“We must not allow anything of temporal value to steal our hearts. Every time we direct our hopes toward earthly things we make a step backward on our journey toward God.”
Inner River: A Pilgrimage to the Heart of Christian Spirituality
striving toward mercy
Do you wish to commune with God? Strive to be merciful… a man should first of all begin to be merciful in the measure that our heavenly Father is merciful.
Saint Issac of Syria
preparing for Lent
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
“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
“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
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
draw living water
“Those who store grievances and rancor in themselves are like people who draw water and pour it into a cask with holes.”
Evagrios the Solitary
holy humility
“When the heart has God given humility it sees everything clearly. It already lives in the earthly Uncreated Church of God… I am referring to humility that is not said with words, neither is it that which we fell we have acquired. Holy humility is God’s gift to the soul.”
The Divine Light Elder Porphyrios Lit in My Heart
Saint Porphyrios
love physical effort
“So you too should love physical effort and tiredness. It is good for the body and good for the soul.”
Saint Porphyrios
guide Thou my footsteps
“Values and relationships were of a different order in the monasteries. All the fathers strived to serve each other in a spirit of self-sacrifice and brotherly love. In fact they found a lot of joy in being able to lend a helping hand. Their way of life stood in sharp contrast to the self centered values and callous individualism displayed by so many who live in large cities…. At a certain point, I noticed an enormous discrepancy between the image I had formed in my mind about Christians and Christian life and what I saw and experienced there. I had always thought that Christians were narrow minded…. I had thought that the Christian Faith and Church were dead…. I was so shocked to encounter a different reality. Something was mysteriously taking place in my soul, which experienced profound joy and tranquility during my stay on the Holy Mountain. It was as though Someone were guiding my footsteps, directing me to speak and learn from the right people.”
The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios
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