When someone is beginning the spiritual life, he should not study a lot, but instead watch himself and guard his thoughts. A strong person is the one who chews well, not the one who eats a lot.
Love giving hospitality, my child, for it opens the gates of Paradise. In this you also offer hospitality to angels. 'Entertain strangers so that you won't be a stranger to God.'
The spiritual discipline of fasting is a tool for shifting the focus away from us and toward the Lord and our brothers and sisters in whom we encounter Him each day. If we distort fasting into a private religious accomplishment to prove how holy we are, we would do better not to fast at all. That would simply be a way of serving ourselves instead of God and those who bear His image and likeness. In Lent, our focus must be set squarely on Christ and His living icons, not on us. The fundamental calling of the Christian life is to become like our Lord, Who offered Himself up for the salvation of the world purely out of love. If we are truly in communion with Him, then we too must offer up ourselves for our neighbors. And as He taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, there are no limits on what it means to be a neighbor to anyone who is in need, regardless of nationality, culture, or anything else. Those who limit their concern for people according to such standards place serving the kingdoms of this world before fidelity to the Kingdom of God.
When the enemy tempts you with thoughts of faithlessness, with all your heart say, I believe completely whatever the Church believes, whatever Christ says in the Holy Gospels, whatever the Holy Apostles and the Holy Fathers said. 'I don't, however, believe you, devil, for you are a liar and a thief.'
In this order, and by this succession, the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles, and the preaching of the truth, have come down to us. And this is most abundant proof that there is one and the same vivifying faith, which has been preserved in the Church from the apostles until now, and handed down in truth.
Do you wish God to hear your prayer immediately, brother? When you lift your hands up to heaven, pray first of all, with your heart, for your enemies and God will grant you speedily whatever else you request.
Often when someone throws a rock at a dog, rather than rushing at the person who threw the stone, the dog will run and bite the stone. We do the same thing. The tempter uses someone else to tempt us, either in word or deed, and, rather than deal with the tempter who threw the stone, we bite the rock, our fellow man that the hater of the good used against us.
Cultivate the Jesus Prayer and a time will come when your heart will leap with joy, just as it does when you are about to see a person who you love very much.
The present age is temporal. In comparison with the future one it is like a drop in the oceans. So no longer attach your mind to temporal and earthly things, but to the incorruptible and heavenly things. Let us long with our whole soul for heavenly things, and with God's help we shall obtain them. Let your recollections, says Saint Yperechios, be in the Kingdom of Heaven, and you shall quickly inherit it. So please, my brethren, let us not be negligent and drowsy.
For now is the time to labor for the Lord, for salvation is found in the day of affliction: for it is written: 'In your patience gain ye your souls' (Luke 21:19)
The adversary will sit in the temple of Jerusalem, in order to show himself as Christ, he will demand that those who are captivated by him should worship him as Christ. The Antichrist will demand worship as if he were God.
All the treasures of the world are nothing to me if love is absent, all the honors of the world are lowly and dead without love. Love is for me life, light and joy. This sad world does not know this love and calls darkness light.
Do you wish God to hear your prayer immediately, brother? When you lift your hands up to heaven, pray first of all, with your heart, for your enemies and God will grant you speedily whatever else you request.
