Everything in man is old, like a disease, like an old garment hung out on a thorn -- such are all human victories and defeats; and when people think, when they speak, when they labor, they just bring their junk out into the bazaar; young men think like old men, old men think like the dead, the dead smell no worse than those living on earth. Everything is old, like the defeat of ones defeated long ago -- defeated from the beginning, since even the beginning of history is itself a defeat. Thou art the only Novelty, my Conqueror; after the first man Thou art the only New Man. In the sleepy caravan of history, Thou art the only unexpected oasis; in the deaf-like, sultry, tedious expectation of death and burying of life, Thou art the only Thunder. Everything concerning Thee is new, my Jesus, from birth to death and from death to eternity.
-St Nikolai (Velimirovich), Akathist to Jesus the Conqueror of Death
Orthodoxy in America
