Category: ASCETICISM

  • Young men who still feel strongly the urge for physical love and pleasure and yet who also want to take on the regime of a monastery must discipline themselves with every form of vigilance and prayer, avoiding all dangerous comfort, so that their last state may not be worse than their first. For those sailing the tides of spirituality know only too well that the religious life can be a harbor of salvation or a haven of destruction, and a pitiable sight indeed is the shipwreck in port of someone who had safely mastered the ocean.

    —St. John Climacus

  • “Do not merely speak with pleasure about the deeds of the Fathers, but demand of yourself also the accomplishment of the same amid great labors.”

    —Evagrius Ponticus

  • You will lose nothing of what you have renounced for the Lord’s sake. For in its own time it will return to you greatly multiplied.

    —St. Mark the Ascetic

  • How do you benefit if, for example, you begin to sleep on a hard mattress but instead indulge in warm baths?

    Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
    Tito Colliander

  • A desert hunter saw Abba Antony having fun with the brothers. He was shocked and expressed his dismay because of their frivolity. The old man said to the hunter, “Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.” When he did so, Antony said, “Now shoot another.” Again, the hunter complied.

    Then the old man asked him to shoot a third arrow.  The hunter hesitated. “If I bend my bow too many times, I will weaken and break it.”

    Antony said to him, “It is the same with God’s work. If we stretch the brothers beyond measure, they will weaken and break.”

    By Way of the Desert: 365 Daily Readings

  • Those who knew him well claim they knew him not at all.

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902 -1971), Life and Legacy
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • This exceedingly simple outer life reflected a far more severe inner life. It was well known that Kyrillos slept little. But just how little is for the most part unknown. Each day he would awake at three in the morning for psalmody and Liturgy that would finish some five hours later. The entire day, until late, would be spent in meetings and visits, only to be interrupted by “his work” of Vespers at six in the evening. Most nights he would retire to his patriarchal cell just before midnight. This would allow for three to four hours of sleep at most. Yet even this is called into question. An examination of his letters (unpublished and thus unknown until now) reveals that if a time of writing as specific, then it was consistently between the hours of one to two in the morning. Even the few hours of sleep, it appears, would be regularly sacrificed.

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902 -1971), Life and Legacy
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • “Some have melted their bodies with asceticism, but because they lacked discretion, they were found to be far from God.”

    —St. Anthony the Great 

  • …he shut all the doors of the world within himself—the desires and the needs—he gave up everything…he neglected the bodily needs so that they no longer had any authority over him. After he had tasted, participated, and lived with Christ…what need did he have for anything else?

    A Silent Patriarch: Kyrillos VI (1902 -1971), Life and Legacy
    Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • For what is denying oneself? He who truly denies himself does not ask, “Am I happy?” or, “Shall I be satisfied?” All such questions fall away form you if you truly deny yourself, for by so doing you have also given up your will for either earthly or heavenly happiness.

    This obstinate will to personal happiness is the cause of unrest and division in your soul. Give it up and work against it: the rest will be give you without effort.

    Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
    Tito Colliander