Life ("Sea of Life")
“Such is our life! Calm and tempest alternate with each other; and time passes, passes, seeking to plunge into the abyss of eternity. Blessed is that swimmer in the sea of life, who often directs his gaze heavenward.” (St. Ignatius Brianchaninov)
“Oh, this treacherous sea of life! It’s vast, majestic, deep, beautiful, and mysterious, irresistibly drawing human hearts to it. It’s almost never quiet, calm, and azure, but more so agitated and stormy. The constantly surging waves, as if chasing and fight each other; they roar, converse, argue, and foam with some kind of malice and hatred. Seeking to destroy unlike themselves, these waves hurl themselves with fury and passion against the immovable stones and cliffs on the shore. But breaking against them as against impregnable fortresses, as against indestructible eternity, they run back into the depths of the lawless sea, mimicking the clamor and discontent of an innumerable human crowd with their noise, seething, and groaning.” (St. Seraphim Chichagov)
“ ‘Keep us, our God; for your ocean is so wide and our boat is so small.’ How truly beautiful those words are. They speak to us with a special meaning precisely because we understand that they might well be uttered by each of us at some point on our sometimes difficult journey on the sea of life. We are so weak, so helpless, and yet so forgetful of our God’s loving kindness. Tossed to and fro at the mercy of circumstance, we would likely perish if He did not hold us in his providential care…And so, even thought we each journey in a “small boat” on a “wide ocean”, we can surely trust our God to guide and protect us even in the worst of storms. We need only ask him to keep us this day, and every day that yet remains.” (Rev. Andew J. Demotses)
“We pray silently, out of utter dependence on God, and pour out our fears and needs upon Him. It is at that moment that we enter into the miracle on the sea. Christs vests us with the lifejacket of His peace and hope, which no wave, storm, or chaos can overcome. The Apostle Peter had to let go in order to stay afloat. The presence of Christ made it okay for him to let go. Each day Christ waits for us on this sea of life to have this encounter.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)
“People are lonely in this sea of life. And how difficult it is for them to come to the realization that they have only one sincerely loving, forgiving, unchanging, and all-powerful protector, true friend, and merciful Savior Christ! They don’t know the truth and righteousness of God and are powerless to overcome their spiritual sleep. Like the blind, they don’t see Christ standing closer to them, sinners, than to the righteous. Christ the Savior, acting through the attracting power of Divine grace but without violating the human will, awakens those who are spiritually asleep, calling them to rise, to be reborn through repentance, to come to their senses, especially when they’re already beginning to perish in the waves of the sea of life. Grace, like the breath of boundless love, revives the chilled human heart with its life-giving warmth; it doesn’t forsake even the most wretched of sinners.” (St. Seraphim Chichagov)
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