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"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty."

"...I am the light of the world; he who follows Me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life..." John 8:12

"...I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die..." John 11:25-26

Saint John of Damascus:

My beginning and foundation was the form;bestowing Word of Your commandment; for it pleased You to make me by compounding visible and invisible nature into a living thing. out of earth was my body formed and made, but a soul You gave me by the Divine and Life-creating In; breathing. Wherefore, O Christ, to Your servant in the land of the living, in the courts of the righteous, do You grant repose.

When in Your own image and likeness You in the beginning did create and fashion man, You gave him a home in Paradise, and made him the chief of your creation. But by the devil's envy, alas, beguiled to eat the fruit forbidden, transgressor then of Your commandments he became; wherefore back to earth, from which he first was taken, You did sentence him to return again, O Lord, and to pray You to give him rest.

Weep, and with tears lament when with understanding I think on death, and see how in the graves there sleeps the beauty which once for us was fashioned in the image of God, but now is shapeless, ignoble, and bare of all the graces. O how strange a thing; what is this mystery which concerns us humans? Why were we given up to decay? And why to death united in wedlock? Truly, as it is written, these things come to pass by ordinance of God, Who to him now gone gives rest.

Where is the pleasure in life which is unmixed with sorrow? Where the glory which on earth has stood firm and unchanged? All things are weaker than shadow, all more illusive than dreams; comes one fell stroke, and Death in turn, prevails over all these vanities. Wherefore in the Light, O Christ, of Your countenance, the sweetness of Your beauty, to him whom You have chosen grant repose, for You are the Friend of Mankind.

Ποία τοῦ βίου τρυφή, διαμένει λύπης ἀμέτοχος; ποία δόξα
ἕστηκεν ἐπὶ γῆς ἀμετάθετος; πάντα σκιᾶς ἀσθενέστερα,
πάντα ὀνείρων ἀπατηλότερα, μιᾷ ῥοπῇ, καὶ ταῦτα πάντα,
θάνατος διαδέχεται. Ἀλλ' ἐν τῷ φωτὶ Χριστὲ τοῦ προσώπου σου,
καὶ τῷ γλυκασμῷ τῆς σῆς ὡραιότητος, οὓς ἐξελέξω ἀνάπαυσον,
ὡς φιλάνθρωπος.

Like a blossom that wastes away, and like a dream that passes and is gone, so is every mortal into dust resolved; but again, when the trumpet sounds its call, as though at a quaking of the earth, all the dead shall arise and go forth to meet You, O Christ our God: on that day, O Lord, for him (her) whom You have withdrawn from among us appoint a place in the tentings of Your Saints;yea, for the spirit of Your servant, O Christ.

Vanity are all the works and quests of man, and they have no being after death has come; our wealth is with us no longer. How can our glory go with us? For when death has come all these things are vanished clean away. Wherefore to Christ the Immortal King let us cry, "To him that has departed grant repose where a home is prepared for all those whose hearts You have filled with gladness."


Elder Paisios of mount Athos: When someone gives his heart to God, then the mind of this man is also seized by the love of God. He is indifferent towards worldly things and continually thinks about the Heavenly Father, and being divinely in love, he glorifies his Creator day and night like an angel.