"The Christian calling is a difficult one, and we fight for it in our daily lives. Our entire lives are is a battle between truth and falsehood, and between doing right and doing wrong. This battle begins at Baptism, and doesn’t end until our last breath"
+ Fr William C. Mills, "Church, World, and Kingdom: The Eucharistic Foundation of Alexander Schmemann's Pastoral Theology" (Chicago: Hillenbrand Books, 2012)
"The first act of the Christian life is renunciation, a challenge. No one can be Christs until he has, first, faced evil, and then become ready to fight it. How far is this spirit from the way in which we often proclaim, or to use a more modern term, “sell” Christianity today! Is it not usually presented as a comfort, help, release from tensions, a reasonable investment of time, energy and money? One has only to read—be it but once—the topics of the Sunday sermons announced in the Saturday newspapers, or the various syndicated “religious columns,” to get the impression that “religion” is almost invariably presented as salvation of man and the world. How could we then speak of “fight” when the very setup of our churches must, by definition, convey the idea of softness, comfort, and peace? How can the Church use again the military language, which was its own in the first days, when it still thought of itself as militia Christi? One does not see very well where and how “fight” would fit into the weekly bulletin of a suburban parish, among all kinds of counseling sessions, bake sales, and “young adult” get-togethers."
+ Fr Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1979) 71.
