If you pray in the morning as you should, your whole day will be blessed. Don’t despair if your efforts appear to be fruitless. Remember how you learned to knit or write. How much effort you expended then… Now it’s easy for you. The same will be true of your spiritual progress. Saint Theophan the Recluse
An experience which isn’t genuine produces Christians who, instead of being saved within the Church, feel as though they should save the truth. Instead of discerning the face of Christ in our brother and sister Christians, we see opponents whom we must overcome, or we see ‘our own people’, who have to support our views. Instead of entrusting the state of our soul to the power of the grace of God, we place it, with unforgivable negligence, at the disposal of the dubious scalpel of psycho-therapeutic methods, or scientific assessments or rationalistic forecasts. Instead of nourishing our soul with humility of the heart, we feed it with the answers of knowledge and reason. In the modern bio-ethical challenges which touch our ...
How insignificant is the earth and life here compared with heaven and the eternal kingdom of Christ. And despite that, we cling so fast to worldly things; we’re negligent and indifferent to the salvation of our soul and to eternal life. Saint John Kronstadtskij
If your heart has reached the stage of naturally hating sin, then it’s victorious, it’s far removed from the things which give rise to sin and has put a reminder of hell in your mind. And you should know that He who helps you is with you; so don’t sadden Him with any sin. Saint Isaiah the Hermit
Cleansing the heart of the passions should be our main priority in life. In this struggle, we don’t try to conform to some external moral code, but rather we strive, with Christ at the center of our way of life and our thinking. It’s difficult, but I say it’s pleasant and it’s easy, though there are two requirements: humility and love. If God’s grace comes, everyone and everything changes; but for it to come, we need first to humble ourselves. Love for Christ is everything. Then all problems are resolved. Elder Efraim Vatopaidinos
Like a good boxer, concentrate the eyes of your soul on your opponent and guard against his punches. Like a fast runner, go as fast as you can to get to the tape and claim the prize of virtue. That’s how God wants you: not lazy and sleepy, but a watchful and careful master of yourself. Elder Cleopa Ilie
Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite was one of the greatest figures on Mount Athos in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was born on Naxos in 1749, and his baptismal name was Nikolaos. He received his elementary education on his native island, going on to the Evangelical School in Smyrna. In 1775, he retired to the Holy Mountain, where he lived a strictly ascetic life as a monk. Here he was closely associated with Saint Makarios Notaras and Saint Athanasios of Paros, and was the author of many works on ecclesiastical and spiritual matters. When in 1801 the Athonite School was passing through a difficult period, the Holy Synaxis of the Athonite Fathers appointed Saint Nicodemus a member of a ...
The Christian faith doesn’t doubt the existence of fear in people’s lives. It accepts it as a reality and interprets it. Fear is the product of our Fall into sin- that which opened the gates for every kind of fear to enter our life, and therefore the tragedy of our time on earth. But with Christ’s coming, we found our true path again and once more felt the love and friendship of our surroundings, on all sides. Christ shed abundant light on our life, so that we could see that God is truly our friend and Father, a person like us, our brother, our nature and our sister. In reality, after Christ’s coming, there’s nothing in our life that can threaten ...
We should put question marks against speculations – Elder, what helps to dismiss speculation? – Everything’s always the way you see it. Always put a question mark against every one of your thoughts, because you usually see everything in a bad light. Do the same for any good thought you might have about somebody else, in case you sin in your assessment. If you put two question marks, that’s better. And if you put three, that’s even better. In this way, you stay calm and gain some benefit, and you also benefit other people. Let me give you an example so you can see what bad thoughts can do. One day a monk came and said to me: ‘Old Haralambos is a magician. ...
We thank Thee, O Christ our God, for that Thou hast given the place of this Monastery to Thy servant, our holy Elder Sophrony, as a refuge, as a comfort, unto sanctification, as an indestructible link with the communion of all Thy Saints and a wondrous antechamber of Thy heavenly Kingdom. We thank Thee in like manner, O holy Father Sophrony, for that, by way of the perpetual refrain of suffering throughout thy whole life and the inconsolable cry of thy repentance, Thou hast possessed for our inheritance the knowledge of the mystery of the ways of salvation. Being drawn toward God without return through self-hatred, Thou didst detach Thyself from every created thing and renounce every passionate attachment to earth. Thou ...
‘So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light’. People are erratic. They can ascend to union with God, ‘a little lower than the angels’; and they can also descend into total depravity, becoming like the demons and worse than animals. Given that we’ve been endowed with free will, we’re called upon to put into effect the ‘likeness of God’, to become god-like, to be united with God. In this process, that is spiritual maturation, we have to evaluate the priorities in our life and make our way forward on the basis of our choices. We’re free to determine the direction of our life and God respects our freedom. God has to dwell at the center of our ...
There are those upon whom the divine law is written, not with ink and letters, but implanted in their hearts of flesh. These people have had the eyes of their mind enlightened and they reach after a hope which isn’t tangible and visible, but is immaterial and invisible. They’re able to overcome the stumbling-blocks of the evil one, not by their own strength, but through the power which is invincible. But those who have not been honored with God’s word, nor instructed by divine law, are ‘vainly puffed up’ (Col. 2,18) and imagine that by their own will they can be rid of the causes of sin, though sin is condemned only through the mystery contained in the cross. It lies within ...
Just think whom you’re standing before at the time of Holy Communion and who are there with you- the cherubim, the seraphim and all the heavenly powers. Bear in mind who you’re praying and singing with. It’s a sobering thought if you remember that, even though you have a material body, you’re being allowed to hymn the Lord of creation together with the bodiless angels. Saint John Chrysostom
Christ is the miracle that astounds us. He is the sign of God for all generations until the end of times, for in His Person every impasse has found its solution. During His earthly life, ‘He lived the tragedy of the whole mankind, and yet tragedy found no place in Him.’ On the contrary, before His utter humiliation, He granted peace to His disciples. In the Person of Christ was revealed the inapproachable and eternal God, but also the true man, as God had conceived him before the foundation of the world in the bosom of the Holy Trinity in His wondrous and pre-eternal Council. In His Person all things were fulfilled, for He is ‘the way, the truth and the ...
Place the greatest weight in your efforts on prayer, because that’s what keeps us in touch with God. And this contact has to be continuous. Prayer is the oxygen of the soul, it’s a need of the soul and shouldn’t be thought of as a chore. Saint Païsios the Athonite
What are the characteristic features of the authentic Christian experience? We can begin by looking at the end of the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John, the section regarding the call of the disciples. This passage is of particular interest, because it’s an image of how Christ calls each Christian separately and what, in the end, the grace and love of God offer us in the ark of salvation, the Church. In this particular passage, three calls are made, three invitations to three disciples. One is to the apostle Andrew, the second to Philip and the third to Nathaniel. Initially, all three respond to the call with an abundance of spiritual enthusiasm. Andrew says: ‘We’ve found the Messiah’; Philip ran ...
Repentance is the feeling we have that we really are transgressing against God’s commandment. Now this commandment is our cure, but it’s been distorted. When we feel the distortion in our relationship with God, then we begin to pray. This prayer is a quest for God’s mercy, for his existence, because God’s a person; he isn’t an idea. Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol
How does unceasing prayer lead to humility? Because, if you look into the depths of your soul, you’ll see that there’s nothing good there and that you can’t achieve anything without the help and the grace of God. Then you won’t tire of asking him to have mercy on you and to save you. And you’re deeply humbled, trembling in case you lose the help and grace of God. Then you pray with humility, prayer humbles you further and you progress spiritually. Saint Dimitri of Rostov
Ardent love of Christ is something else. There’s no end to it and it’s never satisfied. It gives life, it gives resilience, it gives health, it gives and gives and gives. And the more it gives, the more we want to love. Human love can eat away at us, can drive us mad. When you love Christ, all other loves fade. Other loves have a saturation point. Love for Christ hasn’t. Saint Porfyrios Kavsokalyvitis
Prayer can have many forms, as regards it’s extent and expression. It’s shaped according to the instance and the need of the moment. If we need defence and aid, we turn to ‘God who is able to save’ and form our prayer on the basis of the need of the moment. Intercession, supplication, petition, encounter, confession, thanksgiving, glorification or anything else that’s a pressing need. Elder Iosif Vatopaidinos
