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.
True joy is the joy of consolation, the joy that wells up in the knowledge of one's own weakness and the Lord's mercy, and that does not need the bared teeth of laughter to express itself.
A certain brother asked the Abbot Poemen, saying, 'What am I to do, Father, for I am troubled in sadness?' The old man said to him, 'Look to no man for aught, condemn no man, disparage no man: and God shall give thee rest.'
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.
Have you realized that the world and worldly cares do not hinder in fulfilling God's commandments, when there is zeal and attention? That silence and retirement from the world are useless, if laziness and negligence prevail?
A certain brother asked the Abbot Poemen, saying, 'What am I to do, Father, for I am troubled in sadness?' The old man said to him, 'Look to no man for aught, condemn no man, disparage no man: and God shall give thee rest.'
