Here’s a mystery: in His omnipotence and His omniscience, He knows everything, including what’s going to happen in the future, but He’s not the cause of any evil. God has precognition, but doesn’t preordain. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
Nobody’s infallible, especially when they’re still imperfect and full of badness. There are lots of things they don’t know, and they’re not very good at others. They lack experience and are fighting an unequal struggle, as well. “Elder Joseph of Vatopaidi”
If people’s intellect isn’t illumined by divine teaching, their mind is a long way from the truth. “Saint Ephraim the Syrian”
We often come to God to lean on Him because nothing around us brings us peace. And then we feel calm. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
Punishment and reward. Both of these are in the hands of God. But just as life on earth is no more than a shadow of that in heaven, by the same token, punishment and reward are merely a shadow of the real punishment and reward of eternity. “Saint Nicholas Velimirovich”
Just as the winter is a good time to turn over the ground, so sorrows are good for the care of the soul. Sorrow brings two benefits: it makes us more estimable and more careful. “Saint John Chrysostom”
If you hear that your friend or neighbor is laughing at you to your face or behind your back, show them love and praise them. It’s a great thing to expel human praise from your soul. But it’s ever greater to expel the praise of the demons. “St. John of the Ladder” Read more “Words of Life” at
So, do you want me to tell you how we, who are illiterate, read the Scriptures? After I’ve prayed for five or six hours, I then read the Scriptures, and for preference the Gospels. I can assure you that my mind opens so much, I understand so clearly, that I’m overcome with emotion. I put aside the book and am moved to tears for a long period of time… “Elder Charalambos of Dionysiou”
To live truly, we have to live in the way God ordained when He made us. Unless we do, we aren’t living at all. “Saint Theophan the Recluse”
However well informed you are in terms of human wisdom, this doesn’t cure your deformity. You have to rediscover the true image of God, Christ, so that assuming the form of Christ, you’ll be healed of the deformities of the passions and of sin and thus attain your supreme goal of likeness, of glorification. “Abbot Georgios Kapsanis of Gregoriou”
The word of God quietens our nature. The love of it keeps us on the hard path of His will, so that we may put ourselves second and honour others more than ourselves. The word of God is always the word of the Cross that guides us into the abundance of divine life and gives us the freedom of sinless-ness. “Very Rev. Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou)”
The heart gives life to our organism and humility gives life to the soul. Through egotism, people take the side of the wicked spirit, that is they grow in a spirit of evil rather than good. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
There are lots of paths for us to get from earth to heaven, but the easiest, quickest and safest is humility. That’s the only one that’s safe and sure, and if you walk it you’ll get from earth to heaven, to Paradise, unharmed. “Elder Filotheos Zervakos”
The ant waits for the corn to be gathered and vainglory waits for spiritual riches to accrue. The ant hastens to steal; vainglory rejoices at being lavish. The spirit of despair rejoices when it sees wickedness multiplying; the spirit of vainglory rejoices when it sees virtue multiplying. “Saint John of the Ladder”
In order to have the desired relationship with God, to love Him with all our heart and to remain constantly in His presence, it is necessary to have a pure and free heart. The heart becomes free when repentance uproots from within it the law of sin and all the commandments of God become the unique law of our being. Then a divine state and love is imparted to man which is made manifest in unceasing prayer and through it, love for his fellow man. This prayer shows that man is the image and likeness of God and he loves […]
The freedom that the man born of the Spirit seeks is neither political nor social but spiritual and of the heart. The more he becomes sanctified, the more he becomes free. Holiness is not an ethical principle but is purely spiritual and ontological. “Very Rev. Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou)”
Avoid bad thoughts as if they were flames pay absolutely no attention to them so that they don’t consume you “Blessed Joseph the Hesychast”
Stress is caused by the eradication of the religious sense. Unless you have love for Christ, unless you concern yourself with holy matters, you’re bound to be full of melancholy and badness. “Venerable Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
In a quiet room (preferably after some spiritual reading or after lighting the lamp in front of the icons and censing), as far as possible removed from noise and concerns, when you’re free of all thought and calculation, let your intellect go down into your heart and say the prayer ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, sinner that I am’. What peace and power our souls derive from this stillness in God… How it enables us, in the other hours in the day, to retain our peace, without irritability, tension and anxiety, with all our powers in harmony and […]
Christ comes lots of times and knocks at your door. You ask Him into the sitting-room of your soul and then get involved with other tasks and forget all about the great Visitor. He waits for you to appear and when a long time’s passed He gets up and leaves. Next time, you’re so busy, you answer Him from the window. You haven’t got time even to open the door to Him. “Elder Amphilochios Makris of Patmos”
When a person’s intellect is moved to pray, divine Grace comes in a fraction of a second. That person is then filled with Grace and sees everything with other eyes. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
When people are empty of Christ, a thousand and one other things come and fill them up: jealousies, hatreds, boredom, melancholy, resentment, a worldly outlook, worldly pleasures. Try to fill your soul with Christ so that it’s not empty. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia”
People divorce because of their sensuality and their egotism. Nothing else. All the other reasons are invented afterwards to justify what they’ve done. “Saint Paisios the Athonite”
The purer a heart is, the larger and more open it is, and the more easily it finds space to accommodate more people. The more sinful it is, the more it contracts, shuts down, and so it can find room for only a few. “Saint John of Kronstadt”
Sorrows are not visited on God’s servants without a purpose, but as a test of our true love for Him. “Saint Basil the Great”
When people put themselves at the service of others with the aim of helping them and bringing them relief, then not only Christ but all the heavenly powers are at their disposal. “Dimitrios Panagopoulos, preacher”
‘Cyprus will be liberated when the Cypriotes repent. Make spiritual bases and get rid of those of the Turks, the British and the Americans’. So he saw the Cyprus problem as a spiritual issue, not a political or national one. “Saint Paisios the Athonite”
We should see God in the faces of children and we should give them His love. Children, too, should learn how to pray. If they are to pray, children need to have the blood of prayerful parents. “Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyvia” Read more “Words of Life” at
Christian maturity is like being ground as fine as the dust and then when the doors of heaven are shut, you blow under, like the thief on the cross. “Gerontissa Philothei of Karea monastery in Athens, Greece”
God knew that no one by himself would be able to receive all of the wealth of His gifts. That is why He did not abandon man in the desolation of his fall, but sent his Only-begotten Son to the world and He perfected a Body in history the Church, to which He imparted all the glory and perfection of His gifts. We become members of the Church through faith in the word of Christ and repentance so that we may conform our minds and hearts to His saving will. “Very Rev. Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou)”