“Let us consider how our lives might change if we made the “day of the Lord” the point of reference for guiding and correcting ourselves. Our certain judgment before the Lord becomes our main focus in life…What a difference it makes when the day of the Lord becomes our sole focus, the goal for which we strive in this life! As we look to the day of the Lord, we receive clear criteria for attaining God’s blessing, along with true hope. We know what pleases the Lord Jesus: “being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col 1:10).” (Dynamis 8/27/2021)
“In the end, when the Day of the Lord comes and Christ is again openly manifest, He will reestablish justice. That means that everything will be set right. All the works of the demons will be undone, and their rebellion places them outside the covenant with God. They will not be in the Kingdom. You might ask: Why don’t they get another chance? It is hard for us to understand, since we cannot really know what it means to be a rebellious demon. But we do know from Scripture and from subsequent Christian tradition that they do not even want another chance. Their rebellion is so crystallized that the goodness and love of God is something they simply do not desire. And they are not even capable of changing their minds, because changing one’s mind is possible only for those who are able to repent.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“…the apostle [Paul] points toward what we may rightly call “eschatological sobriety,” from the word eschaton (“last”). “For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). With these words he reframes our brief lives and sets them in an end-time perspective. Sobriety, then, is our antidote to the casual, moment-to-moment indulgence that will strip our life of eternal meaning if we are not careful.” (Dynamis 12/2/2021)
“All who listen to the depths of the gospel and live it so completely that none of it remains veiled from them care very little about whether the end of the world will come suddenly and all at once or gradually and little by little. Instead, they bear in mind only that each individual’s end or death will arrive on a day and hour unknown to him and that upon each one of us “the day of the Lord will come like a thief” [1Th 5:2]. It is important therefore to be vigilant, whether in the evening (that is, in one’s youth) or in the middle of the night (that is, at human life’s darkest hour) or when the cock crows (at full maturity) or in the morning (when one is well advanced in old age). When God the Word comes and brings an end to the progress of this life, he will gather up the one who gave “no sleep to his eyes nor slumber to his eyelids” [Ps 132:4] and kept the commandment of the One who said, “Be vigilant at all times” [Lk 21:36] . . .” (Origen)
“As many, therefore, as are children of the light also becomes the sons of the day which is to come, and are enabled to walk decently in the day. The day of the Lord will never come upon them, because they are ready in it forever and continually. The day of the Lord, in effect, is not going to be revealed suddenly to those who ever illumined by the divine light, but for those who are in the darkness of the passions and spend their lives in the rod hungering for things of the world; for them it will be fearful, and they will experience it as unbreakable fire.” (St. Symeon the New Theologian)