We must always pray to the Lord to tell us what to do, and the Lord will not let us go astray. Adam was not wise enough to ask the Lord about the fruit which Eve gave him, and so he lost paradise. David did not ask the Lord whether it would be a good thing if he took Beth-sheba to wife, and so he fell into the sins of murder and adultery. So with all the saints who sinned: they sinned because they had not called upon God to enlighten and help them. St. Seraphim of Sarov said, ‘When I spoke of myself I was often in error.’
What guarantees a safe journey to eternity is effort, dignity, the sense of being unworthy before God, hope (the spiritual oxygen), consolation, and certainty. Not misery and compelled obedience and forced prayer; not tears and sadness - these all come from Satan. Yes, I ought to weep for my sins, but all the while hoping in God's love. But I cannot stand it if I cry because the devil wants me (to despair). Many times Satan crushes a person with despair and the devil becomes the victor. But this does not happen when one is like a child on his father's arm - trusting. Our trust in God is a ceaseless prayer that brings positive results. Despair comes from the devil. Don't say, 'Oh, what has happened to me?' but give yourself to God totally and hope in Him.
The Lord does not reveal Himself to many because of their intellectual pride; yet they think that they have much knowledge. But what is their knowledge worth, if they know not the Lord, know not the grace of the Holy Spirit, know not how this grace comes and wherefore it is lost? But let us humble ourselves, brethren, and the Lord will show us all things, as a loving father shows all things to his children.
Our enemies (demons) fell because of their pride, and call us to follow them, and bring us feelings of praise. And if your soul accepts that praise, then grace will depart, until the soul becomes humble again. And so all your life you must learn the humility of Christ.
All men want peace; but they do not know how to attain it. Paissy the Great, having lost his temper, begged the Lord to deliver him from irritability. The Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Paissy, if thou dost not wish to get angry, desire nothing, neither criticize nor hate any man, and thou wilt have no anger,’ Thus every one who renounces his will before God and other people will always be at peace in his soul; but the man who likes to have his own way will never know peace.
She dwells in heaven and continually beholds the glory of God, yet she does not forget us, poor wretches that we are, and spreads her compassion over the whole earth and all peoples. And this most pure Mother of His the Lord has bestowed on us. She is our joy and our expectation. She is our mother in the spirit, and kin to us by nature as a human being, and every Christian soul leaps to her in love.
Understand me. It is so simple. People who do not know God, or who go against Him, are to be pitied; the heart sorrows for them and the eye weeps. Both paradise and torment are clearly visible to us: We know this through the Holy Spirit. And did not the Lord Himself say, 'The kingdom of God is within you?' Thus eternal life has its beginning here in this life; and it is here that we sow the seeds of eternal torment.
Faith and love which are gifts of the Holy Spirit are such great and powerful means that a person who has them can easily, and with joy and consolation, go the way Jesus Christ went. Besides this, the Holy Spirit gives man the power to resist the delusions of the world so that although he makes use of earthly good, yet he uses them as a temporary visitor, without attaching his heart to them. But a man who has not got the Holy Spirit, despite all his learning and prudence, is always more or less a slave and worshipper of the world.
I beseech you, put this to the test. When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: 'O Lord, we are all Thy creatures. Have pity on Thy servants and turn their hearts to repentance,' and you will be aware of grace in your soul. To begin with, constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will show you the way. But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God's love within him, and does not know God.
To many people the Saints seem far from us. But the Saints are far only from those who have taken themselves away from them, and are very close to those who keep Christ’s commandments and possess the grace of the Holy Spirit.
A lover of riches is never satisfied, no matter how many possessions he accumulates, but the more he acquires daily, the more his appetite increases; and a person forcibly pulled away from a stream of pure water before he has quenched his thirst feels even more thirsty. In a similar way, once one has experienced the taste of God, one can never be satisfied or have enough of it, but however much one is enriched by this wealth one still feels oneself to be poor. Christians do not set great store by
their own lives, but regard themselves rather as rightly set at nought by God and as everyone’s servants.
To wage war only with the sins that make their appearance as actual deeds would be just as unsuccessful as cutting down weeds in a garden instead of digging them up at the root and throwing them out. Sins appear as inevitable outgrowths from their roots, the passions of the soul.
The most important thing in any good effort and the height of all activities is to persevere in prayer, by means of which we can always acquire through supplication the other virtues from God as well.
Many are the obstacles that stand in the way of pleasing God; for not merely poverty and obscurity but also riches and honor are trials for the soul. Indeed, to some extent even the solace and ease which grace bestows on the soul can easily become a temptation and a hindrance if the soul is not properly conscious of these effects of grace and does not enjoy them with great circumspection and understanding: for the spirit of evil tries to persuade the soul to relax now it possesses grace, and so contrives to implant in it sluggishness and apathy.
Train yourself to cut off an intrusive thought immediately… Be at pains over this, so that you acquire the habit. The soul is a creature of habit: according to the habit you have acquired, so will you act all the rest of your life.
