“I honestly have no idea what happened. One day I was just done with it.”
—Julia E Hubbel
Category: BEST OF
-
“He alone knows himself in the best way possible who thinks of himself as being nothing.”
—St. John Chrysostom -
St. Antony sought knowledge from every available source. That was his first quality as a student. He did not seek knowledge just from great teachers, but from everything and everybody, from every event, every person and even from sinners.
He learned his first lesson from a dead man. Isn’t it amazing that he gets his first lesson in monasticism not from a living person but from a dead man, and that dead man was his father? When his father died he looked at his body and learned something from it. He looked at his dead father who owned 300 acres of the best farm land in upper Egypt and who had the wealth, power, and influence and said, “Where is your power, your greatness and your might? You have departed from this world not by your choice; I however, will leave it by my choice before I am forced out.” That was his first lesson about dying to the world. “Behold that great rich man filling the world with power and influence, now lies motionless with no control over his own body!”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great -
St. Mark, in his new reply to these statements, repeats the Orthodox view that “it is possible for one to be a Teacher and all the same not say everything absolutely correctly, for what need then would the Fathers have had for Ecumenical Councils?—and such private teachings (as opposed to the infallible Scripture and Church Tradition) “we must not believe absolutely or accept without investigation.” He then goes into great detail, with many citations from his works, to show that St. Gregory of Nyssa actually did teach the error ascribed to him (which is nothing less than the denial of eternal torment in hell, and universal salvation), and gives the final authoritative word on this matter to Augustine himself.
“That only the canonical Scriptures have infallibility is testified by Blessed Augustine in the words which he writes to Jerome: ‘It is fitting to bestow such honor and veneration only to the books of Scripture which are called “canonical,” for I absolutely believe that none of the authors who wrote them erred in anything…. As for other writings, no matter how great was the excellence of their authors in sanctity and learning, in reading them I do not accept their teaching as true solely on the basis that they thus wrote and thought.‘ Then, in a letter to Fortunatus [St. Mark continues in his citations of Augustine] he writes the following: ‘We should not hold the judgment of a man, even though this man might have been orthodox and had a high reputation, as the same kind of authority as the canonical Scriptures, to the extent of considering it inadmissible for us, out of the reverence we owe such men, to disapprove and reject something in their writing if we should happen to discover that they taught other than the truth which, with God’s help, has been attained by others or by ourselves. This is how I am with regard to the writings of other men; and I desire that the reader will act thus with regard to my writings also.” (St. Mark, “Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire,” chs. 15-16; Pogodin, pp. 127-32).
The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church
Fr. Seraphim Rose -
He read a little in the Bible and did not stop at the literal meaning of words, or their superficial implications, but rather should put the spiritual depth of the words. As Paul the Apostle has said, “Nevertheless, in church, I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1. Cor. 16:19).
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great
-
He sought the virtues in every person he encountered and learned from them, although he did not copy any one person.
…
St. Antony sought knowledge from every available source. That was his first quality as a student. He did not seek knowledge just from great teachers, but from everything and everybody, from every event, every person and even from sinners.
He learned his first lesson from a dead man. Isn’t it amazing that he gets his first lesson in monasticism not from a living person but from a dead man, and that dead man was his father? When his father died he looked at his body and learned something from it. He looked at his dead father who owned 300 acres of the best farm land in upper Egypt and who had the wealth, power, and influence and said, “Where is your power, your greatness and your might? You have departed from this world not by your choice; I however, will leave it by my choice before I am forced out.” That was his first lesson about dying to the world. “Behold that great rich man filling the world with power and influence, now lies motionless with no control over his own body!”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great
-
Truth can come through anyone, they say: poets, scientists, little children, even animals and birds—For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which has wings shall tell the matter (Ecc. 10: 20).
…Be like the honeybee, they say, going from one saintly flower to the next, in foraging for the nectar of Truth.
God’s Path to Sanity
Dee Pennock -
Many search for a benefit from a word…
If they do not read it or hear it they feel that they have not benefited!!
The wise person sees a word of benefit in everything.
Even in the silence of others, he sees benefit and wisdom… He might benefit from their silence more than he benefits from their talk.
Every incident you experience in life, your life or the life of others, holds a word of benefit for you… Therefore, many benefit from incidents more than they benefit from books, articles or talks…
Life experience is also full of countless words of benefit, for the one who knows how to benefit from such experience.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II
SO GOOD QUOTES 