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“Let not us, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example – and warning – to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him – even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world. And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time. No wonder then, that it is hard to be a Christian – it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, lead the more surely to one’s own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds. We must ultimately choose – our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both. God give us the strength to pursue the path to crucifixion; there is no other way to be Christian.” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina, from his journal as printed in the biography Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works by Hieromonk Damascene
“Modern man lives on the dregs of Christianity, on Christian experience digested and turned into ‘ideas’ for mass consumption. Hence the parody of Christianity is to be seen in modern ideas like ‘equality’, ‘brotherhood’, ‘charity.’ … And Christian messianism - the coming Kingdom which is not of this world (Jon 18:36) - has been perverted into the coming Kingdom in this world that practically everyone believes in today. Even those who see through the delusion of idealism… fall prey to the second idea, the idea that Truth can somehow be realized in this world, in the coming age of the ‘spirit,’ or in the relation of ‘man with man.’ But this world cannot hold the Truth in its fullness, any more than it could tolerate the presence in it of the God-Man; for man is called upon to be more than man, he is called to deification, and this can only happen fully in the ‘other world’ - which, though it constantly impinges on this world, never does so more than partially, giving us warnings and indications of what is to come. This world must end, man as we know him must die, must be crucified before that ‘other’ world can come into being.” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina
“One who merely knows these truths in the mind will be helpless to resist the temptations of those times, and many who recognize the Antichrist when he comes will nonetheless worship him – only the power of Christ given to the heart will have strength to resist him.” —Fr. Seraphim Rose of Platina