Category: ASCETICISM

  • He possessed nothing of his own and would have nothing to do with invitations and banquets. He always ate alone, just enough to sustain his sick, emaciated body, and he did not accept invitations because they would involve him in worldly conversations.

    The Life of Saint John Chrysostom
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • When the blessed Arsenius was about to deliver his spirit the brethren saw him weeping, and they said unto him, “Are you also afraid, O father?” And he said unto them, “The dread of this hour has been with me in very truth from the time when I became a monk, and was afraid.” And so he died.

    Abba Arsenius – The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons

  • When Abba Poemen heard of his repose, he said:
    Blessed are you, O Abba Arsenius, for you wept over yourself in this world. For he who does not weep for himself in this world must weep for ever in the next. He may weep here voluntarily, or there because of the punishments [which he will receive], but it is impossible for a man to escape weeping either here or there.

    Abba Arsenius – The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons

  • The saint sees that one hour of sleep per day is sufficient for a monk. While many people see that a person must sleep for eight hours per day, some specialists and those who have experience assert that the body, through habit, may be satisfied with less than that, without any effect on the productivity of the person, just like the stomach which gets used to being small or large in size.

    Abba Arsenius – The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons

  • The saint sees that one hour of sleep per day is sufficient for a monk. While many people see that a person must sleep for eight hours per day, some specialists and those who have experience assert that the body, through habit, may be satisfied with less than that, without any effect on the productivity of the person, just like the stomach which gets used to being small or large in size.

    Abba Arsenius The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons
    Bishop Macarius

  • The intellect that has shut out the senses, and has achieved a balance in the body’s temperament, has to fight only against its memories.

    —St. Thalassios the Libyan

  • 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

  • The intellect will go on looking for sensual pleasure until you subjugate the flesh and devote yourself to contemplation.

    —St. Thalassios the Libyan

  • Why, we have known ascetics of this class who have persisted in their fasting even unto death, as if with such sacrifices God were well pleased Hebrews 13:16; and, again, others who rush off into the extreme diametrically opposite, practising celibacy in name only and leading a life in no way different from the secular; for they not only indulge in the pleasures of the table, but are openly known to have a woman in their houses; and they call such a friendship a brotherly affection, as if, forsooth, they could veil their own thought, which is inclined to evil, under a sacred term. It is owing to them that this pure and holy profession of virginity is blasphemed among the Gentiles. 

    —St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23

  • The old man is completely composed of passions. The divesting of it means spiritual martyrdom, by which you appointed yourselves to martyrdom. You know that this is true from your own experience. The external labors and podvigs are not as painful as the taming of the thoughts, the extinguishing of the passions, the tearing away of the temptations. If such movements can arise in a moment, then you are at any moment in labors, in wounds and turmoils.

    —St. Theophan the Recluse, Kindling the Divine Spirit