“Sin remains an affront to the holy God. It alienates us from God again as if Christ had not reconciled us to our Creator. So it puts us in danger of losing the blessings of eternal life that are given to us by belief and baptism (Mark 16:16). And because we are members of one another, sin affects the whole Body of Christ. Some sins are especially contagious and contaminate the entire community of faith. Therefore, we need not fear anything in this world. But we do need to fear sin and its effect on our fellow believers and us.” (Fr. Basil)
“The more we let sin get the upper hand in our own lives, the more our children will suffer for it. Sin is like a contagious disease. My children don’t suffer because I have it. They catch it from me and then suffer because they have it….Slander is also an infectious sin. Many of us find ourselves getting caught up in conversations about others, and not wishing to cause offense, we go along with it. We start contributing our own judgmental comments. Many Christians are not sure what to do when they find themselves in this situation.” (John Piper, Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou)
“ ‘In all my remembrances of you I thank my God, for you are always in every one of my prayers. I pray for you with joy’ (Philippians 1:2)… How delightful to know that St. Paul prays for them with joy. Happiness is contagious. If they feel out of sorts, they need only enter the sanctuary of their souls to sense the Spirit binding the Apostle to them, and absorb the grace of happiness. Joy is contagious. Nobody likes to be around the gloomy and downcast. When a person begins with self-pity and whines his complaints, some spirit inside us whispers a message: Get away before this grief afflicts you…Joy also is infectious. Joy is Paul’s basic nature, because he is naturally optimistic about life. Whatever worries us is potentially a learning experience. Paul prays that whatever we are confused by, whatever frustrations we experience, God will help us find a way out. Joy is positive. (Fr. Vladimir Berzonsky)
“Goodness gravitates towards what is right, noble, and true. Goodness is not about being pretentious and fake, two things we see way too much of in the world today. When someone overflows with goodness, it is infectious. Goodness also includes worrying about the good of others, and looking out for their good as well as our own.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis)
“We view sin as infection. Further, we are all connected whether we like to think so or not. Therefore, our sin, our infection, can spread. We can, through our words, actions and poor examples, lead others astray. The good news is that faith is contagious. When we truly believe in God, and our words and action reflect this devotion and we let our light shine (Matthew 5:16), our faith can be transformative to others…Faith is a contagious gift.” (Sacramental Living Ministries, Dynamis 5/10/2019)
“Each action of faith in your life is like putting another peg into the Lite Brite pattern. People will notice that there is something going on in the way you live your life. At first it may not look like anything or it may even confuse people a bit. However, soon enough, the glow of your faith will shine through the darkness of the world and reveal a beautiful design, the Cross of Salvation. Don't worry about people not seeing the pattern. They will. Your challenge is to make sure that the light always shines brightly in everything you do.” (Vasie-Leigh Andriotis)
“When we study the spread of the new faith among early Christians, we are amazed at the decisive missionary role played by simple people like merchants, sailors, and soldiers. Having known Christ and grown in his grace and wisdom, these people shared their Christian experience and spoke about their new life in Jesus wherever they went. Even without speaking they let their knowledge of Christ, their communion with God, be visible through their lives. A real knowledge of Christ and experience of his grace is a mobile entity, it has a contagious nature; hence, it can be and actually is transmitted in a thousand ways, both verbal and non-verbal.” (Archbishop Demetrios Trakatellis)
“Because people saw a faith [in the early Church] that people were not only willing to die for, but that people were willing to live for on a daily basis. The genuine love and joy that was lived in the lives of the early Christians was contagious. In modern society, our collective state of angst and mistrust, cynicism and ego make it hard to present a church that is attractive to the one who doesn’t know Christ. Doing what pleases God is a great way to recapture the joy of those early Christians, who, while not well learned in the faith, still lived with a contagious zeal. We are much more educated than they—we have an ability to read and to acquire information for ourselves that they didn’t have. And yet the church by and large is not growing. It’s not for lack of information. It is for lack of gratitude towards God.” (Fr. Stavros N. Akrotirianakis)
“Be as Christ to those around you, just as Christ was with His disciples. Walk with them, talk with them, shower them with love, eat and drink with them, live with them, sacrifice for them, and die for them. This is how Christ taught us. This is what Christ showed us. When you live this life of love, which is what the life of self-denial is, another thing you may notice is that you will be offering the same freedom to those around you. They are in a sense being given permission to return to innocence, to deny themselves as well. You inspire them with your love to respond with love. The way of love becomes contagious, multiplying in other people. This is all why Jesus is able to say to us in Matthew 11:30 that His “yoke is easy and [His] burden is light.” Coming to Jesus is actually the way of rest, the way of peace.” (Father Andrew Stephen Damick)
#SacramentalLivingMinistries #Dynamis #VasieLeighAndriotis #ArchbishopDemetriosTrakatellis #FrStavrosNAkrotirianakis #FatherAndrewStephenDamick #FrBasil #JohnPiper #ArchimandriteVassiliosPapavassiliou #FrVladimirBerzonsky