"Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ" by St. Justin Popovich Part II

Ok, I have technically been finished with Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ for a while now but got side tracked with a new book that I received.  As always I love to write down excerpts from the books I read to give people an idea of the spiritual insight, grace, and Faith that is in these books. This is one of my favorite books so I will quote a lot from it so enjoy:

"In order for a person to be immortal he must, at the very core of his sense of self, feel himself immortal.  For him to be eternal, in his center of consciousness of self he must know himself eternal.  Without doing this, for him both immortality and eternity alike will be conditions imposed from the outside."


"Only in Christ, in Him alone, did man feel himself immortal and know himself eternal."


"For this reason only he who is organically made on with Christ [Incarnate], one with His Body, the Church, can be the one to feel himself really immortal know himself in truth to be eternal.  Whereby, for man and for humanity, Christ composes the one and only passage and transition from time to eternity: This is why in the Church, the Orthodox Church, Christ became and remained the one and only way and the single guide from the former to the latter, from the sense of one's own mortality to the sense of one's immortality, from self-awareness of what is eternal and without dimension."


"Hence, the mission of the Church is to make everyone of Her faithful, organically and in person, one with the Person of Christ; to turn their sense of self into a sense of Christ, and their self-knowledge...for their life to become the life in Christ and for Christ; their personality in Christ and for Christ; that within them might live not they themselves but Christ in them (Gal. 2:20)."


"[The Church] is beyond nationality, oecumenical (oncerned with promoting unity among churches), all-embracing: to unite all men in Christ, all without exception to nation or race or social strata."


"And so it is: in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist the ways of Christ and the means of uniting all people are composed and defined and integrated.  Through this mystery, man is made organically one with Christ and with all the faithful."


"The Church has adapted herself to the people when it should properly be just the reverse: the people adapting themselves to the Church."


"It is now high time - the twelfth hour - time for our Church representatives to cease being nothing but the servants of nationalism and for them to become Bishops and Priests of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church."


"The mission of the Church, given by Christ and put into practice by the Holy Fathers, is this: that in the soul of our people be planted and cultivated a sense and awareness that every member of the Orthodox Church is a Catholic (Universal) Person, a person who is for ever and ever, and is God-human; that each person is Christ's, and is therefore a brother to every human being, a ministering servant to all men and all created things."


"Martyrdom is the state in which a Christian brings forth fruit...For the Orthodox, martyrdom is purification."


"The watchword which should be heard within the Church today is: Let us return to the Christ-bearing ascetics and to the Holy Fathers!"


"And today only Orthodox ascetic efforts and virtues can bring about sanctity in every soul, in the soul of all our people..."


"Herein lies the difference between the world of men and the one in Christ: the human world is transient and time-bound, whilst that of Christ is as ever whole, for ever more.  Orthodoxy, as the single vessel and guardian of the perfect and radiant Person of [Christ Incarnate], is brought about exclusively by this exertion of virtues by grace, through entirely God-human Orthodox means..."


"The Orthodox soul of our people leans towards the Holy Fathers and the Orthodox ascetics."


"In its heart of hearts our people knows Christ and Orthodoxy, it knows just what it is that makes and Orthodox person Orthodox.  Orthodoxy will always generate ascetic rebirth.  She recognizes no other."


"Life in the one true God and Lord Jesus Christ is really our only true life because it is wholly eternal and completely stronger than death."


"There is no end to the love of the Lord of Christ for man..."


"Actually, a man's real life begins with his faith in the Lord Christ, which commits all his soul, all his heart, all his strength to the Lord Christ, Who gradually sanctifies, transfigures, deifies them."


"The Saints are the most perfect Christians, for they have been sanctified to the highest degree with the [asceticism] of holy faith in the risen and eternally-living Lord Christ and no death has power over them."


"The lives of the Saints are in fact the life of [Christ Incarnate], which is poured out into His followers and is experienced by them in His Church."


"God, Who became incarnate and who as the God-man has in entirety remained in His Church, which lives eternally by Him.  And one lives 'worthily of God' when one lives according to the Gospel of Christ."


"For the Saints are Saints by the very fact that they constantly live the entire Lord Jesus as the soul of their soul, as the conscience of their conscience, as the mind of their mind, as the being of their being, as the life of their life."


"Again if you want...irrefutable testimonies of the life-bearing and life-creatnig nature of the All-Venerable Cross of the Lord, and with it an experimental confirmation of the all-truthfulness of the holy dogma of the saving nature of the death of the Savior on the Cross, then start out with faith through the Lives of the Saints."


"We must not be mistaken.  Western Christian humanistic maximalism, the "papacy," is fundamentally protestantism since it removed the foundation of Christianity from the eternal God-man [Christ] and placed it in finite man claiming this to be the measure and criterion of all."


"Only with [Christ] and His Church, and through His Church 'with all the Saints,' is it possible to achieve 'complete personhood, as measured by the stature and fulness of Christ' (Eph. 3:18, 4:11-16)."


"Honesty is the language of Truth: the dogma concerning the infallibility of the 20th century pope is nothing other than the rebirth of idolatry and polytheism, the rebirth of idolatrous value judgments and criteria."  


" 'I do not condemn; go and sin no more' (John 8:11).  This is the Orthodox method of recovery, established as dogma, in the task of saving the sinner from sin.  This method of Holy Tradition, developed in accordance with the wisdom of God and established in the Orthodox Church by the Holy Fathers..."


"Humility is the foundation of our philosophy concerning life and the world, concerning time and eternity, concerning [Christ] and the Church."