“In Christ, in His incarnation, the Son of God became the Son of Man. In the Ascension Christ shows humanity truly and fully belongs with God in heaven. Christ being fully God and fully human unites heaven and earth. And since Christ descended to the place of the dead and raised them with Himself, He also unites Hades, the place of the dead, with both earth and heaven. All become one in Christ.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“The Resurrection of Christ is the revelation of the goodwill of God, the promise of the final outcome of all things. The world that is being “gathered together in one in Christ Jesus,” is, through His suffering and death (within them), being united to His resurrection. This is the context in which we pray and worship and in which we come to perceive God (with what the fathers describe as the “noetic” faculty). We pray and we listen and we think there is only silence. This itself is the secular perception. Everything around us and we ourselves exist, sustained by the voice of God. Their existence is the eloquence of His good will.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“…how do we reach the state of “union with Christ”? We cannot realize our union with Christ if we are not in union with the church, His Body. The limbs, muscles, and organs of the physical body have no life except as part of the body. So the members of the Body of Christ do not possess the New Life of Christ except as part of His Body. However, when we are one in Christ, we share in the fullness of Christ. The fullness of Christ is the church’s goal, end, and completion. When the church achieves the perfect unity in Christ, there is nothing lacking–nothing in faith, love, and hope; nothing in the inspiration, power, and gifts of the Spirit; nothing in doctrine and leadership, nothing in worship, praise, and thanksgiving. Together in the church, we become the one “perfect man,” and together, we reach the maturity in Christ to which we as the Body of Christ are called.” (Fr. Basil)
“Holy Communion is received unto the remission of sins and life eternal. Through Holy Communion, we enter into the entire economy of salvation from the incarnation of God the Word to His session at the right hand of God the Father. The Blood of the Godman unites God to man and the members of the Church with each other into a single Body, a single life, a single soul. Through communion, we become one with Christ, one with our brother and our sister, one with the Saints, one with the entire Church, in which there is no separation between the living and the dead, for all are then one in Christ Jesus.” (Bishop Alexei)
“Prayer among fellow believers offers intimations of deliverance. Breaks in the barrier clouds come about when we are with others in prayer, even if they are not praying specifically for us at the time. The Holy Spirit has a way of reaching out to us all at once, because we realize at least subliminally that we are one in Christ, and that while we are individuals at worship, our common human nature is being charged with spiritual energy that manifests itself in the form of peace. That emotion need not be articulated; it’s enough to sense the good feeling of warm love from the God in us and surrounding us.” (Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky)
“The Apostle Paul, by using the imagery of rebirth (Galatians 4:19), directs us to consider what it means when Christ is “born in us.” Our emphasis shifts inward toward our spiritual formation and the interior growth that ultimately produces godly thoughts, actions, choices, and words. How does this inner formation occur? To have Christ formed in us, we must enjoy day-to-day contact with Him and engage in regular personal interaction with the Lord.” (Dynamis 9/7/2018)
“All the disciplines, liturgies, icons, candles, hymns, chanting, architecture, writings, Holy Scriptures, and saints’ lives are given by a loving God to acclimate you to His everlasting presence. Let’s embrace all these spiritual tools.” (Father Barnabas Powell)
“...what Christ is and did, the Church represents in the daily liturgical theophany of his saving action so that it can touch our lives. But what the Church actualizes in us radically through its sacramental life must be lived out by us in the exodus of our own pilgrimage.” (Archimandrite Robert Taft, SJ)
“Because Christ united the human and divine natures in His person, it is now possible for us to experience closer fellowship with God than Adam and Eve initially experienced in the Garden of Eden.” (Abbot Tryphon)
“Let us know God, Who commanded us to know Him and allows us to know Him through His Word (Holy Scriptures) and His Grace. Let us attach ourselves to God during this earthly life. He offers us a most intimate union with Himself, and He gives us a certain amount of time to effect that union — our earthly life. There is no other time, except the limited time of our earthly life, when we could unite with Him. If it does not occur during this time, it will never occur at all.” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov)
“This life in union with the Crucified and Risen Christ is the very heart of our existence. We are not so much “moral agents” as “cruciformed persons.” We do not merely “try not to sin,” we are “dead to sin.” For this reason, we say that prayer is the “one thing needful.” Prayer is our actively uniting ourselves to Christ, for apart from Him, “we can do nothing.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“The crisis of the deeper life is the key that unlocks the secret of…transformation. It is the beginning of the exchanged life…the “ Exchanged Life” is Christ living His life through us, rather than our trying to make life work through our own efforts and resources. It is made possible by the believer's union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6-8).” (V. Raymond Edman, John and Joyce Stanley)
“How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit?...there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to Him; a constant looking to Him for grace.” (Hudson Taylor) “…only total abandonment to God could lead to experiencing God’s fullest blessing…As we embrace His efforts, His gracious work will gradually achieve a total transformation of our being. (V. Raymond Edman, Dynamis 6/14/2018)
“When we know the Lord Jesus and are known by Him, when we have a life-giving relationship with the Him, our heart acquires a new orientation from which good works and virtues naturally develop.” (OCPM 6/14/2017)
“…the foremost issue facing us in this life is the state of our relationship with God…before all else we must seek a deep, intimate relationship with Christ our God, rather than trusting exclusively in worldly knowledge.” (Dynamis 5/7/2015, 4/18/2018)
“It is not what man is seeking, but whom he is seeking, that matters in the end.” (Jonathan Jackson)
“No matter how much we may study, it is not possible to come to know God unless we live according to His commandments, for God is not known by science, but by the Holy Spirit. Many philosophers and learned men came to the belief that God exists, but they did not know God. It is one thing to believe that God exists and another to know Him. If someone has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, his soul will burn with love for God day and night, and his soul cannot be bound to any earthly thing.” (St. Silouan the Athonite)
“In the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees of the New Testament, we see the tragedy of highly educated people who lacked the illumination of the Holy Spirit. All their knowledge was worldly knowledge that would die with them. Christ even told them that they were searching the Scriptures for eternal life but missed who the Scriptures testify about who can grant eternal life that is Christ (John 5:39). It’s the condition of many today who value positions, degrees, advanced degrees, and intellect divorced from the wisdom that is knowing and seeking Christ above all else.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)
“…God’s ultimate treasure – the life in Christ – is available to people from all walks of life…” (OCPM 7/14/2017)
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