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.
One of the most mysterious anticipations of the Orthodox Church is the contemplation of the 'Protecting Veil of the Mother of God,' of Her constant standing in prayer for the world, surrounded by all the saints, before the throne of 'God. 'Today the Virgin stands in the Church and with hosts of saints invisibly prays to God for us all; angels and high priests worship; apostles and prophets embrace each other-it is for us that the Mother of God prays unto the Eternal God!' Thus the Church remembers the vision which was once seen by St. Andrew, the fool for Christ's sake. And that which was then visibly revealed remains now and will stand for all ages. The 'Contemplation of the Protecting Veil' of the Mother of God is a vision of the celestial Church, a vision of the unbreakable and ever-existent unity of the heavenly and the earthly Church.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Have confidence in the compassion of our Creator. Reflect well on what you are now doing, and keep before you the things you have done. Lift up your eyes to the overflowing compassion of heaven, and while He waits for you, draw near in tears to our merciful Judge. Having before your mind that He is a Just Judge, do not take your sins lightly; and having also in mind that He is compassionate, do not despair. The God-Man gives man confidence before God.
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.
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.
