Despair is the firstborn child of pride. Those who despair cannot make any progress because despair is the murderer of hope.
Author: SO GOOD QUOTES
-
164. A man knows God and is known by Him in so far as he makes every effort not to be separated from God; and he will succeed in this if he is good in every way and refrains from all sensual pleasure, not because he lacks the means to indulge such pleasure, but because of his own determination and self-control.
Anthony the Great: On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life: One Hundred and Seventy Texts
Philokalia -
“The thought is not a sin.”
—Fr. Paul Girguis -
Do not trust to abstinence not to fall. One who had never eaten was cast from heaven.
Certain learned men have well defined renunciation, by saying that it is hostility to the body and a fight against the stomach.
With beginners falls usually occur by reason of luxury; with intermediates because of haughtiness as well as from the same cause which leads to the fall of beginners; and with those approaching perfection, solely from judging their neighbour.
(…) Do not expect to confute the demon of fornication by arguing with him; for with nature on his side, he has the best of the argument.
He who has resolved to contend with his flesh and conquer it himself struggles in vain. For unless the Lord destroys the house of the flesh and builds the house of the soul, the man who desires to destroy it has watched and fasted in vain.
Offer to the Lord the weakness of your nature, fully acknowledging your own incapacity, and you will receive imperceptibly the gift of chastity.
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
-
…There in triumph are the virgins who subdued their passions by the strength of continence…In obedience to the Lord’s command, they turned their earthly patrimony into heavenly treasure.
-
CHAPTER XXVIII. — A VIRGIN WHO FELL
AGAIN, I knew a virgin in Jerusalem who wore sackcloth for six years and shut herself up in a cell, taking none of the things that bestow pleasure. In the end she fell, abandoned (by God) because of her excessive arrogance. She opened the window and admitted the man who waited on her and sinned with him, because she had practised asceticism not with a religious motive and for the love of God, but with human ostentation, which springs from vain-glory and corrupt intention. For, her thoughts being engrossed in condemning others, the guardian of her chastity was absent.
Palladius, The Lausiac History (1918) pp. 35-180 -
Galatians 5:16-19
16 I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. 17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, [f]murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
-
St. Theophan the Recluse (1800s), in a homily to a group of nuns at a Convent which he oversaw, wrote: “For he who refuses to give in to passions and sinful desires does the same as he who refuses to bow down and worship idols. He who refused to worship idols was given over to external sufferings, while he who refuses to satisfy the passions actually wounds himself and forces his heart to suffer until the passions quiet down in him. Victory over passions is a self-inflicted spiritual martyrdom, which is performed invisibly in the heart but is nevertheless very painful.”
Sainthood and Martyrdom in the Modern World
SO GOOD QUOTES 