Some undertake a particular duty, but for a brother’s peace of mind, at his request they leave it; and some leave their work through laziness; and some do not leave it out of vainglory; and some do not leave it out of zeal. Faith and determination can make wonders. Just
Lord, You who among people come in secret, have mercy on us and put fire to the prison,
The intellect is made blind by these three passions:
This is the advantage of praying during the night; night is a shield against thoughts, against images and feelings. Try to be
Do not forget these words: God has given you time to build
The Holy Fathers say that evil in and of itself does not exist. Evil is a distortion of reality. Evil is the desperate attempt of a thought
Be humble about your talents. Be thankful for your gifts. Be giving in your
Today, increased knowledge and trust in logic has, unfortunately, shaken our faith to its foundations and filled our souls with
One man received a thought and accepted it without examination. Another received a thought and
The grace of the Holy Spirit which is given mystically to every Christian when he is baptized acts and is manifested in proportion to
God’s voice fills you with peace, leads you, reassures you, enlightens you, encourages you, comforts you, calms you and convicts you. Satan’s voice rushes you, pushes you, frightens you,
What is wrong with us? We believe that we will correct God with our inventions. We turn night into day so that
In the Church there is human-divine cooperation through history for deification. The real, charismatic Church is
Do not judge. You don’t know from what storm the other person has come. You don’t know
Why do men learn through pain and suffering, and not through pleasure and happiness? Very simply, because
The difference between who you are and who you want to be is
A horse when alone often imagines that it is galloping, but when
Divine care surrounds all human beings all the time, but it is only seen by those who
St. Gregory Palamas teaches that knowledge of created things comes from doing virtuous deeds. And when asked what the aim of virtuous deeds is, he writes:
And now, finally, after all that we have said, there remain these three that bind and secure the union of all, faith, hope, love; and the greatest of these is love, for God Himself is so called. And (as far as I can make out) I see the one as
Unity heals, separation wounds. This is true both in the Church and in the family. That’s why we
What have we achieved in this century with our ‘civilization’? We have driven people mad and have polluted the atmosphere and the environment. When
Men are often called intelligent wrongly. Intelligent men are not those who are erudite in the sayings and books of the wise men of old, but those who
In order to reach to perfect peace of love you must struggle to
The one who disobeys the Church, in fact doesn’t believe in Christ because
Patient endurance kills the despair that kills the soul; it teaches the soul to
I once asked one of the most experienced fathers and pressed him to tell me how humility is obtained by obedience. He said:
The pride of our academy are our saints. This gives us the reason to continue. From St. Philaret of Moscow and St. Theopan the Recluse till
We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all, because
A great deal is being said today about acquiring the mind of the Church. Sometimes, however, we do not know just what the mind of the Church is. We identify it with a blind obedience to some general laws or