“Do you wish to learn the opportune time for seeking the Lord? Let me briefly state that your entire life is the only time to carry this out. Seeking the Lord is not defined by limit or time; rather, the truly opportune time for this consists in never putting an end to our search.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa)
“The great perversion of our consumer life-style is to substitute shopping for seeking. Our passions (traditionally described as: self-love, gluttony, lust, love of money and greed, sadness, acedia (sloth & dejection or apathy and boredom anger, fear, vainglory, and pride) create a counterfeit sense of seeking. The passions cry out to be fed and satiated. However, they are disordered (for a variety of reasons) and generally only draw us deeper into a maw of darkness and addiction. We frequently imagine asceticism to be an unusual application in our life. What we imagine to be “self-denial” is, in fact, little more than a proper effort to live a life that is truly conformed to our nature. We cannot seek the true food of the soul until we find the soul’s true hunger.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“Excessive care about worldly matters is characteristic of an unbelieving and fainthearted person, and woe to us, if, in taking care of ourselves, we do not use as our foundation our faith in God, who cares for us! If we do not attribute visible blessings to Him, which we use in this life, then how can we expect those blessings from Him which are promised in the future? We will not be of such little faith. By the words of our Savior, it is better first to seek the Kingdom of God, for the rest shall be added unto us (see Mt. 6:33).” (St. Seraphim of Sarov)
“…we must use our freedom as human persons to seek first His Kingdom as we find the healing of our souls in response to His gracious invitation. The conventional responsibilities of life are in no way incompatible with doing so, for they provide opportunities to reorient the desires of our hearts to God as we love and serve Christ in our neighbors. All of our blessings and struggles are part of His creation, and nothing but our own sinfulness keeps us from making them points of entrance into eternal joy. By mindfully offering them to God every day of our lives, we will gain the strength to obey St. Paul’s instruction to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Family life, work, and the countless challenges of living faithfully in our culture present opportunities to find healing from “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk,” as well as lying. This is possible not because we have fulfilled a list of legalistic requirements, but because in baptism we have “put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Mountains figure prominently in many Bible stories. I am reminded of Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God’s hand; Mount Tabor, where Jesus led Peter, James, and John to witness His Transfiguration; and the hillside from which our Lord taught His famous Sermon on the Mount. In all of these cases mountains express a theological principle—God reveals Himself and distributes divine gifts to those willing to rise above this world and seek a higher reality.” (Archpriest Steven John Belonick)
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