The Present Day As the Last Day of Our Life | St John Climacus | Skull with Red Orthodox Cross | Memento Mori | Orthodox Christian HoodieIt is impossible, someone says, impossible to spend the present day devoutly unless we regard it as the last of our whole life. And it is truly astonishing how even the pagans have said something of the sort, since they define philosophy as meditation on death. + St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 6: On the Remembrance of Death, section 24 +++ Even the Pagans Meditated on Death An Example of "Logos Spermatikos" The Phaedo of Plato

He will swallow up death in victory

- The Ladder

Consider the morning star: its light seems to be extinguished  when the sun rises

what were you doing all day long when the sun was shining

Like warriors they charge

And our Lord himself said with his divine lips that such affliction ‘was not from the beginning of the creation’ (Mark 13:19)

But return to soberness and cry aloud: Holy

excerpted from Only One Thing is Needed:

And though after my skin worms destroy this body

St Paul was the noblest of men and the most outstanding example of the nobility of human nature and of its possibilities for virtue

How will we look at the Lord straight in the eyes

But having shaken off all ties with earthly things and having stripped himself of all his cares