cultivate love

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culitvate love

 

“Love is the most perfect fruit of the Holy Spirit, and it emerges within one’s life after one cultivates all the other fruits enumerated by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians (5: 22– 23): love, joy, peace , patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Authentic, divine love is a quality of the soul that manifests last, after the cultivation of all the other virtues, starting with self-mastery and self-control.”

Kyriacos C. Markides
Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality

on the soul

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Optina Elders

The human heart is not a splinter, and the human soul – not a cheap thing; it is more valuable than all the world.  All the treasures on earth and in the universe are not worth one Christian soul.

Saint Anatoly

Living Without Hypocrisy: Spiritual Counsels of the Holy Elders of Optina

the light of Christ

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Panagia - Notre Dame Paris

 

 

“O Christ, the True Light that illumines and sanctifies every human being who comes into the world, may the brightness of your face become sealed in our souls so that we may behold the Ineffable Light , and guide our steps to follow your commandments through the intercession of your Most Holy Mother and all the saints. Amen.”

Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality

preparing for Lent

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Open to Me : Lenten Triodion

Open to me, O Giver of Life, the gates of repentance : for early in the morning my spirit seeks Your holy temple.  The season of the preparing for Lent begins with the above hymn.  We are thus reminded that the purpose of Lent is to return to God, not simply to change our diet.

adapted from : Meditations for Great Lent

Vassilios Papavassiliou

one humble word

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humble word

“One word of a humble and [spiritually] experienced man that is painfully born from the depths of his heart has greater worth than a bunch of clever sayings of an external man’s that come out quickly from his educated mouth.  His words don’t speak truth to the souls of men, for they are fleshy words and not the fire of the flames of Pentecost.”

Saint Paisios

machiavelli was wrong

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Saint Silouan

 

“The Staretz believed that evil always proceeds by means of deceit, camouflaging itself as good, whereas good in order to realize itself does not need the cooperation of evil.  Therefore as soon as wrong means – magic, lying, violence and the like – make their appearance one is entering a domain alien to the spirit of Christ.  Good is not attained by evil means and the end does not justify the means.

Good not obtained by good means is not good.

This is the testament that we have received from the Apostles and Holy Fathers.  Although good frequently triumphs and by its appearance rectifies evil this does not mean that evil has led to good and that good has come out of evil.

That is impossible.

But the power of God is such that, where it appears, it heals all things so wholly that no scar remains – the damage caused by evil is effaced – for God is the fullness of life and creates life from nothing”

from the book : The Monk of Mount Athos

Archimandrite Sophrony

eternity and liturgy

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the liturgy thanksgiving

 

 

 

Saint John Cabasilas says, “The Liturgy is a portrait of the life of Christ and is an expression also of the gratitude of man for everything God has done.  By performing this act we are given grace and that grace helps us to an eternal event which is always present : in eternity there is no past and no future, there is the eternal “today”, the eternal present.”

 

from the book

The Enlargement of the Heart

Archimandrite Zacharias