“Όλοι οι άνθρωποι δημιουργήθηκαν κατ’ εικόνα Θεού. Ωστόσο, μόνο όσοι ζουν σε κοινωνία μαζί Του μέσω της προσευχής και εκπληρώνουν το θέλημά Του, όντας καλοί και ελεήμονες, φτάνουν στην ομοίωση με τον Θεό

“in the Church everyone – from the highest hierarchical ministry to the layperson – is united by the love of Christ, and that each person is a bearer of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which does not dwell in a person automatically but is given in response to a pious life.

“With every advance in our thought the unity of the creative act and the impossibility of tinkering with the creation as though this or that element in it could have been removed will become more apparent. Perhaps this is not the “best of all possible” universes but the only possible one. Possible worlds can mean only ‘worlds which God could have made but didn’t’. The idea of that which God ‘could have’ done involves a too anthropomorphic conception of God’s freedom. Whatever human freedom means, Divine freedom cannot mean indeterminacy between alternatives and choice of one of them. Perfect goodness can never debate about the means most suited to achieve it. The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than himself produces his acts and no external obstacle impedes them—that his own goodness is the root from which they all grow and his own omnipotence the air in which they may all flower.

C. S. Lewis ›

Direct quote

“The Panagia thus reveals that the ultimate destiny of the human person is not merely moral improvement, but deification—the participation, by grace, in the life of God,

“who is like God?

“forgiving others is essential for experiencing God’s mercy and becoming more like Him

Patriarch Daniel of Romania ›

Patriarch

Reported

“Many people today look only at the ground and focus exclusively on themselves. This image calls us to lift our gaze upward, toward God and Heaven.