“Our goal is union with God, which comes through sanctification. The first step toward that goal is the denial of the self. This is not a false humility, pretentious posturing, or a playing-the-martyr mentality, but an honest recognition that we are far from God, that we are spiritually sick and require healing. The paradox is that the closer we come to God, the farther away He seems, as we become more acutely aware of our own sinfulness. And yet God is not far from us but within us, intimately connected to us, our very breath and our very life.” (Dr. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou)
“Paul urges the believers in Colossae to continue to pray. That should go without saying. Prayer, after all, is the breath of the soul. The body cannot survive for more than a few minutes without breathing. Likewise, the neglect of prayer deadens the soul.” (Fr. Basil)
“All believing Christians know the value of prayer and its power in the life of those who are praying and those who are being prayed for. Prayer’s a matter of life and death; without it Christians literally can’t live and breathe. The saints of our Church point this out: ‘We must pray more than we breathe’…And it’s obvious. How can we live naturally and joyfully without constant reference to God our Father, Creator, Provider and Ruler? Those who’ve expunged God from their lives have found out, even if they’re often not fully aware of it, that their lives have become hellish. Spiritual asphyxiation makes them experience death before their death.” (Protopresbyter Georgios Dorbarakis, Saint Gregory the Theologian)
“…just as we cannot love mankind in general, only a man, we cannot provide for society in general, only the person standing in front of us. So each must carefully discern how to act in ways that help individuals and families. For some, it may be through seeking a more just system in ways that do not contradict an ecclesial ethos. For most, it will be through personal generosity and ministry to those in need. Scarcity is not a problem of economics, it is the outcome of a spiritual affliction. Fear constricts the heart and leads to greed. Selfishness poisons the soul and produces misers. But Christ promises us “life most abundant” (Jn 10:10). The breath of the Spirit unfetters the heart and awakens it to God’s bounty, and so the only appropriate response to so great a gift is absolute generosity. Christians forget to their eternal peril that distributive justice is also a biblical ideal.” (Rev. Fr. Joshua Lucas)
“…when God created us He blew His Breath into us. This Breath of God is Love. Do we stop loving? Then we stop living! We cannot do without breath. Yet, if you love the one and not the other, it means that you love no one. Do you understand how it is? For God has given us Love, our heart, our eyes, all His Gifts, for the purpose… First, to love Him with all our soul, with all our being as we are told in the First Commandment, and second, never to dissociate our self from the others. We are told “Love thy neighbor as thyself”. Who am I to say: “This one is bad, I must not love him. That one is a liar, what have I got to do with him”? Ah! No, my brother! Love is not like that. Love loves everyone, as God loves us all in spite of our pitiful state! Doesn’t He have plenty of reasons not to love us? And yet… In spite of everything, He makes His sun rise on good and bad alike and sends His rain on the honest and dishonest.” (Mother Gavrilia)
“God has given to the earth the breath which feeds it. It is his breath that gives life to all things. And if he were to withhold his breath, everything would be annihilated. His breath vibrates in yours, in your voice. It is the breath of God that you breathe—and you are unaware of it.” (Theophilus of Antioch)
“Example after example bears witness to this tradition that uses breath as a metaphor of divine-human intimacy. But there is also a very practical aspect of this tradition: the use of one’s own breath as a way to experience this divine-human intimacy, as an aid to dispel the illusion of separation from God…“Maximus the Confessor puts it quite simply, “God is breath.” (Martin Laird)
“Contemplative breathing is the ultimate assertion that you can relax because God is the one in charge of your survival. To embrace the stillness of contemplation is to acknowledge that your heavenly Father knows your needs and is taking care of you exactly as He promised (Matt. 10:29–31).” (Robin Phillips)
“If the mind focuses on the breath, that means the wandering mind, which has been outside of the body, is now united to the body, and that’s a huge first step, because so often we’re absent from the present moment. You can live your whole life without actually having lived it. Focusing on the breath is important because it brings the mind back to the body, and also because the breath is the one thing that we have that is unambiguously in the present—right here and right now. If I can get my mind to focus on the breath I’m not only entering into my body but I’m also entering into the present. It is so tremendously powerful to be in the present. It can be frightening because it’s a place we’re not familiar with, and I think that’s one of the reasons we run from it. It can be overwhelming.” (Hieromonk Maximos Constas)
“Activities as natural as walking and breathing are spiritual activities – the labor of love of the soul (biblically the same Hebrew word is used to mean spirit, wind or breath which gives us a sense of how intertwined the physical and spiritual really are). Such thinking helps get rid of dualistic ideas which oppose the spiritual to the physical. As humans we are both physical and spiritual (or soulful) and any activity in one of these spheres affects the other sphere.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“God has given to the earth the breath which feeds it. It is his breath that gives life to all things. And if he were to withhold his breath, everything would be annihilated. His breath vibrates in yours, in your voice. It is the breath of God that you breathe—and you are unaware of it.” (Theophilus of Antioch)
“The soul that is united and transformed in God breathes God in God with the same divine breathing with which God, while in her, breathes her in himself.” (St. John of the Cross)
“Example after example bears witness to this tradition that uses breath as a metaphor of divine-human intimacy. But there is also a very practical aspect of this tradition: the use of one’s own breath as a way to experience this divine-human intimacy, as an aid to dispel the illusion of separation from God.” (Martin Laird)
“The simple exercise of paying attention to your breath brings all of your attention and focus into the present moment. It’s an effective way of shutting off your racing mind and descending into the stillness of your heart…Let the remembrance of Jesus be with your every breath. Then indeed you will appreciate the value of stillness.” (Kevin Scherer, St. John Climacus)
"At one point, God took dirt from the earth and fashioned it into a man, into Adam. But Adam did not have life until God did something more than just shaping him. Adam became a living soul when God breathed into him the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). And what is the “breath of life”? It is nothing less than the very presence of God Himself. From the beginning, we were made to breathe God.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
"The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being". The very Breath of God brings us into existence as living beings…one who lives a life "in the Spirit", is one who has been breathed upon.” (Father James C. Moulketis)
“The act of breathing is a gift from God. The Scriptures record that He “breathed into [our] nostrils the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). Every time we pay attention to this breath entering and leaving our bodies, we witness the breath of God coursing through us. By being mindful of this, we are reminded that there is no life apart from Him.” (Kevin Scherer)
“The heart cannot become tranquil and be without imaginings as long as the senses are active…So, of course, it is necessary for each and every one of us to find…a few moments in solitude to collect oneself and breathe spiritually. Spiritual breath is prayer; and the Prayer of Jesus, the invocation of His holy Name is the very heart of spiritual breathing. ‘Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved.’ ”(His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph)
“Through the grace of God and our disciplined efforts prayer lifts us up from our isolation to a conscious, loving communion with God in which everything is experienced in a new light. Prayer becomes a personal dialogue with God, a spiritual breathing of the soul, a foretaste of the bliss of God's kingdom.” (GOArch Department of Religious Education)
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