“We pay a high price for our evil thoughts and uncontrolled passions, for they enslave and wither away our humanity…People today live in exile and are estranged from God, since they waste His multiple gifts in a prodigal manner, with no conditions or limits. They live as if there were no God, as if Christ hadn’t come to earth; and then the tragedy of their exile becomes all the more bitter. In their efforts to taste and enjoy the riches of life, to acquire and hang on to many things, they usually pay a high price.” (Dynamis 3/10/2021, Archimandrite Nikanor Karayannis)
“Everything in our world has a price—not in monetary terms, but as a sum total of efforts, time, and resources spent to achieve something…Our petitions to God also have their price: sorrows, prayers, labors, temptations and patience. Our business is to pray, leaving the overall outcome to God’s care. This leads to a complicated conclusion: We know what we want, but we don’t know if it’s good for us, and we don’t know what God wants, but we know that it’s good for us. It defies the earthly logic of justice, but stems from the “illogical” Divine mercy that penetrates the depths of the human heart. That is why the Lord, Who knows the hearts of all men (cf. Acts 1:24), above all requires trust from us. Yes, there is also a price in our relations with God—trust.” (Julia Balayants)
“ ‘I have often asked God through prayer for something I thought to be good. And I insisted illogically on asking for it, thus violating Divine will. I would not let God provide whatever He knew would be to my benefit. And so, having received what I had asked for, I afterwards felt very sorry that I had not asked that His Will be done; because things did not turn out as I had thought they would’ Hand in hand with the desire to obtain something “at all costs” comes haste, a truly underestimated enemy of a careful Christian life. In a hurry, obsessed with something, we make many mistakes at once, for which we subsequently pay a significant price.” (St. Nilus of Sinai, Julia Balayants)
“The Kingdom of God has no price tag on it. It is worth as much as you have. For Zaccheus it was worth half of what he owned, because the other half that he had unjustly pocketed he promised to restore fourfold. For Peter and Andrew it was worth the nets and vessel they had left behind; for the widow it was worth two copper coins; for another it was worth a cup of cold water. So, as we have said, the Kingdom of Heaven is worth as much as you have.” (St. Gregory Dialogos)
“In offering His life for us, Christ shows us that there is nothing more valuable in this world than a human person – and for that there can be no monetary price. Money is simply a token of human life – energy, time, and labor, all of which are meant to be shared. If we love the token more than human beings, then we value people only for what they can do for us; we reduce them to slaves.” (Fr. Matthew Baker)
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