A collection of scriptural meditations from Saints and Fathers of the Church.

Beware of envy. Wherever there is envy, God's spirit does not exist.

‘Wine makes glad the heart of man' (Ps. 104:15). But you who have professed sorrow and grief should turn away from such gladness and rejoice in spiritual gifts. If you rejoice in wine, you will live with shameful thoughts and distress will overwhelm you.

If you have received from God the gift of knowledge, however limited, beware of neglecting charity and temperance. They are virtues which radically purify the soul from passions and so open the way of knowledge continually.

According to the degree to which the intellect is stripped of the passions, the Holy Spirit initiates the intellect into the mysteries of the age to be.

If someone is judged worthy to receive the gift of knowledge but allows his heart to be full of bitterness or rancor or aversion to another, it is as if he had been struck in the eye by a thornbush. That is why knowledge is no good without charity.

Fear God and keep His commandments both in your feelings and in your intellect. If you force yourself to keep them in your intellect, bit by bit you will attain to fulfilling them in your feelings.

The saints’ freedom from envy is a wonderful phenomenon. The saints not only did not allow envy to conquer their hearts, but exerted themselves greatly to ensure that their friends be exalted and they themselves debased.

The intellect becomes a stranger to the things of this world when its attachment to the senses has been completely sundered.

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