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Quotes

A collection of scriptural meditations from Saints and Fathers of the Church.

He Who before our offence forbids us to sin, after our offence ceases not from waiting for us to repent, He Whom we have rejected calls after us. We have turned away from Him, but He has not turned away from us.

Through anger the brightness of the Holy Spirit is shut out from the soul.

An elderly monk said, 'Always, when you are tempted to criticize, you should put a question mark on the whole situation and not judge. For we do not know what is really going on.'

Holy Scripture is presented to the mind’s eye like a mirror in which the appearance of our inner being can be seen.

If therefore holy men, even when they do mighty things, think themselves worthless, what must be said of those who, without fruit of virtue, are yet swollen with pride? But any works, although they be good, are as nothing unless seasoned with humility. A great deed done boastfully, lowers rather than uplifts a man. He who would gather virtue without humility, carries dust in the wind; and where he seems to possess something, from the same is he blinded and made worse.

Why do we live in pleasure in the presence of our brothers' affliction?

A mind that dwells on everyday matters of life and vain things disperses the soul. One should turn inwardly, looking at the soul’s uncultivated vineyard, weeding it of all evil thorns and planting virtues there instead. But be wary, for this type of work is not easy at all. It requires perseverance and much patience. One will be confronted with a multitude of difficulties. Various writings of the Fathers are very helpful, and in our days are available by the dozens. In them one can find anything his heart desires, and anything it needs. The Fathers will lead you on the right spiritual path, if only you read them with humility and prayer.

There is a difference, Dearly Beloved Brethren, between the delights of the body and those of the soul, that the delights of the body, when we do not possess them, awaken in us a great desire for them; but when we possess them and enjoy them to the full they straightway awaken in us a feeling of aversion. But spiritual delights work in the opposite way. While we do not possess them we regard them with dislike and aversion; but once we partake of them we begin to desire them, and the more do we hunger for them. In one case the appetite pleases, the reality brings displeasure; in the other it is the appetite [that] displeases, the reality delights us more and more. In the one case appetite leads to fullness, and fullness to disgust; in the other appetite begets fullness, and fullness in turn begets appetite. For spiritual delights, when they fill the soul, increase in us a desire of them; and the more we savor them, the more do we come to know what we should eagerly love.

True patience consists in bearing calmly the evils others do to us, and in not being consumed by resentment against those who inflict them. Those who only appear to bear the evils done them by their neighbors, who suffer them in silence while they are looking for an opportunity for revenge, are not practicing patience, but only make a show of it.

And so it often comes about that the life of one burning with love after having sinned is more pleasing to God than a life of innocence that grows languid in its sense of security.

We truly love God and keep His commandments if we restrain ourselves from our pleasures. For he who still abandons himself to unlawful desires certainly does not love God, since he contradicts Him in his own intentions. . . Therefore, he loves God truly, whose mind is not conquered by consent to evil delight. For the more one takes pleasure in lower things, the more he is separated from heavenly love.

It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one's brethren through slander.

Let the love of your fellow man rise above the promptings of self love.

When we see sinners we must always weep for ourselves first over their failure. Perhaps we have fallen in the same way; or we can fall, if we haven't yet. And if the judgment of the teaching office must always eradicate vices by the power of discipline, we must nevertheless make careful distinctions: we should be uncompromising about vice, but compassionate to human nature. If a sinner has to be punished, a neighbor has to be supported. When he has nullified what he has done by his repentance, our neighbor is no longer a sinner. With the righteousness of God he turns against himself, and what the divine righteousness reproves he punishes in himself.

True patience grows with the growth of love. We put up with our neighbors to the extent that we love them. If you love, you are patient. If you cease loving, you will cease being patient. The less we love, the less patience we show. If we truly preserve patience in our souls, we are martyrs without being killed.

Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren't to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.

Take care that the seed fall not on stony ground sending forth fruit of good works, but without the roots of perseverance.

An Athonite elder said, 'Blasphemous thoughts are like airplanes that annoy us, against our will, with their noise, and we are powerless to prevent them. The heavy anti-aircraft battery is psalmody, because it is both prayer to Christ and disdain for the devil.'

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