St. Symeon the New Theologian Orthodox Church

On Holy Baptism

"By dying to sin in baptism one could say mystically that he shares in the death of Christ (cf. Col. 2:12). Join me in observing how appropriately the symbols convey the sacred. To us death is not, as others imagine, a complete dissolution of being. It is, rather, the separation of two parts which had been linked together. It brings the soul into what for us is an invisible realm where it, in the loss of the body, becomes formless. And the body is hidden in earth and undergoes a change from corporeal shape and is withdrawn from its human appearance. Now because of this it is quite appropriate to hide the initiate completely in the water as an image of this death and this burial where form is dissolved.
This symbolic lesson therefore sacredly leads the one who is baptized into the mystery that by his triple immersion and emersion he imitates, as far as the imitation of God is possible to men, the divine death of One Who was three days and nights in the tomb, the life-giving Jesus, in Whom, according to the mysterious and hidden tradition of Scripture, the ruler of the world found nothing. Next they put bright clothes on the initiate. His courage and his likeness to God, his firm thrust toward the One, make him indifferent to all contrary things. Order descends upon disorder within him. Form takes over from formlessness. Light shines through all his life. "

- St. Dionysius the Areopagite

"First, we must recognize that the starting-point of all our spiritual development is the natural knowledge given us by God, whether this comes through the Scriptures by human agency, or by means of the angel that is given in divine Baptism to guard the soul of every believer, to act as his conscience and to remind him of the divine commandments of Christ. If the baptized person keeps these commandments, the grace of the Holy Spirit is preserved in him. "

- St. Peter of Damascus

The Children of God and the Children of the World

"The Word of God is God. And the word of the world is world. There is a great difference and distance between the Word of God and the word of the world and between the children of God and the children of the world. For every begotten offspring resembles its proper parents. If, therefore, the offspring of the Spirit gives itself over to the word of the world and to earthly matters and the glory of this age, it is stricken with death and perishes, whence it came into existence. "

- St. Macarius the Great: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies

The Search for Meaning

"We live in an age of constant activity, gratification of the senses, uncontrolled imagination and speculations that wear people out. They are searching for inner stillness but also for theology - knowledge of God - to give their lives meaning. "

- Met. Hierotheos Vlachos of Greece

And So, Do Not Consent...

"Dear F...., you will still not understand? Why, you yourself see that for years the enemy has been scaring you but has accomplished nothing so far...Here is what Batiushka Father Amvrosy said concerning you, "She should not despair, but trust in God's mercy." The enemy only suggests thoughts; he can accomplish nothing without God's permission and unless we ourselves consent. And so, do not consent and he will not hurt you. "

- from a letter of St. Anatoly of Optina to one of his spiritual daughters

Let Us Not Disdain Our Master...

"'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' Matt. 24:403 It is clear from the aforesaid that the Lord accepts and takes everything done for our poor neighbors as done for Him Himself. And His words "ye have done it unto me" are not limited only to those to whom we were unkind, or whom we have wronged, or whose possessions we have appropriated, or to whom we have done other harm, but include also those whom we have disdained. - This latter alone is sufficient for our condemnation for, in disdaining them, we disdain Christ Himself. "

- Saint Symeon the New Theologian