“O radiant fountain, ever gushing with life, creative power coeternal with the Father, who with surpassing beauty hast fulfilled the whole economy of the salvation of mankind;

O Christ our God, who didst burst the indestructible bonds of death and the bolts of Hades, and hast trampled down multitudes of evil spirits; who didst offer thyself for us as a blameless victim, giving thine immaculate body as a sacrifice, inviolate and unblemished by an sin, and through that dread and indescribable act of sacrifice, didst bestow eternal life upon us; who didst descend into Hades and break down its eternal bars, showing forth the way up to those who sat below; thou who, in thy wisdom, didst bait and hook the ruler of evil, the dragon of the abyss, and with cords of gloom didst bind him in Tartarus, in unquenchable fire, confining him to the outer darkness by thine infinite might;

O glorious Wisdom of the Father, who didst manifest thyself as a mighty ally to the oppressed, enlightening those that sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, thou Lord of eternal glory and beloved Son of the Father Most High, Light everlasting of Light everlasting, Sun of righteousness…”

-Third Kneeling Prayer, Vespers of Pentecost

”“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.“
Matthew 5:43-48 LSB

Pray for those who Persecute You
“For neither did Christ simply command to love but to pray. Do you see how many steps he has ascended and how he has set us on the very summit of virtue? Mark it, numbering from the beginning. A first step is not to begin with injustice. A second, after one has begun, is not to vindicate oneself by retaliating in kind. A third, to refuse to respond in kind to the one who is injuring us but to remain tranquil. A fourth, even to offer up one’s self to suffer wrongfully. A fifth, to give up even more than the wrongdoer wishes to take. A sixth, to refuse to hate one who has wronged us. A seventh, even to love such a one. An eighth, even to do good to that one. A ninth, to entreat God himself on our enemy’s behalf. Do you perceive how elevated is a Christian disposition? Hence its reward is also glorious.”

- John Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 18.4.

“Therefore the Son of the Father declares [Him] from the beginning, inasmuch as He was with the Father from the beginning, who did also show to the human race prophetic visions, and diversities of gifts, and His own ministrations, and the glory of the Father, in regular order and connection, at the fitting time for the benefit [of mankind]. For where there is a regular succession, there is also fixedness; and where fixedness, there suitability to the period; and where suitability, there also utility. And for this reason did the Word become the dispenser of the paternal grace for the benefit of men, for whom He made such great dispensations, revealing God indeed to men, but presenting man to God, and preserving at the same time the invisibility of the Father, lest man should at any time become a despiser of God, and that he should always possess something towards which he might advance; but, on the other hand, revealing God to men through many dispensations, lest man, falling away from God altogether, should cease to exist. For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God. For if the manifestation of God which is made by means of the creation, affords life to all living in the earth, much more does that revelation of the Father which comes through the Word, give life to those who see God.”

-Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 4, ch. 20:7

“At this point it must be mentioned that although God’s self-revelation in history through the chosen people of Israel—the revelation which culminates in the coming of Christ the Messiah—is of primary importance, it is also the doctrine of the Christian Church that all genuine strivings of men after the truth are fulfilled in Christ. Every genuine insight into the meaning of life finds its perfection in the Christian Gospel. Thus, the holy fathers of the Church taught that the yearnings of pagan religions and the wisdom of many philosophers are also capable of serving to prepare men for the doctrines of Jesus and are indeed valid and genuine ways to the one Truth of God.”

-
The Orthodox Faith Volume 1: Doctrine and Scripture
Thomas Hopko

“Therefore the perfection of goodness is not in one individual, nor is it in any way the perfection of what is one’s own. No one can be called good who does not join himself constantly to the bad.”

—Tertullian, On the Prescription of Heretics

“We must guard against the feeling that there is 'safety in numbers'. It is natural to feel that if all men are as bad as the Christians say, then badness must be very excusable. If all the boys plough in the examination, surely the papers must have been too hard? And so the masters at that school feel till they learn that there are other schools where ninety per cent of the boys passed on the same papers. Then they begin to suspect that the fault did not lie with the examiners. Again, many of us have had the experience of living in some local pocket of human society-some particular school, college, regiment or profession where the tone was bad. And inside that pocket certain actions were regarded as merely normal ('Everyone does it') and certain others as impracticably virtuous and Quixotic. But when we emerged from that bad society we made the horrible discovery that in the outer world our 'normal' was the kind of thing that no decent person ever dreamed of doing, and our 'Quixotic' was taken for granted as the minimum standard of decency. What had seemed to us morbid and fantastic scruples so long as we were in the'pocket' now turned out to be the only moments of sanity we there enjoyed. It is wise to face the possibility that the whole human race (being a small thing in the universe) is, in fact, just such a local pocket of evil—an isolated bad school or regiment inside which minimum decency passes for heroic virtue and utter corruption for pardonable imperfection.”

- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Thou art all my good in times of peace,
My only support in days of trouble,
My one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
And even when it crosses mine
Teach me to be pleased with it.”

—Portion from Valley of Vision, p. 7 “The All-Good”

The education of children for God is the most important business done on earth.

-- R. L. Dabney

“Do we commend hospitality? Do we admire brotherly love, wifely affection, virginity, feeding the poor, singing psalms, nightlong vigils, penitence? Do we mortify the body with fasting? Do we through prayer take up our abode with God? Do we subordinate the inferior element in us to the better—I mean, the dust to the spirit, as we should if we have returned the right verdict on the alloy of the two which is our nature? Do we make life a meditation of death? Do we establish our mastery over our passions, mindful of the nobility of our second birth? Do we tame our swollen and inflamed tempers? Or our pride, which “comes before a fall,” or our unreasonable grief, our crude pleasures, our dirty laughter, our undisciplined eyes, our greedy ears, our immoderate talk, our wandering thoughts, our anything in ourselves which the evil one can take over from us and use against us, “bringing in death through the windows,” as Scripture has it, meaning through the senses?
No. We do the very opposite: we offer freedom to the passions of others, like kings declaring an amnesty after a victory, on the sole condition that they give their assent to us—and thus rush against God more violently or more “piously” than before; for this discreditable purchase we pay them a dishonorable price, license in exchange for impiety.”

—Gregory of Nazianzus, Against the Eunomians, Theological Oration 1 (27)

Regeneration

“He saved us, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,”
Titus 3:5

“Adoption gives us the privilege of sons, regeneration the nature of sons.”

“Regeneration is the motion of God in the creature; conversion is the motion of the creature to God, by virtue of that first principle.”

—Stephen Charnock

“Repentance is a change of the mind, and regeneration is a change of the man.”

—Thomas Adams

“Seeing we are born God’s enemies, we must be new-born His sons.”

—Richard Baxter