converse with Him

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Repentance is the Mother of Life. It opens its door to us when we take flight from all things. By means of the intellects intuitions, repentance renews in ys the grace that we have lost after baptism by leading lax lives. By water and Spirit we have put on Christ, though we did not perceive His glory. Through repentance we enter into His delight by means of the knowledge of those extraordinary intuitions that replace causes to dawn within us.

He who is deprived of repentance is deprived of the delight to come. He who us close to all things is far from repentance. And he who is far from all with discernment repents in very truth.

Saint Isaac of Syria

the power of bold prayer

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daily devotion
Orthodox Study Bible

By the love which the saints show for God on account of the things they suffer for His name’s sake (when they endure strains and do not forsake that which God loves) their hearts acquire the boldness to gaze toward Him without a veil and to beseech Him with confidence. Great is the power of bold prayer. For this reason, God allows His saints to be tried by every sorrow, then to experience anew and to prove His aid, and to understand how great a providence He has for them, for in their perils He is found to be their Redeemer.

Saint Isaac the Syrian

Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian

the hopeful ploughman

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From long suffering in prayer, the fruit of life arises, and expectation is a firm helper during prayer to those who posses it. When you pray, bring to mind the ploughman who sows in hope. He Who causes to return twofold the seed that the plougjman sows with hope.

Saint Isaac the Syrian

beware of despair

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Beware of despair. You do not serve a tyrant, but your service is to a kind Lord, Who taking nothing from you, yet has given you all. And when you did not exist at all, He fashioned you so that you would be in that state in which you now are. Who is sufficient to render Him thanks for the fact that He has brought us into existence? O the immesurable Grace! Who can sufficiently honor Him with hymns? … God is very compassionate and ardently loves to give… He rejoices when a man offers Him prayer.

Saint Isaac the Syrian

justice through mercy

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Christmas Truce of World War I
http://bgindependentmedia.org/christmas-truce-was-moment-of-peace-in-brutal-wwi/

One of the saints spoke of this saying, “The merciful man, if he be not just, is blind. That is to say, he must give to another man what he has gained by his own labors and hardship and not what he has through fraud, injustice and trickery.

And the same saint said in another place, “If you wish to sow your seed among the destiute, sow from your own seed, for if you wish to sow from other men’s seed, know that what you sow is the most bitter of tares.”

But I say that if the merciful man does not rise above what is just, he is not merciful. That is to say, he is merciful who not only shows mercy to others by giving from his own means, but who also suffers injustice from other men with joy (voluntarily, and who not merely keeps and requires justice in his dealings with his fellow men) but also shows them mercy.

The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian

Homily Four

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-1144861/Original-letters-detailing-WW1-soldiers-Christmas-truce-sold.html

overcome justice by mercy

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big city horse farm

When a man overcomes justice by mercy, he is crowned though not with crowns awarded under the Law to the righteous, but with the crowns of the perfect who are under the Gospel. For the ancient Law also dictates that a man must give to the poor from his own means, and clothe the naked, and love his neighbor as himself, and forbids injustice and lying. But the perfection of the Gospel’s dispensation commands the following, “Give to every man that asketh of thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again.” And further, a man must not merely with joy suffer injustice as regards his possessions and the rest of the external things which come upon him, but he must also lay down his life for his brother.

The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian

Homily Four