Paradox
“Everything is paradox, and we throw ourselves upon the mercy of God… as Grace increases in our lives, we become more like Christ through love of God and neighbor. Increase in Grace is both the cause of and the result of our efforts. It’s not either cause or result, it’s both, which is a paradox…” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, Fr. Michael Gillis)
“…no one speaks of the Cross as a “miracle.” Nevertheless, it is the greatest of miracles. It has the mark of paradox and contradiction. St. Paul describes Christ Crucified as the “wisdom and power of God” (1Cor. 1:24). St. Maximos the Confessor said, “He who understands the mystery of the Cross understands all things.” The Cross is apparent weakness and defeat. It is “foolishness,” in the eyes of many, St. Paul notes. But this goes to the heart of God’s work in the world, and, goes to the heart of God’s self-revelation to the world.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“But Love is at the heart of power, as He ought to be, and because of this we live in a paradoxical grace; we are limited beings to whom unlimited love is given. And with that comes endless possibility. There’s no such thing as a limitless self, but there is a God who dwells in our hearts, and the freedom of the cosmos is in his hands. We are a poem spoken by God, and, like the fictionalized Frost said, it’s in the forms of divine affection and creativity, holy forgiveness, and fellowship shown to us in Christ that we’ll find the expression of self, the fulfillment of personhood we so desire.” (Sarah Clarkson)
“The word given by God to St. Silouan the Athonite applies…“Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.” On the one hand, we must not fool ourselves with an illusory, superficial spirituality that distracts us from experiencing the true state of our souls before God. Instead, we must know from our hearts how far we are from fully embracing our Lord’s gracious healing and entrusting ourselves and all our earthly cares to Him. On the other hand, even as we confront the grave tension between the infinite holiness of God and our corruption, we must refuse to despair by accepting the lie that there is no hope for us, our loved ones, and our world in the mercy of the Lord. Far better is the way of the father in today’s gospel lesson, for he confessed the weakness of his faith even as he paradoxically showed great faith in asking for Christ to save his son.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“God is an obvious reality, but man is a paradoxical being—God’s beloved creation, fallen away from real life and caught in some fiction, in a kingdom of crooked mirrors—and has lost himself in this kingdom, feeling his great torment and discomfort from his being in this false life. He who feels his sojourn in falsity begins to think and seek: where are You, and why am I here? Who are You, Who has created me? Do You exist? And these terrible, hot questions are born a man’s heart, and gradually God reveals Himself to him.God is the highest, purest, and most undoubtable reality…But about whether God is a reality—it’s impossible to doubt. He is life, and truth, and the way, and He is reality, clouded for man because the devil played an evil trick on us—and we went along with this trick and called life that which is not life. Therefore the search for God is the search for our true selves, and the search for the true wellspring from which we can drink forever without dying.” (Archpriest Andrei Tkachev)
“…A paradox, you probably already know, is a statement which is seemingly self-contradictory; a statement which appears to be false, but which, upon careful examination, in certain instances proves to be true… Spirituality is a paradox…let me pass on what I consider the four paradoxes… we surrender to win…we give away to keep…we suffer to get well…we die to live.” (Fr. Bogdan Djurdjulov)
“…Christian life is filled with paradoxes, what the Holy Fathers referred to as antinomies: conflicts between two principles, laws or truths that seem equally valid. An example would be “bondage to sin” and “freedom in the Spirit,” both of which accurately describe the Christian person…Another would be the affirmation, “Through the Cross, joy has come into the world!”...Each of these pairs, read through the lens of ordinary logic, seems irreconcilable. We cannot be both slave and free; joy cannot be the emotion accompanying a hideous execution; and we can hardly remember what has not yet happened. In the light of the Gospel, however, these make perfect sense.” (Fr. John Breck)
“ …we focus too much on the fears and anxieties of the world. We focus on trying to save our lives through the securities and protections of the world. But Jesus says in the Gospel lesson. "What does it profit a man to gain the world but forfeit his life? For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel, will save it." Christ is saying that we find true life, we discover the meaning of life, when we are ready to lose our lives for a greater cause. It's a paradox, and unfortunately, not too many people are ready to follow it.” (Fr. Luke Veronis)
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” The paradox of our relationship to God is that obedience in our relationship to Him does not enslave us – but sets us free. It is the same as the paradox of the Cross. Christ said of the Cross, “No man takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own self” (John 10:18). Our own salvation can be no different. No one can take our life from us – we must lay it down of our own self. We lose our life in order to find it. We lose a false self in order to find the true. The saint is the most free of all human beings. What a strange wonder.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Grand paradox. The bible says, “when I am weak then I am strong” (2Cor12:10). The 12 Step programs say that when I admit my powerlessness, then I am in position to truly turn my life and my will over to God as I understand Him. And in my powerlessness is my strength.” (Albert S. Rossi, PhD)
“We are uncomfortable with paradox. Paradox is a concept that in our post-Enlightenment secular age, we have a hard time grasping. A paradox always feels like a problem to be dissected, a riddle to be solved…though our trust and confidence in God may seem paradoxical at times, it isn’t ever baseless. God’s goodness and His love are evident everywhere, if we but have the eyes to see.” (Father Barnabas Powell)
“…it takes time and growth to gain the wisdom to see things more clearly. I think of it like going into a dark room at night with no artificial lights. Your eyes eventually adjust to the darkness and you can make out shapes and maybe see some things in the room. But as the sun slowly rises and increasing amounts of light come through the window, you see more and more until at last you can see everything clearly.” (Sacramental Living Podcast)
“Grace that it is the gift of God’s own presence and action in His creation. The Scriptures repeatedly point out that God is omnipresent. We can trust we are never outside of His love and grace. However, it is paradoxical that though God is never separate from us, we can separate ourselves from Him by our choice to consciously reject Him through our thought and/or behavior.” (Orthodox Study Bible, Sacramental Living Podcast)
“Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ. Sadly, too often we hear those words and are not able to apply them to how we live on a day-to-day basis…No matter what the circumstances, no matter how much we mess up, no matter how many powerful forces there are that would try to damage our relationship with Him, God will be there for us with His love.” (Foundation Study Bible, Romans 8:38-39)
“No matter what happens to us, no matter where we are, we can never be separated from his love.” (Life Application Study Bible, Romans 8:35-36)
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