"The Lord had said unto Abraham: Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee (Gen. 12:1). This is an explicit image for the change of heart which occurs in true believers, when they sincerely take upon themselves their cross, and follow Christ. They leave their father—selfishness, crucifying it through self-denial; they leave their kindred—their personal sinful leanings, passions and habits, crucifying them through the resolution to follow unswervingly and in all things the passion-slaying commandments of the Lord; they leave their country, the entire sinful realm, the world with all of its demands, crucifying it with the resolution to be alien to it—although for this it might be necessary to endure not only loss of property and social status, but even to endure death itself."
- Saint Theophan the Recluse
Reference: http://days.pravoslavie.ru/en/Days/20120310.htm
