Don’t trust your negativity in judging other people, because this negativity is piled high with wickedness and so produces wicked thoughts. Keep a watch on your negativity and stay away from wickedness, lest your mind be darkened and it see everything as a muddle. Saint Thalassios the Libyan
We should pay great attention to the prayers before Holy Communion. And when we’re going up to receive the sacrament, we should pray and say: ‘God forgive me and have mercy upon me’. We should approach with great care. And when we return, we should have words of praise on our lips; we should glorify God for receiving us. Theosemni. Abbess of the Holy Monastery of Chrysopiyi, Crete.
The Lord is known through the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit fills our whole being: soul, mind and body. This is how God is known, in heaven and on earth. Saint Silouan the Athonite
We should do what we think is right and what our conscience dictates, being careful not to scandalize anyone. But if anyone is scandalized by this, that’s not our responsibility. We can’t please everyone. Hieromonk Chrysostomos Stavronikitianos
This is why we have to have love and affection with great discretion, so that we can bring up our spiritual children with a double dose of health. When they’re little, we don’t want them to be harmed, even by their naïve, indiscriminate enthusiasm. Saint Païsios the Athonite
False humility and sanctimonious speech aren’t always signs of humility. People can be humble and you’d never guess. What indicates a humble person? According to the Fathers, their first attribute is that they don’t get angry. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
The notion that God loves only his own ‘good children’, who rigorously apply his will, and rejects the prodigals and the sinners is very widespread, not only among non-Christians but also among quite a number of Christians themselves. A God who doesn’t love everyone, as his children, however they live, can’t be ‘the God of our fathers’. Such a God isn’t love and if God isn’t love, he doesn’t exist. Speaking to Christians, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem says: ‘If he’s the divinity, he’s certainly love’. So when we present God as being almighty and dominant, harsh and rigid in his decisions, opposed to diversity, continually chastising inept and weak people, silent in the face of injustice and exploitation on the part of ...
‘Elder, sometimes temptations come one on top of the other and I can’t resist’. ‘The only way to avoid temptations is to make a pact with the devil. Why are you laughing? You don’t like that solution? Let me explain. When we strive, we’re going to have difficulties and temptations. The harder you try to avoid temptations, the more the devil will oppose you. But sometimes, if we use them properly, temptations are an opportunity to make our un-Gospel-like lives more “evangelical”’. ‘Does the devil declare war on people who pay careful attention to themselves?’ ‘Satan doesn’t bother with useless people, he goes for those who are striving, to tempt them and to put them out of action. He doesn’t waste his time ...
Through the simplicity and clarity of his parables, the Lord reveals an astonishing reality. He shows us the love of God and the tragic state of people who are suffering from pride. The parable initially describes the comforts of a rich man and the hardships of a poor man, Lazarus. The two people in the parable, the rich man and the poor one, each represents the class to which they belong. Two people who are not unacquainted; they know each other and their paths cross. In the parable, they’re presented as occupying two spaces and conditions, both on earth and in eternity. There’s a huge chasm between the rich man and poor Lazarus, not only after their death, but also ...
‘Right’ and ‘Left’ don’t only have to do with political alignments. The terms were also used to define two categories of temptation in the spiritual life. Indeed, because it’s less perceptible, the temptation ‘from the right’ was considered the more dangerous. When does a temptation come from the right and when from the left? Here’s an example. If the devil presents you with the suggestion that you should cheat a co-worker for your own benefit, that’s a temptation ‘from the left’. You know where it’s coming from and you either accept it or reject it. But if the evil spirit whispers that we’re in a crisis, that your co-worker doesn’t have a family and so you’re justified in cheating them for ...
Satan’s an optician. He makes us wear his own kind of glasses, so we see the failings of others magnified and our own errors minimized. Dimitrios Panagopoulos
‘Humility is an anonymous grace of the soul, which can be named only by those who know it from experience. It’s inexpressible riches, it’s an appellation of God, a gift of God’ (Saint John the Sinaite, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, discourse 25, 3). We need to be very careful with the virtue of humility. You may think you have it because, perhaps, you see yourself as a simple sort of person, but, in fact, you’re working with your egotism and with the evil devil. This is because false humility presents itself in a variety of guises which have no more than an external resemblance to it. Sanctimoniousness, for example, and unctuousness, which are hypocritical ways of behaving and speaking that ...
The whole of life is like a wave. Either we’ll become like Saint Peter and walk on the waters, or we’ll sink, like the Prophet Jonah. Abbess Gavriilia
The frenzy which is the result of the influence of demonic forces is described in stark language in the case of the man possessed at Gadara. This agitation is expressed in the power of evil, which, in many and various ways, troubles us, tortures us and sometimes literally rules us. Today we’ll look at one tragic characteristic symptom of this: the rupture which sin causes. Internal division: the demonic symptoms of sin It’s a fact that, like all spiritual and bodily sicknesses, being possessed is linked to the reality of sin and to the presence of evil and corruption in the world. In the episode of the man possessed in Gadara, the dominion of the devil is apparent, bringing about human suffering ...
There are times, in religious circles, when confusion arises over which people are mentally ill and which are possessed by demonic energy. When Saint Païsios the Athonite was asked how the mentally ill can be distinguished from the possessed, he answered: ‘Any ordinary doctor who’s in the Church can diagnose that. If people are possessed and they approach a sacred object, they go to pieces. From this it’s obvious that they have a demon. If you give them a little holy water or make the sign of the cross over them with a holy relic, they react, because the demons are cringing inside them. If, on the other hand, they’re suffering from a mental illness, they don’t react at all. Even ...
Apart from the conventional and social character which the retrieval of the bones of the departed at the time of exhumation has always had, it is also an act of care and enhancement, which, in the Church takes on an essentially loving and eschatological meaning. We don’t merely see to the cleaning and ordering of the bones of a person we love; we liturgically prepare the bones of a brother or sister who ‘awaits the resurrection of the dead’. Although there’s no evidence that retrieval of the bones is clearly deemed to be an obligatory action, it has come to be established now as the care on the part of the Church militant for the Church triumphant. In the Church, ...
We all love life. We’re anxious and want to make life happy. But this life of ours is polluted by our passions. Why? Because we don’t seek itin the right place. Saint John Kronstadtskij
When you’re grafted onto the Body of Christ, that is the Church, through the sacraments, particularly Baptism, Confession and the Divine Eucharist, you acquire an ecclesiological mode of being. Though you’re not yet actively a person, you begin the task of repentance with a will. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos
In accordance with the Lord’s commandment, Christians have a duty to become holy and perfect. Perfection and holiness are first etched deeply in the soul of these Christians and from there make a mark on their thoughts, desires, words and actions. In this way, God’s grace, which resides in the soul, wells up into the whole of the external character. Saint Nektarios of Pentapolis
The path of wickedness is easy; the path of goodness is difficult. ‘As easy as it is for the upright to change and fall away, it’s just as difficult for the others, the wicked, to alter’ (Saint John the Sinaite, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, discourse 24, 11). Changeability is a characteristic of human nature. God alone is immutable and utterly unalterable- he alone is truly stable. We aren’t now talking about created spirits, the angels and demons. After the fall of the first angel, Lucifer, they were made partially immutable: the angels, on the one hand anchored in goodness; the demons, on the other, fixed in evil and wickedness. What a tragedy for us humans, however. Shifting towards wickedness is infinitely easier ...
