Quotes

To Believe in Him without Doing His Will is Not to Believe in Him at All

To believe in Him and not to believe in what He believed, not to love what He loved and not to desire what He desired, is not to believe in Him. To separate Him from the “content” of His life, to expect miracles and help from Him without doing what He did, and finally to call Him “Lord” and worship Him without fulfilling the will of His Father, is not to believe in Him. We are saved not because we believe in His “supernatural” power—such faith He does not want from us—but because we accept with our whole being and make ours the desire that fills His life, which is His life and ultimately makes Him descend into death and abolish it.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 65

The Sacraments Pass Us Over Into the Kingdom of God

The holy water in Baptism, the bread and wine in the Eucharist, stand for, i.e. represent the whole of creation, but creation as it will be at the end, when it will be consummated in God, when He will fill all things with Himself.

It is this end that is revealed, anticipated, made already real to us in the sacrament; and in this sense each sacrament makes us pass over into the Kingdom of God. It is because the Church herself is the sacrament of this passage and in each of her sacraments takes us there, into the Kingdom of God, that the water of Baptism is holy, i.e. the very presence of Christ and the Holy Spirit; that the bread and wine of the Eucharist are truly, i.e. really, and with a reality more real than all the “objective” realities of “this world,” the Body and Blood of Christ, His parousia, His presence among us. Thus consecration is always the manifestation, the epiphany of that End, of that ultimate Reality for which the world was created, which was fulfilled by Christ through His Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension, which the Holy Spirit reveals today in the Church  and which will be consummated in the Kingdom “to come.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 49-50

Prayer of St. Mary of Egypt to the Theotokos

O Virgin, Mother of God, who didst give birth to God the Word, I know that it is neither fitting nor seemly that one so defiled and so covered with guilt as I should look up to thy image, O ever Virgin. It is fitting that I should be hated and shunned by thy purity. Yet as He who was born of thee became man on purpose to call sinners to repentance, help me, for I have no other succour. Let me also find an entrance. Do not refuse me a sight of the wood on which God the Word, thy Son, suffered according to the flesh, who shed His own precious blood for me. Grant, O Queen, that I may be admitted to worship the sacred Cross, and I will promise thee as surety to the God whom thou didst bring forth that I will keep myself ever undefiled, When I see the Cross of thy Son, I will at once renounce the world and the things of the world, and forthwith follow wherever thou shalt lead.”

St. Sophronius of Jerusalem
The Life of St. Mary of Egypt

Those who are imaged are real and help us

With the material picture before our eyes we see the invisible God through the visible representation, and glorify Him as if present, not as a God without reality, but as God who is the essence of being. Nor are the saints whom we glorify fictitious. They are in being, and are living with God; and their spirits being holy, they help, by the power of God, those who deserve and need their assistance.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part III, Quote from Simeon of Mount Thaumastus

We do not worship images

We, who are of the faithful, do not worship images as gods, as the heathens did, God forbid, but we mark our loving desire alone to see the face of the person represented in image.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part III, Quoted from St. Athanasius Answers to Antiochus

Feelings for someone can be expressed through their images

When the Devil say man made after God’s image and likeness, as he could not fight against God, he vented his wickedness on the image of God. In the same way an angry man might stone the King’s image, because he cannot stone the King, striking the wood which bears his likeness.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part III, Quote form St. Basil’s Commentary on Isaiah

God’s holy ones are worshipped as partakers of the divine nature

And “God stood in the synagogue of the gods; in the midst of it He points out the gods.” (Ps. 82.1) As, then, they are truly gods, not by nature, but as partakers of God’s nature, so they are to be worshipped, not as worshipful on their own account, but as possessing in themselves Him who is worshipful by nature. Just in the same way iron when ignited is not by nature hot and burning to the touch, it is the fire which makes it so. They are worshipped as exalted by God, as through Him inspiring fear to His enemies, and becoming benefactors to the faithful. It is love of God which gives them their free access to Him, not as gods or benefactors by nature, but as servants and ministers of God. We worship them, then, as the king is honoured through the honour given to a loved servant. He is honoured as a minister in attendance upon his master— as a valued friend, not as king. The prayers of those who approach with faith are heard, whether through the servant’s intercession with the king, or whether through the king’s acceptance of the honour and faith shown by the servant’s petitioner, for it was in his name that the petition was made. Thus, those who approached through the apostles obtained their cures. Thus the shadow, and winding-sheets, and girdles of the apostles worked healings. (Acts 5.15) Those who perversely and profanely wish them to be adored as gods are themselves damnable, and deserve eternal fire. And those who in the false pride of their hearts disdain to worship God’s servants are convicted of impiety towards God. The children who derided and laughed to scorn Elisseus bear witness to this, inasmuch as they were devoured by bears. (II Kgs. 2.23)

…I venerate and worship angels and men, and all matter participating in divine power and ministering to our salvation through it.

…No one should be worshipped as God except the one true God. Whatever is due to all the rest is for God’s sake.

St. John Damascene
Apology Against Those Who Decry Holy Images
Part III, What We Find Worshipped in Scripture