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- "Christanity is similar to tasting deeply of truth, eating
and drinking of truth - to eat and drink on and on unto power
and energy. It is like a certain spring when someone very
thirsty begins to drink from it. But then, while he is drinking,
someone rushes him off before he has drunk his fill. Afterward,
he burns more ardently, because he has tasted the water and
eagerly seeks it. So also in the spiritual life, a person tastes
and partakes of the heavenly food, but while he is eating it is
taken away and no one given him to eat his fill."
St. Macarius the Great, Fifty Spiritual
Homilies.
- "Christian religion is not a certain philosophic
system, about which learned men, trained in metaphysical
studies, argue and then either espouse or reject, according to
the opinion each one has formed. It is faith, established in the
souls of men, which ought to be spread to the many and be
maintained in their consciousness. There are truths in
Christianity that are above out intellectual comprehension,
incapable of being grasped by the finite mind of man. Our
intellect takes cognizance of them, becomes convinced of their
reality, and testifies about their supernatural existence.
Christianity is a religion of revelation. The Divine reveals its
glory only to those who have been perfected through virtue.
Christianity teaches perfection through virtue and demands that
its followers become holy and perfect. It disapproves of and
opposes those who are under the influence of the imagination. He
who is truly perfect in virtue becomes through Divine help
outside the flesh and the world, and truly enters another,
spiritual world; not, however, through the imagination, but
through the effulgence of Divine grace. Without grace, without
revelation, no man, even the most virtuous, can transcend the
flesh and the world." "Modern Orthodox
Saints, St. Nectarios of Aegina", Dr. Constantine Cavarnos,
Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Belmont,
Massachusetts., 1981., pp. 154-187
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