yourself below everybody else and you will live in Christ's company.

+St. Niphon of Constantiana, quoted in his life in The Synaxaria, Volume 2, entry for December 23

Fr. Stephen Freeman: Sharing in the Divine Life

 Jesus did not come to make bad men good; He came to make dead men live.

Thus God came into our world, becoming one of us, so that by His sharing in our life, we might have a share in His life. In Holy Baptism we are united to Him, and everything else He gives us in the Life of His Church is for the purpose of strengthening, nurturing, and renewing this Life within us. All the sacraments have this as their focus. It is the primary purpose of prayer.

Thus, stated simply, to have communion with God means to have a share in His Divine Life. He lives in me and I in Him. I come to know God even as I know myself. I come to love even as God loves, because it is His love that dwells in 1ne. I come to forgive as God forgives, because it is His mercy that dwells within me.

Without such an understanding of communion, many vitally important parts of the Christian life are reduced to mere moralisms. We are told to love our enemies as though it were a simple moral obligation. Instead, we love our enemies because God loves our enemies, and We want to live in the Life of God. We’re not trying to be good, or to prove anything to God by loving our enemies. It is simply the case that if the Love of God dwells in us, then we will love as God loves.

Of course all this is the free gift of God, though living daily in communion With God is difficult. The disease of broken communion that was so long at work in us is difficult to cure. It takes time, and we must be patient with ourselves and our broken humanity - though never using this as an excuse not to seek the healing that God gives.

We were created for communion with God - it is our very life. Thinking about communion with God is not a substitute for that communion. Theology as abstraction has no life within it. Theology is a life lived in Christ. The ancient Christian writer Evagrius Ponticus famously said, “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”

+Fr. Stephen Freeman, from Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, chapter 2, Sitting in a Cave in Mar Saba

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid: On life and judgement

 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved." John 3:16-17

... what have we gained by the Son being given? An immense and unfathomable gift for all who believe in Him: to escape destruction and live eternally. The Old Testament promised length of days in this earthly life to those who pleased God. But the Gospel bestows, not any transitory existence, but life that is unending and beyond time.

There are two comings of Christ: the first has already taken place; the second is still to come. The Lord is speaking of His first coming when He says that the Son was not sent to condemn the world. Had that been the reason for His coming, all mankind would have been condemned, "for all have sinned" (Rom 3:23) as Paul says. He came the first time in order to save the world; only after some refused to believe did He judge those individuals. In contrast, the chief purpose in giving the Mosaic law was to rebuke sin and condemn transgressors (cf Rom 3:20). No one was forgiven under the law; rather, it called for punishment to be applied as soon as the sinner was identified. The Lord's first coming, then, did not have judgement as its objective, though judgement did fall upon those who rejected the Lord's efforts to save them. By their own unbelief they brought condemnation on themselves. But at the second coming, the Lord's explicit purpose is to judge all and render to each according to his deeds.

+Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid, from The Explanation of the Gospel of John.

Mahatma Ghandi: On how Christianity might be accepted in India

I would suggest first of all that all of you Christians, missionaries and all begin to live more like Jesus Christ.
+Mahatma Ghandi, in reply to a question by Stanley Jones, in The Christ of the Indian Road

St. Nicholas Cabasilas: Life in Christ in this world

In this present world... it is possible for the saints not only to be disposed and prepared for that life [in Christ] but also even now to live and act in accordance with it. Paul writes, "lay hold on eternal life" (1 Tim 6:12), and "it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). The divine Ignatius says, "there is water living and speaking in me" (Epistle to the Romans 7:2). Scripture is full of such passages! Beside all these, when He who is the Life promises the saints to be with them forever, and says, "Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Matt 28:20), what else should one think? When He had sown the seed of life on the earth (Luke 8:5) and cast on it the fire (Luke 12:49) and the sword (Matt 10:34), He did not forthwith depart and leave it to men to plant and nourish the seed and to kindle the fire and use the sword. He Himself is truly with us and "works in us to will and to do" (Phil 2:12), as the blessed Paul said. It is He Himself who kindles and applies the fire, He Himself holds the sword. In short, "neither does the axe boast without him who lifts it" (Is 10:15). Those from whom the Good One is absent will attain to no good.
Yet the Lord did not promise merely to be present with the saints, but to abide with them - nay more than this, to make His abode in them (John 14:23). What then shall I say? Where it is said that He is united with them, it is with such love that He becomes one spirit with them. As Paul says, "he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with Him" (1 Cor 6:17), and "that you may be one body and one spirit, just as you were called" (Eph 4:4).
+St. Nicholas Cabasilas, from The Life in Christ, book 1, #2: The life in Christ consist of union with Him.