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.
He who wants to cross the spiritual sea is long-suffering, humble, vigilant and self-controlled. If he impetuously embarks on it without these four virtues, he agitates his heart, but cannot cross.
The mission of the Church is to bring about in her members the conviction that the proper state of human personhood is composed of immortality and eternity and not of the realm of time and mortality... and the conviction that man is a wayfarer who is wending his way in the sway of time and mortality towards immortality and all eternity.
The Lord commands all men to repent (Matt. 4:17), so that even the spiritual and those making progress should not neglect this injunction and fail to give attention to the smallest and most subtle errors.
Cultivate patience. Patience is a heavenly gift, a gift from the Heavenly Father... With patience, and love for your fellow men, you become a victor in life's continual trials.
Those who have sinned must not despair. Let that never be. For we are condemned not for the multitude of evils, but because we do not want to repent...
'If our prayer is not in harmony with our deeds, we labor in vain,' Abba Moses often told the young monks. 'How are we to accomplish such harmony?' they asked him one day. 'When we make that which we seek fitting to our prayer,' explained the saint. 'Only then can the soul be reconciled with its Creator and its prayer be acceptable, when it sets aside all of its own evil intentions.'
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.
Patience reigns quietly and fruitfully in the life of the man who does not harm or endanger anyone, who is content with little and is obedient to the commandments of the Heavenly Father.
Unless the inner man meditates upon the law of God and is nourished thereby, unless he is strengthened by reading and by prayer, he is conquered by the outer man, and he serves his master.
Every tribulation reveals the state of our will, whether it inclines to the right or to the left. An unexpected tribulation is called temptation, because it subjects a man to a test of his secret dispositions.
