SO GOOD QUOTES

St. Antony sought knowledge from every available source. That was his first quality as a student. He did not seek knowledge just from great teachers, but from everything and everybody, from every event, every person and even from sinners.

He learned his first lesson from a dead man. Isn’t it amazing that he gets his first lesson in monasticism not from a living person but from a dead man, and that dead man was his father? When his father died he looked at his body and learned something from it. He looked at his dead father who owned 300 acres of the best farm land in upper Egypt and who had the wealth, power, and influence and said, “Where is your power, your greatness and your might? You have departed from this world not by your choice; I however, will leave it by my choice before I am forced out.” That was his first lesson about dying to the world. “Behold that great rich man filling the world with power and influence, now lies motionless with no control over his own body!”

—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great

Remember that the Lord is in every Christian. When your neighbor comes to you, always have great respect for him, because the Lord is in him, and often expresses His will through him. ‘It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:13). Therefore, do not grudge anything to your brother, but do unto him as unto the Lord; especially as you do not know in whom the Lord will come and visit you; be impartial to all, be kind to all, sincere and hospitable. Remember that sometimes God speaks even through unbelievers, or disposes their hearts towards us, as it happened in Egypt when the Lord gave Joseph favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. (Gen. 39:21).

—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ