Since it is not the source of its own life, creation has no means of sustaining itself. It came from nothing and remains liable to dissolve back into it. All created things, left to themselves, tend to break apart and drift towards isolation, dissolution and eventual death. Aware of his vulnerability, man is fearful, and fear makes him a misery to himself and a terror to his fellow creatures. He needs to be liberated both from the confines of nature and from the fear which drives him to devour his fellow men.

If the world is to live, death must be overcome. But only a relationship of love, freely willed on both sides, can overcome the constraints on our life, including the ultimate limit that is death. Created beings are safe from death as long as they are in communion with the life that, being uncreated, has no limit. Man is made for relationship with God, who always intended to be with man, and intended that man should know this and be glad of it. From the first, God meant to be incarnate for man: had he not fallen, man would have been transformed incrementally into Christ, that is, man-with-God.

John D. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas H. Knight (London: T&T Clark, 2008), xvi.

Let us fast, my children, do not listen to those who say that fasting is nothing, and that this is something from monks. This is not from monks, my children, forgive me, God says this. The first commandment of God [in the Garden of Eden] is fasting, and our Christ fasted.

St. Elder Iakovos Tsalikis of Evia, "On Prayer and Fasting," retrieved from Orthodox Path blog, posted February 25, 2025.

[St. Anthony said] that it was more fitting for young men to hold to the ascetic life with zeal and not to seek things that enervate the body, but rather to accustom it to labors, bearing in mind the apostle's words, "When I am weak, then I am strong." For he used to say that the nous of the soul is strong when the pleasures of the body are weak....

For a man's whole life is very short when measured by the ages to come; all our time is nothing compared to eternal life. In the world everything is sold at its value and an item is exchanged for its equivalent, but the promise of eternal life is bought for a trifle....

St. Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, Saint Anthony the Great, trans. Saint Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery (Florence, AZ: Saint Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery Press, 2019), 12, 21.

Christ is the only exit from this world; all other exits—sexual rapture, political utopia, economic independence—are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of the many that have tried them.

Fr. Seraphim Rose, journal entry dated February 3, 1961. From Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2003), 95.

The saint of God[, St. Agathon,] constantly and strictly attended to himself and said that without intense self-examination, no person can achieve success. This is the path to salvation. The saints of God, who constantly examined themselves, constantly found within themselves new failing, and once they found them, they plunged ever deeper into repentance that purified them and prepared them for heaven. On the contrary, evil inattentiveness and busyness are always connected with a profound ignorance concerning oneself; not surprisingly, such self-ignorance is always very self-satisfied and proud of itself. "Many delude themselves," said Blessed Theophylact, "with vain hope, thinking that they will receive the kingdom of heaven, and they in advance add themselves to the ranks of those who rose up because of their virtue, imagining great things about themselves.... Many are called, because God calls many, even all, but there are few chosen, few who are saved, few who are worthy of being chosen by God. To call is God's work, but to be chosen is ours: the Jews were called, but were not chosen, for they were not obedient to the One Who called.

St. Arsenius, who was great among monks, during the entire course of his life, whenever he did manual labor, put a kerchief on his knees because of the amount of tears that fell from his eyes. He died. Abba Pœmen, a father who was gifted with unusually profound spiritual discernment, said upon hearing of this man's death, "You are blessed, Arsenius, for you wept for yourself during this life. Whoever does not weep for himself here will weep eternally. It is impossible to run away from weeping. Either you weep here willingly, or you will weep there unwillingly, in tortures." Hearing of this death, Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria said, "Blessed are you, Abba Arsenius! You constantly remembered the hour of your own death."

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, "A Homily on Death" in The Threshold: Trials at the Crossroads of Eternity, trans. Nicholas Kotar, The Collected Works of St Ignatius (Brianchaninov), vol. 3 (Jordanville: Holy Trinity Publications, 2023), 88.