To ask mercy from God is to ask for His Kingdom, that Kingdom Christ promised to give all who seek it, assuring them that all other things of which they have need will be added unto them.
Saint Nicholas Cabasalis
Psalm 129:7
a fount and treasury of love for mankind
“Do not think that you have a right to complain when your prayers are not answered. God fulfills your desires in a manner that you do not know.”
— St. Nektarios of Aegina
Do not run away from poverty or sorrows
such things lift our prayer to Heaven
your sorrow will be turned into joy
John 16:20
The Lord commands us to love our enemies, not for their sake, but for our own good. For as long as we wallow in the remembrance of an insult we have suffered from a friend, a neighbor, or a relative, we will have neither peace nor rest. We must become free from such thoughts. This means that we must forgive from the heart. Everything must be forgiven. The peace we feel afterwards brings a sense of well-being, joy, and comfort not only to us but to all who surround us. Everyone will feel the impact of our thoughts if our thoughts are kind and peaceful. And the opposite is true, as well.
Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives:
the Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica
________________________________________________________
Embrace the counter-intuitive… ask yourself what is normal?
When one sees the violence and hatred going on in the world, even now just outside of our Nation’s Capitol in Baltimore, it’s clear that we have lost touch with what is normal. Where are the voices of healing?
Normal is not what everyone does, or even what the majority of people are doing.
Normal is the Truth, the Way and the Life.
Christ is Risen! Truly He is risen!
A disciple should always carry the memory of God within. For it is written: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Your should not only love the Lord when entering into the place of prayer but should also remember Him with deep desire when you walk or speak to others or take your meals. For scripture says: Where your heart is, there also is your treasure; and surely, wherever a person’s heart is given, where ever their deepest desire draws them, this is indeed their god. If a disciple’s heart always longs for God, then God will surely be the Lord of the heart.
Makarios the Great
Faith is the beginning of love.
Evagrios of Pontus
All that is best, that attracts our spiritual gaze and the inclinations of our heart in man, is from God, from His Son, and from His Spirit…
God is nearer to us than any man at every time. He is nearer to me than my raiment, nearer than the air or light, nearer than my wife, father, mother, daughter, son, or friend. I live in Him, soul and body. I breathe in Him, think in Him, feel, consider, intend, speak, undertake, work in Him. “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.”
St John of Kronstadt
As impossible as it is to describe the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted honey, so the goodness of God cannot be clearly communicated by way of teaching if we ourselves are not able to penetrate into the goodness of the Lord by our own experience.
Saint Basil the Great
Abba Moses asked Abba Sylvanus, “Can a man lay a new foundation every day?” The Abba said, “If he works hard, he can lay a new foundation at every moment.”
Our daily life is preparation for death.
Be firm in your faith – established and centered in Christ. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind;
and, love your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27)
Embrace the counter-intuitive.
Make room for blessings in disguise and in so doing, even loss can be received as a gift from God so that He can give you more life.
“The Lord died and resurrected to prove and demonstrate our own resurrection from the dead. With His resurrection an inextinguishable flame of faith was kindled forever in the hearts of men, that they too would be resurrected.”
Bishop Nikolai Velmirovic
A Treasure of Orthodox Spirituality
“We knew not whether we were on heaven on on earth,
for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere on earth.
We can not describe it to you; only this we know,
that God dwells there among people…
we can not forget that beauty.”
Report of the envoys to Prince Vladimir of Kiev (10th century) upon returning to the Ukraine
yet still completely overwhelmed by the beauty
of the Orthodox Christian worship at the Hagia Sophia – Constantinople.
God is a mystery
unable to be grasped
Otherwise God would not be God
Evagrius of Pontus (4th Century)
“This is the day of Resurrection; Let us be radiant in the festival! Let us embrace one another; Let us call brothers, even those who hate us, And forgive all things in the resurrection. And therefore let us proclaim: Christ is risen from the dead, By death He has trampled upon death, and to those in the tombs He is bestowing Life!”
Paschal Hymn
Let God Arise
This hymn is chanted on Pascha but also during Bright Week, and it is a remembrance of the beginning of the Fast – when we celebrated Forgiveness Vespers – calling to remembrance the essence of the Fast – to love God above all and love our neighbor as ourselves.
Basking in the jubilation of the Resurrection, the faithful greet one another with “Christ is Risen!” before even saying hello.
Truly this is the most joyous time of our year!
gladsomelife.com 