Having filled himself with pride, the Antichrist will begin to set himself up and glorify himself as God, belching forth slander against Christ. He will do this so openly that he will command that all those who do not want to serve him as God be killed.
Such are the souls of the saints: they love their enemies more than themselves, and in this age and in the age to come they put their neighbor first in all things, even though because of his ill-will he may be their enemy.
It is always possible to make a new start by means of repentance. 'You fell,' it is written, 'now arise'(cf. Prov. 24:16). And if you fall again, then rise again, without despairing at all of your salvation, no matter what happens. So long as you do not surrender yourself willingly to the enemy, your patient endurance, combined with self-reproach, will suffice for your salvation. 'For at one time we ourselves went astray in our folly and disobedience,' says St. Paul. '... Yet He saved us, not because of any good things we had done, but in His mercy' (Tit. 3:3,5).
If we desire to acquire faith the foundation of all blessings, the door to God's mysteries, unflagging defeat of our enemies, the most necessary of all the virtues, the wings of prayer and the dwelling of God within the soul--we must endure every trial imposed by our enemies and by our many and various thoughts... if we forcibly triumph over the trials and temptations that befall us, it will not be we who are victorious, but Christ, Who is present in us through faith.
Pray before your body takes rest on your bed... If you are tempted, make the Sign (of the Cross) on your forehead reverently… for this is a known and tested weapon against the Devil.
With such a welcome does the representation of the Virgin's form cheer us, inviting us to draw not from a bowl of wine, but from a fair spectacle, by which the rational part of our soul, being watered through our bodily eyes, and given eyesight in its growth towards the divine love of Orthodoxy, puts forth in the way of fruit the most exact vision of truth. Thus, even in her images does the Virgin's grace delight, comfort and strengthen us! A virgin mother carrying in her pure arms, for the common salvation of our kind, the common Creator reclining as an infant - that great and ineffable mystery of the Dispensation! A virgin mother, with a virgin's and a mother's gaze, dividing in indivisible form her temperament between both capacities, yet belittling neither by its incompleteness.
When God is thanked, He gives us still further blessings, while we, by receiving His gifts, love Him all the more and through this love attain that divine wisdom whose beginning is the fear of God (cf. Prov. 1:7).
Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast `that is agreeable' to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakeable against all the attacks of the evil one that are planned from that quarter. On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of the aforesaid passions, is like unto one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein.
Was there ever anyone of any breeding who dared to speak the name of Holy Mary, and being questioned, did not immediately add, 'the Virgin'? For by such added names the positive proofs of merit are apparent... And to the Holy Mary, Virgin is invariably added, for that Holy Woman remains undefiled.
Nothing so abets our secret destruction as conceit and self-satisfaction, or so cuts us off from God and provokes our chastisement at the hands of other men as grumbling, or so disposes us to sin as a disorderly life and talkativeness.
He who is afraid of God's punishment has a slave-like fear of God, and it is this that makes him refrain from evil: 'Out of fear of the Lord men shun evil' (Prov. 16:6. LXX)... through fear of what threatens us we sinners may be led to repent and may seek deliverance from our sins...The more a man struggles to do good, the more fear grows in him, until it shows him his slightest faults, those which he thought of as nothing while he was still in the darkness of ignorance. When fear in this way has become perfect, he himself becomes perfect through inward grief: he no longer desires to sin but, fearing the return of the passions, he remains in this pure fear invulnerable. As the psalm puts it, 'The fear of the Lord is pure, and endures for ever' (Ps. 19:9. LXX). The first kind of fear is not pure, for it arises in us because of our sins. But, independent of sin, the person who has been purified continues to feel fear, not because he sins, but because, being human, he is changeable and prone to evil. In his humility, the further he advances through the acquisition of the virtues, the more he fears. This is natural; for everyone who possesses wealth greatly fears loss, punishment, dishonor, and the consequent fall from his high estate...The sign of the first kind of fear is hatred of sin and anger towards it, like someone wounded by a wild beast. The sign of perfect fear is the love of virtue and the fear of relapsing, since no one is unalterable.
Keep your mind from malicious thoughts of your neighbors, knowing that such thoughts are hurled by diabolical power, to keep your mind from your own sins and from seeking.
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.
Patient endurance kills the despair that kills the soul; it teaches the soul to take comfort and not to grow listless in the face of its many battles and afflictions.
