“…darkness can never overpower the light of Christ, nor can it understand the way of love…To choose to follow Christ is to accept Christ’s choosing you! (John 15:16). To be His disciple, is to live in Christ while still living in this world. To be a Christian is to shine with the light of Christ (Matthew 5:14).…the knowledge of our own weakness, how it is that we are broken, is only made possible by the light of Christ, a light that simultaneously illumines the darkness, a strength made perfect in weakness. “It is,” St Isaac of Syria affirmed, “a spiritual gift of God to be able to perceive one’s own sins.” Moreover, to plumb the depths of our fallenness is to scale the heights of divine love.” (Orthodox Study Bible, John 1:5, Fr. Ted Bobosh, Fr. John Behr)
“…we must mindfully open the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ. That means offering our concerns to God through prayer on a daily basis as we turn our attention to the words of the Jesus Prayer and away from worried, intrusive thoughts. It means reading the Psalms in order to learn how to cry out to God from the depths with persistent trust, instead of wallowing in despair. It means refusing to make gratifying any passion the measure or purpose of our lives. It means repudiating the idols we have been worshipping and struggling to seek first the Kingdom of God in how we live each day.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Those living in this darkness are unable to apprehend the light of Christ, unable to distinguish light from darkness, truth from lie (John 1). Caught up in this same darkness many in the Church have also been blinded to truth and aimlessly wander around in the shadows where the true light is replaced with its opposite—“a different gospel” (Gal. 1.6), the uninspired imaginings of darkened minds…As a result, many are leaving the Church while many of its remaining members continue in the shadows, their commitment nominal at best. This does not mean that all is lost. There is, as promised in Scripture, a group of spiritually-minded believers who are still in the Church, who still speak and live by the truth. But, given the overwhelming power of the forces of darkness, these hold-outs are a small, misunderstood, and sometimes even mistreated minority—what Scripture calls a Remnant —within the Church.” (Fr. Edward Rommen)
“Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed, and not a “mystery” to be explained. Religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a “status,” a rationale, make it “normal.” Only Christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible. At the grave of Lazarus Christ wept, and when His own hour to die approached, “he began to be sore amazed and very heavy.” In the light of Christ, this world, this life are lost and are beyond mere “help,” not because there is fear of death in them, but because they have accepted and normalized death. (Fr. Alexander Schmemann)
“The Light of Christ isn’t an imposition, forced upon us by propaganda or brainwashing. It’s a discreet call to repentance, a sweet awakening into participation in a life that’s royal…Blessed are they who see Christ’s invitation to repentance as the opening of a window onto the true Light, as a foray into the ‘freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom. 8, 21).” (Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos)