Category: BEST OF

  • How long do you expect life to be? No one can guarantee its extent or quality. But temporary pleasures are not worth the eternal consequence. Consider all your deeds within an eternal perspective.

    ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM ON REPENTANCE & DEFEATING DESPAIR
    Letters to Theodore

  • When someone steals another’s clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.

    —St. Basil the Great, On Social Justice

  • “Beware of passionate attachments to the world. Although they deceive you with peace and comfort, they are so fleeting that you do not notice how you are deprived of them, and in their place come sorrow, longing, despondency, and no comfort whatsoever.”

    —St. Leonid of Optina

  • We want something from Him, not Him at all. Is that a relationship? Do we behave in that way with our friends? Do we aim at what friendship can give us or is it the friend whom we love?

    —Met. Anthony Bloom, Beginning To Pray

  • We cannot afford to waste our time doing things that don’t glorify God. Every second of every day was given to us as an opportunity.
    …
    Every detail matters; no factor in life is insignificant. Our mannerisms, our works, our thoughts, the music we listen to and our hobbies… these are all small, but proactive ways to glorify God.

    And we must trust that the reward is worth it.

    —Fr. Antony Paul, BATTLING AGAINST SPIRITUAL LAZINESS

  • A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • “Honesty is unmeddling thought, sincere character, frank and unpremeditated speech.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • Some, I know not why (for I have not learned to pry conceitedly into the gifts of God) are by nature, I might say, prone to temperance, or silence, or purity, or modesty, or meekness, or contrition. But others, although almost their own nature itself resists them in this, to the best of their power force themselves; and though they occasionally suffer defeat yet, as men struggling with nature, they are in my opinion higher than the former.

    St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “One who loves his neighbour can never tolerate slanderers, but rather runs from them as from fire.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “Not only do my choices and their consequences effect those around me immediately, but my choices also effect those far away and those not yet born.”

    —Fr. Michael Gillis

    “Your lives in your homes are a responsibility, and have a deep effect in the generations coming after you.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

    “The life of each one of us does not end at death on this earth and birth into heaven. We place a seal on everyone we meet. This responsibility continues after death, and the living are related to the dead for whom they pray. In the dead we no longer belong completely to the world; in us the dead still belong to history. Prayer for the dead is vital; it expresses the totality of our common life.”

    —Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

    Every human being is an incalculable force, bearing within him something of the future. To the end of time, our daily words and actions will bear fruit, either good or bad; nothing that we have once given of ourselves will perish, but our words and works, handed on from one to another, will continue to do good or harm to remote generations. This is why life is a sacred thing, and we ought not to pass through it thoughtlessly, but to appreciate its value and use it so that, when we are gone, the sum total of good in the world may be greater.

    —Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur