What can God do with one who willfully gives himself over to the world, and is deceived by its pleasures, or led astray by material wanderings? The man to whom He gives help is the one who turns away from material pleasures and from his former habits, who drags his mind at all times to the Lord, whether it will or not, who denies himself and seeks the Lord only. This is the man whom He keeps under His care: who guards himself on every side from the snares and entanglements of the material world, who works out his own salvation with fear and trembling, who passes with all heed amidst the snares and entanglements and lusts of this world, and seeks the help of the Lord, and hopes by His mercy to be saved through grace.
St. Paul says: 'The person engaged in spiritual warfare exercises self control in all things' (I Cor. 9:25). Aware of all that is said in divine Scripture, let us lead our life with self-control, especially in regard to food.
The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force. That may be one of the reasons why the enemy is trying to get both of you to break this excellent habit. [This is] one more temptation which God permits so that you should learn to overcome it and come out of the testing stronger than before!
The head of every good striving and the pinnacle of all corrections is to persevere in prayer, by which we may ever obtain, through entreaty of God, all the other virtues as well. By prayer those who are worthy partake of the sanctity of God and spiritual activity and the union of the mind with the Lord in unutterable love. He who constantly forces himself to endure in prayer is roused by spiritual love to Divine fervor and flaming desire towards God, and he receives, according to his measure, the grace of spiritual, sanctifying perfection.
St. Paul says: 'The person engaged in spiritual warfare exercises self control in all things' (I Cor. 9:25). Aware of all that is said in divine Scripture, let us lead our life with self-control, especially in regard to food.
The soul that really loves God and Christ, though it may do ten thousand righteousnesses, esteems itself as having wrought nothing, by reason of its insatiable aspiration after God. Though it should exhaust the body with fastings, with watchings, its attitude towards the virtues is as if it had not even begun to labor for them.
In the eyes of God, it is always preeminently right that a man should spend himself in devising new means for spreading consolation to his subordinates, who are his charges.
Inside us evil is at work suggesting unworthy inclinations. However, it is not in us in the same way as, to take as an example, water mixes with wine. Evil is in us without being mixed with good. We are a field in which wheat and weeds are growing separately. We are a house in which there is a thief, but also the owner. We are a spring which rises from the middle of the mud, but pours out pure water. All the same, it is enough to stir up the mud and the spring is fouled. It is the same with the soul. If the evil is spread, it forms a unity with the soul and makes it dirty. With our consent, evil is united with the soul; they become accomplices. Yet there comes a moment when the soul can free itself and remain separate again: in repentance, contrition, prayer, recourse to God. The soul could not benefit from these habits if it were always sunk in evil. It is like a marriage. A woman is united with a man and they become one flesh. But when one of them dies, the other is left alone. But union with the Holy Spirit is complete. So, let us become a single spirit with Him. Let us be wholly absorbed by grace.
For as merchants on a voyage, though they find a wind to suit them and the sea calm, but have not yet reached the haven, are always subject to fear, lest suddenly a contrary wind should stir and the sea rise into billows, and the ship be in peril, so Christians, even if they have in themselves a favorable wind of the Holy Spirit blowing, are nevertheless yet subject to fear, lest the wind of the adverse power should rise and blow on them, and stir disturbance and billows for their souls. There is need therefore of great diligence, that we may arrive at the haven of rest, at the perfect world, at the eternal life and pleasure, at the city of the saints, at the heavenly Jerusalem, at the church of the firstborn (Heb. xii. 23.). Unless a man gets through these measures, he is under much fear, lest in the meantime the evil power should effect some fall.
Remember always that, once we have decided consciously to strive after righteousness, we cannot escape catastrophes and sorrows, no matter where we are.
Have great care of your children. We live at a time when much freedom is given to the expression of thought, but little care is taken that thoughts should be founded on truth. Teach them to love truth.
It is impossible for the soul to attain anything spiritual and pleasing to God, or to be free of inner sin, without guarding of the mind and purity of heart, in other words, without sobriety... If with God's help we gain something daily through our sobriety, we should take care not to enter into communication with other people without discrimination, lest we suffer loss through our converse with them and are led into temptation.
There is no venom more poisonous than that of the asp or cobra, and there is no evil greater than that of self-love. The winged children of self-love are self-praise, self-satisfaction, gluttony, unchastity, self-esteem, jealousy and the crown of all these, pride. Pride can drag down not men alone, but even angels from heaven, and surround them with darkness instead of light.
Just as it is impossible to cross the sea without a boat, so it is impossible to repulse the provocation of an evil thought without invoking Jesus Christ.
We should zealously cultivate watchfulness, my brethren; and when, our mind purified in Christ Jesus, we are exalted by the vision it confers, we should review our sins and our former life, so that shattered and humbled at the thought of them we may never lose the help of Jesus Christ our God in the invisible battle.
The Law (as it is written in the Scriptures) was given to us by Angels and, both before and after the days of the Law, Angels guided our illustrious forefathers to God, either by declaring to them what they should do and leading them from error and an evil life to the straight path of truth, or by making known to them the Divine Law, or in the manner of interpreters, by showing to them holy Hierarchies, or secret visions of super-mundane Mysteries, or certain divine prophecies. Now if anyone should say that God has shown Himself without intermediary to certain holy men, let him know beyond doubt, from the most Holy Scriptures, that no man has ever seen, nor shall see, the hidden Being of God; but God has shown himself, according to revelations which are fitting to God, to His faithful servants in holy visions adapted to the nature of the seer.
Our Lord and God made flesh has offered us the image of all virtue, as an example to the human race; and to recall us from the ancient fall, has set before us, as in a picture, His all-virtuous life in the flesh. Among many other good examples, He has shown us how, after His baptism, when He went out into the wilderness, it was with fasting that He began His mental wrestling with the devil, who came against Him as an ordinary man. And through this manner of His victory, our Lord has taught us, His unprofitable servants, how we must practice our wrestling against the spirits of evil, that is with humility and fasting and prayer and sobriety: which He observed though He Himself had no need of such things, being God...
