“With faith, life is a great mystery. As the saints say, life is a commission. What’s the assignment? It is heaven’s commission for man to meet God in his earthly days. St. Justin (Popovic) of Serbia admirably says that Christians seek the eternal in the temporal, the invisible in the visible, and God in the human. Christians are pilgrims of eternity, and they are constantly searching for divine gold in the earthly mire. So let us try to look for this divine gold in the earthly swamp every day. It is scattered everywhere in every meeting, in every glance, in every little conversation we have. You just need to take a better look around you, take a deeper look into your own heart.” (Igumen Tikhon Borisov)
“In these verses from Saint Luke’s Gospel [Luke 21:37-22:8], Christ embraces the daytime by “teaching in the Temple,” spends the night “on the mountain called Olivet” (vs. 37), and arranges for the Passover meal in the afternoon “when the Passover must be killed” (vs. 22:7). The Eternal moves through time at every hour, touching us as we learn, rest, and celebrate. Let us never forget the presence of Christ but rather meet Him in every hour, for He makes now eternal and gives timeless purpose to everything.” (Dynamis 12/8/2023)
“…there may be many things and moments in our lives that carry some echo of eternity. It is eternity itself that we long for and not its echoes. I have some wonderful memories of transcendent moments in various Liturgies through the course of my life. But those moments were themselves not the thing itself. The thing itself has been present in every Liturgy, even every other moment of life, mostly unrecognized. Among the most poignant statements in the gospels is in the opening chapter of St. John: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” (1:10-11). It describes Christ’s “homecoming.” It is followed by a statement that reverses and fulfills: “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God, to those who believe in His name:” (1:12). Home Himself has come among us in order to welcome us strangers into the place that has been prepared for us. Strangers no more, we may dwell in paradise – the heart’s true home.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Gaining a place in eternity requires us to sacrifice many of the things we love and to which we’re deeply attached. Christ proposes not merely a new moral code for us in his Gospel but the transcendence of our earthly limits. And this is true not only of the rich but of all of us who know existentially what we need to overcome in life if we’re going to meet the transcendent Christ. Some might have to overcome their wealth; others their gluttony; others their avarice, others their sensuality, and all of us whatever weakness we have.” (Protopresbyter Nikolaos Patsalos)
“Heaven and earth intermingling. That’s what Christianity is all about.” (Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin)