A collection of scriptural meditations from Saints and Fathers of the Church.
An icon is a symbol of the invisible. It depicts not only the outward, visible countenance of the Lord and His saints, but also their inner likeness, their sanctity.
If you speak of pagan abuses, these abuses do not make our veneration of images loathsome. Blame the pagans, who made images into gods! Just because the pagans used them in a foul way, that is no reason to object to our pious practice. Sorcerers and magicians use incantations and the Church prays over catechumens; the former conjure up demons while the Church calls upon God to exorcise the demons. Pagans make images of demons which they address as gods, but we make images of God incarnate, and of His servants and friends, and with them we drive away the demonic hosts… If the Scripture says, The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands (Ps. 135:15), it is not forbidden to bow before inanimate things, or the handiwork of men, but only before those images which are the devil’s work.
But if you give a strong body rest and ease and idleness, all the passions dwelling in the soul are intensified. Then, even if the soul has a great desire for good, even the very thought of the good that is desired will be taken from you.
Ease and idleness are the destruction of the soul and they can injure her more than the demons.
Those who yield themselves to idleness and apathy, even though they may be spiritual and holy, hurl themselves into unnatural subjection to passions.
Most of us call ourselves sinners, and perhaps really think it; but it is indignity that tests the heart.
A little fire softens a large piece of wax. So, too, a small indignity often softens, sweetens and wipes away suddenly all the fierceness, insensibility & hardness of our heart.
Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.
Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.
According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.
The intellect becomes a stranger to the things of this world when its attachment to the senses has been completely sundered.
If we want to do something but cannot, then before God, Who knows our hearts, it is as if we have done it. This is true whether the intended action is good or bad.
In everything we do, God looks as the aim, whether it is for Him or for some other purpose we act. So, when we wish to do something good, let us have as our aim not to please men but to please God, so as to have our eyes always fixed on Him, doing everything for Him, lest we bear the labor but lose the reward.
In all our actions God looks at the intention, whether we do them for Him or from some other motive.
We ought not to grieve or become irritated at anything because, by frequent vexation and irritability, we form the morally and physically very injurious habit of irritability, whilst by bearing opposition with equanimity we form the good and useful habit of enduring everything calmly and patiently.
You ask for some way of completely eradicating irritability. The inclination to irritability is given us to use against sin, and we were never meant to use it against our fellow men. When we do, we act contrary to our true nature.
Those who meditate unceasingly upon the holy and glorious name [of Jesus] in the depths of their heart can sometimes see the radiance of their own spirit-intelligence. For when the mind is profoundly concentrated on this invocation, we feel experientially how it starts burning off all the layers of dirt that normally suffocates the soul.
If thou, being offended by anything, dost sense that grief and wrath have seized thee, preserve silence, and say naught until unceasing prayer pacifies thine heart.