“Our orienting loves are like a kind of gravity—carrying us in the direction to which they are weighted. If our loves are absorbed with material things, then our love is a weight that drags us downward to inferior things. But when our loves are animated by the renewing fire of the Spirit, then our weight tends upward.” (James Smith)
“While for many…repentance implies going to confession and enumerating one’s sins, the Prophet Joel…gives us a much broader sense of what repentance implies. For Joel, repentance means returning to God when one has strayed away from the Lord. It is a re-orienting of one’s life and priorities, restoring God as Lord of one’s life. This goes beyond just admitting to certain sins or showing remorse for one’s errors. It is more akin to changing one’s perspective, a paradigm shift in one’s thinking and orientation.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“So what is the cure for evil thoughts? If we sit depressed and are anxious over all the things that depress us, that anger us, that cause us to despair, then we become more like those thoughts. But if we orient our spiritual sight toward what is holy and good, then the evil thoughts being suggested by the demons will have no place in us to take root and grow. Finally, it is critical that we see clearly that this spiritual pursuit is not merely about trying to create good thoughts—remember, our thoughts when receive them are not really generated from within. So this teaching is not “the power of positive thinking.” No, we orient our minds toward what is good precisely by doing what is good. We purify our nous and are able to receive the thoughts of holiness by repentance, by faithfulness, by turning toward Christ and then walking in His direction.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)
“Those who are truly finding the healing of their souls in Christ will shine brightly in contrast to the darkness that so easily takes root in our hearts. By God’s grace, we must all become so focused on gaining the spiritual vision to behold the glory of Jesus Christ that we appear as foolish by worldly standards as a blind beggar causing a disturbance or a former Pharisee becoming the apostle to the Gentiles. Doing so requires a daily struggle to purify our hearts and reorient our deepest desires for fulfillment in God. The first step on that journey is to recognize our blindness and to call out with persistent humility for the mercy of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. Every single one of us must do that every day of our lives if we are to know the healing and restoration of the miserable beggar who received his sight through faith in the Lord. Let us not despair even when the darkness threatens to overwhelm us, but instead mindfully open our hearts to the light of Christ as we trust that He will minister to us at our point of greatest need and make us participants in His salvation.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Christianity does not seek to preserve something that is now past – it is not a faith bound in history. Rather, it professes that what was once given at a moment in history is nothing other than that which shall be at the end of all things. The faith is thus only rightly lived when it is radically oriented towards that which is to come. The Kingdom of God is never anything other than the end and fulfillment of all things, that for which creation itself came into existence.” (Father Stephen Freeman)