Remember Repent Re-Enchant | Victorian Floral Heart Design Texture | Orthodox Christian T-Shirt

Repentance is thus something—if you understand it as I tried to explain [as a turning from death to life; a longing for eternal things]—of such a distinct, such great beauty, that in their divine inspiration the Fathers called it the science of sciences and the art of arts. And truly it is a science, and truly it is an art. What is art? It is creativity. Here man by his own will gives birth to himself in eternity. By his free will, he becomes his own parent, his own father, through divine grace that has the power to give birth. Therefore, through the free will that man gives God, that is, “I want, O Lord!” through this free will he gives birth to himself as his own father. And through the pain which he undergoes, he becomes—I dare say—his own mother; because he gives birth to himself in eternity through pain.

This path, thus, is true creativity; it is the creation of a god by grace. Man, the image and—when he attains it—the likeness of God, is nothing other than a god. Our spiritual father, Elder Sophrony, who had been an artist, a painter, especially a portraitist by trade, would say that God makes His self-portrait in man. 

- Fr. Rafail Noica, Repentance is Our True Culture