Journey

“Christians must embody the struggle for holiness in every dimension of their lives and support one another as they pursue the difficult journey to the life of the Kingdom….each of our lives should be seen as a quest or a pilgrimage, which can only be understood in terms of a narrative. Our life-journey is a life-story.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters, Joseph Pearce)

“Life in Christ is thus not a journey that happens with angels and demons on the periphery. Rather, it means that He rescues us from slavery to demonic forces. Life in Christ means joining Him and His angels as He defeats His demonic enemies…The Christian life is thus a journey of the person toward and with Christ, with angels as occasional helpers and demons as enemies who try to hinder the quest. The Hero’s Journey is the model for the Christian, whose story is about him or herself. Spirits are marginal characters whose presence or absence does not fundamentally alter the plot.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)

“There is a story about Rabbi Zusha weeping on his deathbed about how God would judge him. When his disciples tried to comfort the rabbi by comparing him to Moses and Abraham, he said, “When I get to Heaven, I will not be asked, ‘Why weren’t you like Moses, or why weren’t you like Abraham?’ They will ask, ‘Why weren’t you like Zusha?’…Christ never asks us to be someone we are not, but instead to embrace the journey of becoming evermore our true selves in Him…we cannot know ourselves until we know the unknowable God. Created in His image and likeness, we are irreducibly bound to the knowledge of God in the journey toward our true selves.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters, Father Stephen Freeman)

“God arranges for us precisely those tribulations that will move us forward on our spiritual journey by showing us our own weakness and God’s strength. If we open our hearts to Him in honest confession and repentance, He meets us in those tribulations with a grace and strength we could not have imagined.” (Holy Synod of OCA Bishops)

“While being virtuous is hard and even harder when practiced alone, it becomes especially difficult when one experiences a dearth of good men. I mean, just as travel involves hardship, and much more so when the traveler is alone and has no one with whom to share the journey, so too in this case. In other words, fellowship and fraternal encouragement are no small thing…The spiritual path towards true existence is difficult and even tedious. It requires attention and repentance, the willingness to expose ourselves to God in the naked, honest truth. However, this is not a journey we make alone. St. Paul declares, “Christ within us, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:27) If St. Silouan was correct in declaring, “My brother is my life,” then we must understand that Jesus has said as much of us: “You are my life.” We have no such declaration in the gospel, but we are told, “…that you may dwell in Me, and I in you.” We have been shaped far too deeply in our modern individualist world-view. We hear Jesus saying nothing more than, “I’ll help you from time to time,” and we pray in precisely that manner. We fail to see that the Life-of-Christ-in-me is also living and willing my life (Phil. 2:13). Learning to live in union with Him, in a communion of life and action, is the very heart of the life of grace.” (St. John Chrysostom, Father Stephen Freeman)

“We often lose hope in the face of worldly troubles. However, it is precisely while on such tough journeys that God calls us to move forward confidently…Faith is a principle of questioning and struggle before it becomes a principle of certitude and peace…our faith journey is a movement from seeing our faith as an “interesting uncertainty” to an “incomprehensible certainty.” (Dynamis 9/7/13, Thomas Merton, Gerald Manly Hopkins)

“To step out brings us nearer God and to true joy, but God goes with us as we journey. He is both in the midst of the struggle and waits on the other side…Growing strong in God’s presence is often preceded by a journey through barren places in our lives. The person who loves to spend time with God will see his or her adversity as an opportunity to experience God’s faithfulness even more deeply.” (Dynamis 12/29/12, Life Application Study Bible, Psalms 84:5-7)

“The life in Christ is a series of choices and actions undertaken after the manner of Abraham. It is a journey that carries us far from the measurable and the familiar, directing us toward a new way of life. We learn to follow this new way by means of sustained obedience over many years…The Christian walk is a journey. As we continue on our path, we come to know a deepening of our faith. We can eventually see God in everything and take great comfort in knowing He is there, even when we don’t understand all that is happening." (Dynamis 3/28/14, Bettie Youngs and Debbie Thurman)

“The hard part of the Christian journey comes after we receive grace that opens our hearts to God and the initial enthusiasm that comes with it. It’s like the passionate part in the beginning of marriage. Once that cools what then? We need the wisdom and discernment to continue to grow in our relationship with God or we become like the seed that received the word with joy but then fell away (Luke 8:13).” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“This is the spiritual journey—to live into the fullness of Christ’s life within us.” (Phileena Heuertz)

“Our world has made it all about ourselves. The journey of the Christian is to make it all about God.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis)

“Deep in our hearts we tend to rebel and protest, but it is necessary to subject our hearts, souls, and actions to the will of God. Although we may rarely discern God’s will among the myriad details of daily life, we still must learn obedience for this life’s journey...We often make life’s journey more difficult than necessary by disobedience.” (OCPM 2/13/2016, Life Application Study Bible, Deuteronomy 2:14-15)

"It’s easy to misunderstand our spiritual journey as a bunch of negatives: Don’t do this, don’t do that. From this point of view, my faith turns into mere “religion” in the pagan sense; that is, a burdensome obligation before a demanding divinity. But faith in the living, Triune God is actually about the big “Do,” of building, step by step, and growing, from day to day, on the foundation of God’s Word, in His grace." (Sr. Dr. Vasssa Larin)

"“It is good for me that I have been afflicted (Septuagint version: that you have humbled me, ὅτιἐταπείνωσάς με); that I might learn your statutes.” (Ps 118/ 119: 71) … How blessed I am to have this verse to pick me up and carry me, whenever I am afflicted and beat down by my own afflictions. Because God carries me forward, “that I might learn.” That’s the great difference faith makes, God makes, in the human journey: He blesses both the ups and the downs with eternal meaning, with the grace of growth in His gifts of humility, wisdom, and compassionate light." (Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin)

“We all possess within us a moral compass which helps us to stay on course in our spiritual journey…Every chapter of our life, whether joyous or difficult, filled with blessings or with sufferings, becomes another passage on the journey to fullness, wholeness, and an eternity spent within the Love of God.” (Fr. Andrew Demotses, Father Stephen De Young)

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