Lenten Meditation -- Saturday of the Akathist to the Most-holy Theotokos

 

Source: legacyicons.com

Death is far closer to us than we imagine—not just a distant event at the conclusion of our earthly existence, but a present reality that is going on continually around us and within us. … All living is a kind of dying: we are dying all the time. But in this daily experience of dying, each death is followed by a new birth: all dying is also a kind of living. Life and death are not opposites, mutually exclusive, but they are intertwined. The whole of our human existence is a mixture of mortality and resurrection: dying, and behold we live (1 Cor. 6:9). …

Yet if at any point we decline to accept the need for a dying, we cannot develop into real persons. … It is precisely the death of the old that makes possible the emergence of fresh growth within ourselves, and without the death there would be no new life.

—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, “Go Joyfully: The Mystery of Death and Resurrection,” as found in The Inner Kingdom, Vol. 1.