Christ the Eternal Tao

'Christ the Eternal Tao' by Hieromonk Damascene.
Dedicated to the 222 Chinese Orthodox Martyrs, who were slain for Christ during the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing in the year 1900.
First reading:
There exists a Being undifferentiated and complete,
Born before heaven and earth.
Tranquil, boundless,
Abiding alone and changing not,
Encircling everything without exhaustion.
Fathomless, it seems to be the Source of all things.
I do not know its name,
But characterize it as the Tao.
Arbitrarily forcing a name upon it,
I call it Great....
-Tao Teh Ching, chapters 25 and 4
(Translated by Gi-ming Shien and Eugene Rose.)
Second reading:
In the beginning was the Tao,
And the Tao was with God,
And the Tao was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by Him;
And without Him was not anything made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in darkness,
And the darkness comprehended it not....
He was in the world, and the world was made by Him,
And the world knew Him not....
And the Tao became flesh,
And dwelt among us,
And we beheld His glory...
-The Gospel of John, chapter 1
(Translated from a Canton edition of the New Testament, published in China in 1911 by the American Bible Society.)
Third reading:
THOUGH NOT with the same power as in the people of God [the Hebrews], nevertheless the presence of the Spirit of God also acted in the pagans who did not know the true God, because even among them God found for Himself chosen people. Such, for instance, were the virgin prophetesses called Sibyls who vowed virginity to an unknown God, but still to God the Creator of the universe, the all-powerful ruler of the world, as He was conceived by the pagans. Though the pagan philosophers also wandered in the darkness of ignorance of God, yet they sought the Truth which is beloved by God; and on account of this God-pleasing seeking, they could partake of the Spirit of God, for it is said that the nations who do not know God practice by nature the demands of the law and do what is pleasing to God [cf. Romans 2:14]....
So you see, both in the holy Hebrew people, a people beloved by God, and in the pagans who did not know God, there was preserved a knowledge of God - that is, a clear and rational comprehension of how our Lord God the Holy Spirit acts in man, and by means of what inner and outer feelings one can be sure that this is really the action of our Lord God the Holy Spirit and not a delusion of the enemy. That is how it was from Adam’s fall until the coming in the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ into the world.
-St. Seraphim of Sarov