Pagans

St. Nikolai Velimirovich: . . . The error of the nature worshipers, the ancient as well as the modern . . .

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Thus then we Christians understand the earth, the sun and the stars as the symbols of spiritual reality and in no way as the reality itself. Pagans of all ages, however, have mistaken those luminous bodies of the firmament for reality. As soon as they took them for reality they began to worship them. That is how the pagans have been ensnared by a terrible error to worship the creatures instead of the Creator. The Greeks worshiped the earth under the name of goddess Gaia, and the sun under the name of Apollo. The sun was worshiped in Egypt under the name of Osiris, and the moon under the name Isis. The moon was worshiped in Babylon, Assyria, Arabia and in many other countries under the name Ishtar.The Persians, as fire worshipers, bowed before the stars as divinities.

The error of the nature worshipers, the ancient as well as the modern, was caused by the fact that their spirit did not guide their eyes but vice versa: their eyes guided their spirit. Similar to a blind person their spirit tottered after their physical eyes and worshiped everything that the eyes declared as reality, and consequently as divinity.

+ St.  Nikolai Velimirovich, The Universe as Signs and Symbols

The Universe as Symbols and Signs: An Essay on Mysticism in the Eastern Church

St. John Climicus: . . . Remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin.

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“It 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.

This is the sixth step. He who has mounted it will never sin again. Remember thy last end, and thou shalt never sin [Ecclesiasticus/Wisdom of Sirach 7:36].”

— St. John Climicus, Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 6.24

St. Jerome: Dwell not in the temple of idols . . .

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”Dwell not in the temple of idols . . . Do you not hear the great St. Paul, who says in other words, ‘Do not read either the pagan philosophers, or the orators, or the poets; do not repose in the study of their works.’ Let us not be too confident that we shall not believe the things we read. It is a crime to drink at the same time of the chalice of Jesus Christ and that of the demons.”

— St. Jerome

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