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Various Quotes
"The same powerful Scripture text that brings a loving person to even greater love will be mangled and misused by a fearful or egocentric person. This is surely what Jesus means when he talks about the one who has being given more and those who have not losing what little they have." (Matthew 13:12)
- Fr. Richard Rohr, THE NAKED NOW: LEARNING TO SEE AS THE MYSTICS SEE
"To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god."
- Thomas Merton
The creation of the world is not only a process which moves from God to humanity. God demands newness from humanity; God awaits the works of human freedom.
- Nicholas Berdyaev
"If a man sins and denies it, saying, 'I have not sinned,' do not correct him, or you will destroy any intention he might have of changing. If you say, 'Do not be cast down, my brother, but be careful about that in the future,' you will move his heart to repent."
- Abba Poemen, sayings of the Desert Fathers
"The all-important aim in Christian meditation is to allow God's mysterious and silent presence within us to become more and more not only a reality, but the reality in our lives; to let it become that reality which gives meaning, shape and purpose to everything we do, to everything we are."
- Fr. John Main, WORD INTO SILENCE
"The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation...Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world...The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, the universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth."
- Taken from "Salvation and Creativity: Two Understandings of Christianity." Nicholas Berdyaev
"Arrogance and fanaticism cause the hardening of positions taken and entrenchment can only lead to a dead end."
- His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch BARTHOLOMEW I
Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty.
- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
Every one of us is in the image of God, and every one of us is like a damaged icon. But if we were given an icon damaged by time, damaged by circumstances, or desecrated by human hatred, we would treat it with reverence, with tenderness, with broken-heartedness. We would not pay attention primarily to the fact that it is damaged, but to the tragedy of its being damaged. We would concentrate on what is left of its beauty, and not on what is lost of its beauty. And this is what we must learn to do with regard to each person as an individual, but also - and this is not always as easy - with regard to groups of people, whether it be a parish or a denomination, or a nation. We must learn to look, and look until we have seen the underlying beauty of this group of people. Only then can we even begin to do something to call out all the beauty that is there. Listen to other people, and whenever you discern something which sounds true, which is a revelation of harmony and beauty, emphasize it and help it to flower. Strengthen it and encourage it to live.
- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
"One critical thing Jesus taught was that controlling the world is not just impossible but inherently sinful. Our task as Christians is to control no one but ourselves and to love all. Our main weapon must always be example, not control."
- Fr. Antony
True spirituality is not a search for perfection, a way into the "next world" or power to control; it is a search for union with God in this present moment.
- Fr. Antony
"But what is the difference between poetic words and words inspired by God? A profound inner sensation comes down from the Holy Spirit to the heart. This sensation works in one’s entire being, even to the extremities of the senses and opens one to others. It connects words to action. It comes from God and opens a heart of flesh to others.
"Here I ask myself, 'Why did you come here, brother? What is your calling? What does the Church ask from you, one so wretched and weak?' The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a sacrifice for many (Matthew 20:28).
"I came, then, to serve my Church first of all, and the whole world, that is, every person I find along my way. I serve and I will give of myself unto death so that there will be no distance between speaking and doing, so that the people will never again say, 'there is a chasm between us and the leaders' and word spread that the Church is far from her people. I know very well that our people are good and that they want from us today to go to them, to seek them out wherever they are, to search out the lost and return them joyfully to the fold. They hunger and thirst for the Word of God."
- Metropolitan Ephraim. From his address at his consecration (2009)
"Faith that does not grow and change is dead. Faith that leaves our most cherished assumptions unchallenged is self-delusion."
- Fr. Antony Hughes
It is said of Abba Macarius the Great that he became a god on earth because just as God protects the world, so Abba Macarius protected others. He would hide the faults he saw as if he had not seen them, and the faults he heard as if he had not heard them.
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers
A brother who had sinned was expelled from the church by the priest. Whereupon Abba Bessarion rose and went with him, saying, 'I too am a sinner.'
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers
"Orthodoxy is the element of absolute freedom." (Fr. Alexander Elchaninov) God has created us to be as free as He is free. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom." What does it say about those who would take that freedom away and we who are so ready to give it up?
- Fr. Antony Hughes
"...the need to overawe people and demand obedience from them is powerful and seductive. It is a part of that world that the kingdom of heaven is not of."
“The main theme of the Bible is the restoration of humanity and, through humanity, of the whole of creation to its original harmony.”
- Bede Griffiths
“Remember God more often than you breathe.”
- St. Gregory Nazianzen
“It is not enough to say prayers: we must become, be prayer, prayer incarnate. All of life, each act, each act, every gesture, even the smile of the human face, must become a hymn of adoration, an offering, a prayer. One should offer not what one has but what one is.”
- Paul Evdokimov
"We are impermanent beings, we all share the same life of pain and happiness: we all belong to one vast family. Life is short, so why poison existence? Why create more suffering?"
- Fr. Jean-Yves Leloup
"And you - who are you to pretend to pray? Don't even speak of the prayer of the heart until you have learned to meditate like a mountain. Ask that stone how it prays. Then come back to me when you know how to pray as hard and deeply as the Earth and all its stones."
- Fr. Seraphim of Athos
"Our concern is the Church as idea, as institution, as an organization, as a teaching. Our concern is the services and the choir, the social and cultural groups and the religious instruction and church-tourism and so forth. It is not that these questions aren’t sometimes important. But there is one thing needful: the purification of the heart and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This is a deviation from the essence of the matter that keeps those who are considered believers-- most pastors and flock equally-- pagans, worshipping themselves, seeking their own glory. They are only concerned with their own power and their own reputation and their own honor. They are satisfied with only the outward form of the worship of God. What is sought in any case, in the understanding of the people, is not change of heart but rather some practices and the keeping some obligations and giving lip service. In what pertains to the exterior of the church, today, it is sometimes, but not always, gleaming by worldly standards, souls graze in their own impurities and lack of awareness. Is this not the ideal church the devil desires and lords over? A worldly church, ritualistic, like a museum, a nominal Christianity but without Christ and without holiness and without truth and without Spirit and without new life, filled with the thoughts of the world and the concerns of the world! Is this not the church that most people receive today and for which they work? The devil has succeeded in making people think that this is the true and desirable church of modernity!
This is exactly a church against Christ! And we, without our attention to holiness, are building it contentedly, persistently and continuously!"
Archimandrite Touma (Bitar)
Abbot of the Monastery of St. Silouan the Athonite Douma
Sunday July 19, 2009
"If you wish to attain to true knowledge of the Scriptures, hasten to acquire first an unshakeable humility of heart. That alone will lead you, not to the knowledge that puffs up, but to that which enlightens, by the perfecting of love."
- St. John Cassian, Conferences, XIV, 10
We can only meet God in the present moment. This is an area where God chooses to place limits on His own power. We choose whether or not to live in the present moment. Because we can encounter God only in that present moment, whenever we live in the past or in the future, we place ourselves beyond His reach.
- Archmandrite Meletios Webber
To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things--this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow-men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.
- Bertrand Russell, A Free Man's Worship
Those who do not co-suffer with those who live in great pain are suffering from the most fatal of spiritual illnesses ... Mercilessness.
- Elder Paisios the New, of Mt Athos
Truth and leniency always go together. If you want to separate truth from leniency, separate them for you, for your own self! But then, know it, you will hear truth without leniency!
- Archimandrite Joel Giannakopoulos
"We must take time, take pains, have a plan, form spiritual habits, if we are to keep our souls alive; and now is the time to begin. A man to whom religion is a reality, and who knows what is meant by "the practice of salvation," keeps his balance, because the living center of his life is spiritual. He cannot be upset, not shaken. The same hard knocks come to him as to others, but he reacts to them by the central law of his life. He suffers deeply, but he does not sour. He knows frustration, but he goes right on in his kindness and faith. He sees his own shortcomings but he does not give up, because a power rises up from his spiritual center and urges him to the best,
- Joseph Fort Newton.
— Come, O true light!
— Come, O eternal life!
— Come, O hidden mystery!
— Come, O indescribable treasure!
— Come, O ineffable thing!
— Come, O inconceivable person!
— Come, O endless delight!
— Come, O unsetting light!
— Come, O true and fervent expectation of all those who will be saved!
— Come, O rising of those who lie down!
— Come, O resurrection of the dead!
— Come, O powerful one, who always creates and re-creates and transforms by your will alone!
— Come, O invisible and totally intangible and untouchable!
— Come, O you who always remain immobile and at each moment move all, and come to us, who lie in hades, you who are above all heavens.
— Come, O desirable and legendary name, which is completely impossible for us to express what you are or to know your nature.
— Come, O eternal joy!
— Come, O unwithering wreath!
— Come, O purple of the great king our God!
— Come, O crystalline cincture, studded with precious stones!
— Come, O inaccessible sandal!
— Come, O royal robe and truly imperial right hand!
— Come, you whom my wretched soul has desired and does desire!
— Come, you who alone go to the lonely for as you see I am lonely!
— Come, you who have separated me from everything and made me solitary in this world!
— Come, you who have become yourself desire in me,who have made me desire you, the absolutely inaccessible one!
— Come, O my breath and life!
— Come, O consolation of my humble soul!
— Come, O my joy, my glory, and my endless delight!
— I thank you that you have become one spirit with me, without confusion, without mutation, without transformation, you the God of all; and that you have become everything for me, inexpressible and perfectly gratuitous nourishment, which ever flows to the lips of my soul and gushes out into the fountain of my heart, dazzling garment which burns the demons, purification which bathes me with these imperishable and holy tears, that your presence brings to those whom you visit.
— I give you thanks that for me you have become unsetting light and non-declining sun; for you who fill the universe with your glory have nowhere to hide yourself.
— No, you have never hidden yourself from anyone but we are the ones who always hide from you, by refusing to go to you; but then, where would you hide, you who nowhere find the place of your repose?
— Why would you hide, you who do not turn away from a single creature, who do not reject a single one?
— Today, then, O Master, come pitch your tent with me; until the end, make your home and live continually, inseparably within me, your servant, O most-kind one, that I also may find myself again in you, at my departure from this world and after my departure may I reign with you, O God who are above everything.
— O Master, stay and do not leave me alone, so that my enemies, arriving unexpectedly, they who are always seeking to lessen my soul, may find you living within me and that they may take flight, in defeat, powerless against me, seeing you, O more powerful than everything, installed within my essence in the home of my poor soul.
— Yea, O Master, just as you remembered me, when I was in the world and, in the midst of my ignorance, you chose me and separated me from this world and set me before your glorious face, so now keep me, sealed within my essence, by your dwelling within me, forever upright, resolute; that by perpetually seeing you, I, the dying flesh, may live; that by possessing you, I, the beggar, may always be rich, richer than the wealthy; that by eating you and by drinking you, by putting you on at each moment, I go from delight to delight in inexpressible blessings; for it is You, who are all good and all glory and all delight and it is to you, holy, consubstantial, and life-creating Trinity that the glory belongs, you whom all faithful venerate, confess, adore, and serve in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.
— Amen.
+ Saint Symeon, the New Theologian (949-1022 CE)
On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless.
- Thomas Merton
On Fear: We have nothing to fear unless we are afraid of love.
- Fr. Antony Hughes
"People should not worry as much about what they do but rather about what they are. If they and their ways are good, then their deeds are radiant. If you are righteous, then what you do will also be righteous. We should not think that holiness is based on what we do but rather on what we are, for it is not our works which sanctify us but we who sanctify our works."
- Meister Eckhart - Dominican theologian, writer and mystic.
"Each of us is called to cultivate an inner garden in which the Divine Word may grow and flourish."
- St John of the Cross
"It is a fair trade and an equal exchange: to the extent that you depart from things, thus far, no more and no less, God enters into you with all that is his, as far as you have stripped yourself of yourself in all things. It is here that you should begin, whatever the cost, for it is here that you will find true peace, and nowhere else."
- Talks of Instruction: Meister Eckhart - Dominican theologian, writer and mystic.
"Someone who declares himself as being an atheist can be, potentially, much more closer to God than I who appears to be, and I'm God's representative. The borders between good and evil are found in our heart. It depends from which one our heart takes its force from each time."
- His Beatitude Anastasios, Archbishop of Tirana, Durrës, and All Albania
"But the greatest of these is love" (I Corinthians 13:13), since that is the very name of God Himself (I John 4:8).
Love is the very banishment of every sort of contrariness, for love thinks no evil.
Fear shows up if ever love departs, for the man with no fear is either filled with love or is dead in spirit.
- St. John of the Ladder
This was the very purpose of creation - that each unique, individual being should participate in its own way in the divine Being, should realize its eternal 'idea' in God, should 'become' God by participation, God expressing himself through that unique being.
- Bede Griffiths, Return to the Center, P. 42
In his (Christ's) surrender on the cross all the pain and agony of mankind was concentrated at a single point, and passed through from death to immortality, There is no pain of any creature from the beginning to the end of time which was not 'known' at this point and thus transmuted. To know all things in the Word is thus to know all the suffering of the world transfigured by the resurrection, somehow reconciled and atoned in eternal life.
It was God's purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things on heaven and things on earth'.
- Bede Griffiths
"Previously, I wanted everything to go my way, but seeing that nothing was done as I wanted, I began to wish that everything be done as it is done; so it was that everything started to be done as I wanted."
- Elder Joseph of Optino
One who has found love feeds on Christ every day and at every hour and he becomes immortal thereby. For Jesus said, ‘Whoever eats this bread that I shall give him shall never see death' (cf. John 6.58). Blessed is he who eats the bread of love that is Jesus. For whoever feeds on love, feeds on Christ...as John bears witness saying, ‘God is love' (I John 4.8). Therefore one who lives in love receives from God the fruit of life. He breathes, even in this world, the air of resurrection...Love is the Kingdom...Such is the ‘wine to gladden the heart of man' (Psalm 104.15). Blessed is he who drinks of this wine...the sick have drunk of it and become wise.
- St. Isaac if Syria, Ascetic Treatises, 73
Is it not true that Christ draws near with love to those who turn away from him? That he struggles with them, begs them not to scorn his love, and if they show only aversion and remain deaf to his appeals, becomes himself their advocate?
- Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter 8, To Demophlius
It can happen that when we are at prayer some brothers come to see us. Then we have to choose either to interrupt our prayer or to sadden our brother by refusing to answer him. But love is greater than prayer. Prayer is one virtue among others, whereas love contains them all.
- St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 26th Step 43
Abba Theodore of Pherme asked Abba Pambo, ‘Give me a word to live by.' And with great reluctance he said to him, ‘Go, Theodore and have compassion on all. Compassion allows us to speak freely to God.'
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Pambo, 14 (PG 65,371)
I don't fear the questions any more. I know that they are all part of the process of coming to union with God and refusing to make an idol of anything less. The point is that during that difficult time I didn't try to force anything. I simply lived in the desert believing that whatever life I found there was life enough for me. I believed that God was in the darkness. It is all part of the purification process and should be revered. It takes away from us our paltry little definitions of God and brings us face-to-face with the Transcendent. It is not to be feared. It is simply to be experienced. Then, God begins to live in us without benefit of recipes and rituals, laws, and "answers"—of which there are, in the final analysis, none at all.
- Sister Joan Chittister
No one is forgotten. It is a lie, any talk of God that does not comfort you.
- Meister Eckhart
If a man's heart does not condemn him (I John 3:21) for having rejected a commandment of God, or for negligence, or for accepting a hostile thought, then he is pure of heart and worthy to have Christ say to him, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
- St. Theodoros the Great Ascetic, The Philokalia
The reason that we have both good and wicked thoughts together is not, as some suppose, because the Holy Spirit and the devil dwell together in our intellect, but because we have not yet consciously experienced the goodness of the Lord. As I have said before, grace at first conceals its presence in those who have been baptized, waiting to see which way the soul inclines; but when the whole man has turned toward the Lord, it then reveals to the heart its presence there with a feeling words cannot express.
- St. Diadochos of Photiki, The Philokalia
"Created man cannot become a son of God and god by grace through deification, unless he is first through his own free choice begotten in the Spirit by means of the self-loving and independent power dwelling naturally in him."
- Philokalia, St. Maximos the Confessor
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed....I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.
- Thomas Merton
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. (I Cor. 6:12)~ The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one anotherThe beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.
- Thomas Merton
The nature of things is measured by the interior disposition of the soul; that is, the kind of person one is will determine what he thinks of others. He who has attained to genuine prayer and love no longer puts things into categories. He does not separate the righteous from sinners, but loves all equally, and does not judge them, just as God gives the sun to shine and the rain to fall both on the just and the unjust.
- St. Nikitas Stethatos
The one who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of detachment knows no distinction between one's own and another's, between faithful and unfaithful, between slave and freeman, or indeed between male and female. But...having risen above the tyranny of the passions and looking to the one nature of men he regards all equally and is equally disposed toward all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, neither slave nor freeman, but Christ is everything and in everything.- St Maximus the Confessor
Titus 1:15
To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted.
S. T. Georgiou writes in his excellent book MYSTIC STREET: MEDITATIONS ON A SPIRITUAL PATH, "The same energy expended in self-absorption can be reapplied toward developing a great spiritual body that will never decay or die. While self-centeredness leads to an existence disconnected from Creator and creation, a theocentric life is infinitely inclusive. (p. 141)
Love exudes from beings who are deeply interconnected and intensely sharing life; their energy is like the sun, which radiates in all directions equally. Shadows and darkness do not exist in their presence; there is only light, and a kind of timeless quality, effected throught the generation of Agape, which is forever. (p. 67) S. T. Georgiou
"…from the things you hear against someone you should not believe anything, and out of what you see believe half. And not even half for many pretend to be fools. Do not judge anyone."
Fr. Dionysius of Mt. Athos
An Athonite Gerontikon p. 351
"…Prayer begins on God’s part as a secret call to stand before Him. We then carry it as a free response in our yearning to speak with Him. Afterward, prayer assumes its divine purpose as an act of repentance and purification. It subsequently attains its ultimate goal as a sacrifice of love and humility that prepares us for fellowship with God…Prayer is the condition in which we discover our own divine image, on which the stamp of the Holy Trinity is impressed."
Fr. Matthew the Poor
Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way, p. 23
"Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between ‘things’ and ‘God’ as if God were another thing and as if creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God."
Fr. Thomas Merton
New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 23
"The nature of things is measured by the interior disposition of the soul; that is, the kind of person one is will determine what he thinks of others. He who has attained to genuine prayer and love no longer puts things into categories. He does not separate the righteous from sinners, but loves all equally, and does not judge them, just as God gives the sun to shine and the rain to fall both on the just and the unjust."
St. Nikitas Stethatos
from the Philokalia
To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are corrupted.
- The Epistle of St. Paul to Titus 1:15
What is it to be a fool for Christ? It is to control one's thoughts when they stray out of line. It is to make the mind empty and free...
- St. John Chrysostom
It is therefore essential to let the 'heart-spirit' settle like calm water. Then it becomes a tranquil lake in which the sky is reflected, in which the face of Christ can be seen.
- Olivier Clement, THE ROOTS OF CHRISTIAN MYSTICISM, P 167
"...the soul, if it is not emptied of foreign thoughts cannot reflect God in contemplation."
- Sayings of the Desert Fathers
More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this 'something' that is born of silence. If you only practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence...after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.
- St. Isaac of Syria
Learning to be silent is far more difficult and far more important than learning to recite prayers.
- Patriarch Bartholomew
The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else.
- Thomas Merton
Is it not true that Christ draws near with love to those who turn away from him? That he struggles with them, begs them not to scorn his love, and if they show only aversion and remain deaf to his appeals, becomes himself their advocate?
- Dionysius the Areopagite, Letter 8, To Demophlius
Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.
- Thomas Merton
As a grain of sand weighed against a large amount of gold, so, in God, is the demand for equitable justice weighed against his compassion. As a handful of sand in the boundless ocean, so are the sins of the flesh in comparison with God's providence and mercy. As a copious spring could not be stopped up with a handful of dust, so the Creator's compassion cannot be conquered by the wickedness of creatures.
- St. Isaac of Syria
Do not say that God is just...David may call him just and fair, but God's own Son has revealed to us that he is before all things good and kind. He is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked (Luke 6.35). How can you call God just when you read the parable of the labourers in the vineyard and their wages? 'Friend, I am doing you no wrong...I choose to give to this last as I give to you...do you begrudge my generosity?' (Matthew 20.13)
Likewise how can you call God just when you read the parable of the prodigal son who squanders his father's wealth in riotous living, and the moment he displays some nostalgia his father runs to him, throws his arms round his neck and gives him complete power over all his riches? It is not someone else who has told this about God, so that we might have doubts. It is his own Son himself. He bore this witness to God. Where is God's justice? Here, in the fact that we were sinners and Christ died for us ...
O the wonder of the grace of our Creator! O the unfathomable goodness with which he has invested the existence of us sinners in order to create it afresh!...Anyone who has offended and blasphemed him he raises up again...Sin is to fail to understand the grace of the resurrection. Where is the hell that could afflict us? Where is the damnation that could make us afraid to the extent of overwhelming the joy of God's love? What is hell, face to face, with the grace of the resurrection when he will rescue us from damnation, enable this corruptible body to put on incorruption and raise up fallen humanity from hell to glory?...Who will appreciate the wonder of our Creator's grace as it deserves?...In place of what sinners justly deserve, he gives them resurrection. In place of the bodies that have profaned his law, he clothes them anew in glory...See, Lord, I can no longer keep silent before the ocean of thy grace. I no longer have any idea how to express the gratitude that I owe to thee...Glory be to thee in both the worlds that thou hast created for our growth and delight, guiding us by the path of they majestic works to the knowledge of they glory!
- St. Isaac of Syria
When a sunbeam falls on a transparent substance, the substance itself becomes brilliant, and radiates light from itself. So too Spirit-bearing souls, illumined by Him, finally become spiritual themselves, and their grace is sent forth to others. From this comes knowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of hidden things, distribution of wonderful gifts, heavenly citizenship, a place in the choir of angels, endless joy in the presence of God, becoming like God, and, the highest of all desires, becoming God.
- St. Basil the Great
On Passions:
It does not lie within our power to decide whether or not the passions are going to harass and attack the soul. But it does lie within our power to prevent impassioned thoughts from lingering within us and arousing the passions to action. The first of these conditions is not sinful, inasmuch as it is outside our control; where the second is concerned, if we fight against the passions and overcome them we are rewarded...
- St. Theodoros the Great Ascetic, THE PHILOKALIA
On Humility:
A hermit was once asked: "What should we do when we are praised and complemented?"
And he replied:
"You should be humble and know yourselves well. I will give you an example. When I carve on a piece of wood the face of a saint, and finish it, I think it is good. After a while I look at it again and discover that it has shortcomings. If I use a magnifying glass, I will see that it is not such marvelous craftsmanship after all. The same thing applies with one's hands. We see that they are clean. But if we examine them again under a microscope, we will see that they have dirt and many germs on them."
- An Athonite Gerontikon
On Perfection in Love - St. Maximus the Confessor
"The one who is perfect in love and has reached the summit of detachment knows no distinction between one's own and another's, between faithful and unfaithful, between slave and freeman, or indeed between male and female. But having risen above the tyranny of the passions and looking to the one nature of men he regards all equally and is equally disposed toward all. For in him there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither male nor female, neither slave nor freeman, but Christ is everything and in everything."
"The next day John was standing
with two of his disciples; and he looked at Jesus as He walked, and he said,
'Behold the Lamb of God!' The two disciples heard John and they followed Jesus.
Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, 'What do you seek?' They
said, 'Rabbi, where are you staying?' He said, 'Come and see.' They came
and saw . . . and stayed with Him"
(John 1:38ff)
Christians love one another.
They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If a man has something, he gives freely to the man who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother.
They don't consider themselves brothers in the usual
sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit of God. And if they hear that
one of them is in jail, or persecuted for professing the name of their redeemer,
they all give him what he needs. If it is possible, they bail him out. If one
of them is poor and there isn't enough food to go around, they fast several
days
to give him the food he needs.
This is really a new kind of person.
There is something divine in them.
From a report given by a pagan official,
Aristides, to the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD),
who was seeking justification to outlaw Christianity.
"In a world full of so much ugliness, liturgy should be a rest for the soul, a repose where the soul can breathe.
Beauty is not aestheticism. It is not an aim in itself. It is a glimpse of God's glory. We shouldn't stay with a glimpse . . . because people are thirsting for beauty and for what they rigthly feel is behind beauty: the glory of God revealed to us.
Heaven opens in liturgy. Beauty in liturgy costs time, love, care, commitment. We must take time for preparing the liturgy, looking for the beauty of the flowers, the songs, the space, the incense, the candles. All this has nothing to do with pure aestheticism, but it is an expression of love.
The faithful can tell whether or not there is the love of God in a church. My experience is that wherever you have a beautiful liturgy, people come. People are attracted, and rightly. We should not say that this is only a superficial attraction.
Beauty is one way to God. It should never be separated from goodness and truth. Beauty without goodness is not beauty; so love for the poor has to be cultivated together with love for beauty -- and, of course, with love for the truth."
by Archbishop Christoph Schonborn of Vienna
"Through the fall our nature was stripped of divine illumination and resplendence. But the Logos of God had pity upon our disfigurement, and in His compassion He took our nature upon Himself. On Tabor He manifested it to His elect disciples clothed once again most brilliantly. He showed what we once were and what we shall become through Him in the age to come -- if we choose to live our present life, as far as possible, in accordance with His ways."
St. Gregory Palamas.