Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. But as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, as I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

— I Peter 1:13-17

We would find peace within and pass our lives more calmly without, if we constantly remembered that we are not permanent residents on earth but sojourners, that is, foreigners taking up temporary residence in a certain place. We are foreign to this life, because our true home and identity is in the next life. Our residence here is temporary, because our life on earth will end soon, and nothing we have acquired here is permanent, except the grace and virtues — or gracelessness and evils — which will inhere in the soul at the dread hour of death. For the Orthodox Christian, his entire life is a pilgrimage, a journey, and a contest, from the hour of his rebirth in Holy Baptism to the hour when he will face Christ the Impartial Judge of how he spent his allotted time here on earth.

The baptized Orthodox, members of Christ's Body the Church, are a distinct race, set apart from the rest of men. All men are creatures of God, but not all men are, properly speaking, children of God. St. John, in the first chapter of his Gospel, says precisely who are the children of God: "But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to them that believe in His name. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." So merely being born physically as a human being does not make someone a child of God. One must "receive Him," that is, believe in Christ as the Incarnate Son of God, and be born not of flesh and blood, but "of God," that is, through faith and baptism. We become children of God by grace.

Furthermore, as St. Theophylact points out in his commentary on this passage, the Evangelist says that He gave us power to become sons of God, in order to teach us that it is not enough simply to be baptized, but we must also daily exercise ourselves in the struggle for virtue to keep on becoming that which we are: children of God. We must strive to retain and increase the grace we received at Baptism, by cooperating with God in good deeds.

Now let's see how this puts our daily life in perspective. There are two insights here: 1. We belong to a race — the race of Christians — which is set apart by grace, and is compassionate but not overly concerned or unduly worried about all the nonsense that goes on around us among the graceless hordes of men who are obsessed with this world as if nothing else existed. 2. We have to spend a lot of energy on striving for virtue to remain part of this chosen and grace-filled body of the Church and not fall back into the old life of chaos, meaninglessness, disintegration, despair, and endless death. Let's take a long, hard look at these two realities, ask God to make them extremely real to our minds, and then re-order our priorities accordingly.

During this holy season of the Pentecost — the fifty days from the Resurrection to the Giving of the Spirit — let us begin, with the Disciples, to sit at the feet of the Risen Lord and learn to be disciples, that is, to be those who "...observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you" (Matthew 28:20). From now on, this should completely occupy the time of our sojourning, unto our salvation.

In truth, my brothers, great is the compassion of our Lord. Inexpressible is the philanthropy which He has shown and does show toward us, who are ungrateful and thankless for His beneficence. For not only did He, out of His infinite goodness, raise us up who had fallen into sin, but He also delivered laws of prayer to us which both direct us towards God and benefit the human race, so that we might not fall again into the same sins on account of foolishness. For this reason, as is proper, the very beginning of the Lord's Prayer elevates our intellect to the highest principle of theology, pointing us towards His Father, the Creator of all the visible and invisible creation, and indicating the sonship of which Christians are deemed worthy, calling Him "Father" by grace.

For since Our Lord Jesus Christ became incarnate, He gave power to all, as many as believed in Him, to become children and sons of God through Holy Baptism, as John the Theologian says: "To them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name" (John 1:12). And the Apostle Paul writes: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26). And again: "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father'" (Gal. 4:6). That is to say, all faithful Orthodox Christians are children of God through faith and by the grace of Jesus Christ. And again, since you are children of God, He, Who is your Father by grace, sent into your hearts the Holy Spirit of His Son, Who mystically cries out from there: "O Father, our Father."

For this reason our Lord tells us how we should pray towards our Father by grace, so that we may always be kept under the grace of sonship, until the very end...