When the soul desires to seek after a variety of foods, then it is time to afflict it with bread and water that it may learn to be grateful for a mere morsel of bread. For satiety desires a variety of dishes, but hunger thinks itself happy to get its fill of nothing more than bread.
— Evagrius Ponticus, Evagrius Ponticus: The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer
Author: SO GOOD QUOTES
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Whenever the process of the soul’s submission to God reaches its full stride, man will never be able to bear any pleasure, comfort, or corruptive seduction that draws him away from his state of submission to God and his enjoyment of his obedience to him. This is freedom, absolute freedom.
—Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life -
If you fall under discipline, know for sure that this is a great profit, for God chastises the soul that has forgotten its weakness and has been puffed up by its talents and success. This is carried on until it realizes its weakness, especially when God does not provide in tribulation a way of escape. He besieges the soul from all sides and embitters it with inward and outward humiliation, whether by sin or by scandal, until it abhors itself, curses its own intelligence, and disowns its counsel. Finally, it surrenders itself to God, feeling crushed and lowly. At such a time, it becomes easy for man to hate himself. He even wishes it to be hated by everybody. This is the way of true humility. It leads to total surrender to divine plan. It ends up with freeing one’s soul from the tyranny of the ego, with its deception, its stubbornness, and its vanity.
—Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life -
Believe me, if you are willing to start at seven o’clock in the evening, without having duties to busy you, and even to put off supper if needed, and to sit with God and read His Word at length without looking at the clock, you will find yourself up until morning. “O Lord, I’ve been up seven hours reading and praying without feeling the time pass!”
—Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life -
There will be a storm of issues. Worries will surround you, and maintaining your Christian life will not be easy. But don’t worry. God will help you. Do what is within your power. Can you pray for five minutes a day? Then pray. And if you can’t manage five minutes, pray for two. The rest is God’s affair. Contrary to our expectations, there is no ‘must.’ Such a word does not exist within the Christian life. The idea that something ‘must’ be, or ‘must’ take place, is a product of the intellect,…a logical conclusion….But the word ‘must’ has never moved anyone to do anything. On the contrary, it makes you feel like a slave and discourages you from moving forward.
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Anytime you have a negative feeling toward anyone, you’re living in an illusion. There’s something seriously wrong with you. You’re not seeing reality. Something inside of you has to change. But what do we generally do when we have a negative feeling? “He is to blame, she is to blame. She’s got to change.” No! The world’s all right. The one who has to change is you.
― Anthony de Mello, Awareness -
In a short time, a man can cut off ten such desires. He takes a little walk and sees something. His thoughts say to him, ‘Go over there and investigate,’ and he says to his thoughts, ‘No! I won’t,’ and he cuts off his desire. Again, he finds someone gossiping, and his thoughts say to him, ‘You go and have a word with them,’ and he cuts off his desires and does not speak. Or again his thoughts say to him, ‘Go up and ask the cook what’s cooking?’ and he does not go, but cuts off his desire. Then he sees something else, and his thoughts say to him, ‘Go down and ask, who brought it?’ and he does not ask. A man denying himself in this way comes little by little to form a habit of it, so that from denying himself in little things, he begins to deny himself in great without the least trouble. Finally, he comes not have any of these extraneous desires, but whatever happens to him he is satisfied with it, as if it were the very thing he wanted. And so, not desiring to satisfy his own desires, he finds himself always doing what he wants to. For not having his own special fancies, he fancies every single thing that happens to him. Thus, he is found, as we said, to be without special attachments, and from this state of tranquility he comes to the state of holy indifference.
—Dorotheos of Gaza, Discourses and Sayings -
A Smile, A Gaze…
Love without limits employs the simplest means to establish contact between persons. Words are not needed. If they are pure and true, a smile or a gaze will suffice.
A smile, a gaze… Two means of infinite expression: a deep and silent expression of ourselves. Thereby a communion is created with those to whom we may never speak a word or whom we may never see again.
Whether or not you are known to me, I look at each of you attentively—you whom God has placed on my pathway. Silently, and in my presence, God makes of you living souls. He makes you present to me. In your eyes I behold your soul, just as my gaze conveys my soul to you.
We can, then, become immersed in other persons: “I am in you and you in me.” Between us there grows a living communion. Its heart, its ultimate fulfillment, is the Face of God, that Face we behold through the transparency of each other’s faces.
We smile at each other. That smile relaxes lips that previously were closed. It opens teeth that before were tightly clenched. A door has opened. Something has begun between us, something whose future we leave entirely in the hands of God.
You who have given me today a smile or a gaze that is both pure and true, and who have received from me a smile or gaze, pure and true (I stress these words, “pure and true”): I bless you in silence.
I pray to the Lord of Love that the wordless meeting of our souls will allow a brilliant light to illumine this day!
—Lev Gillet, Love Without Limits
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