Category: BEST OF

  • “The narrow way is difficult, and it can be very lonely.”

    —Archpriest Konstantine Feodoroff, Narrow is the Way

  • “There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

    —Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  • If you’ve been taught that it is okay to be in this self-sacrificed type of environment and stay away from relationships, you will never—ever—grow.  That is not spirituality.

    That spirituality that says, I’m going to be on my own—read, pray, do whatever, and I don’t care about anybody else – you are not part of the body of Christ.  You are dismembering yourself from the body of Christ.

    Fr. Paul Girguis, Redeeming the Time: Setting Boundaries


  • God often isolates those whom He chooses, so that we have nowhere to turn except to Him, and then He reveals Himself to us.

    —Father Seraphim Rose

  • “There is nothing more freeing in life than when a friend forgives you. There is nothing that feels quite as liberating as knowing you’ve wronged someone that you love so much and, feeling it — feeling it in your chest — and they graciously forgive you. They graciously let it go. It’s the most liberal. It’s it feels like you were in jail and you were taken out of jail. It feels like, it feels like you were in despair, and they lifted you out of their despair. And it’s a unique position where only they have right, only the friend you’ve wronged has the ability to graciously forgive you. So let’s do that with our friends. Let’s model the good behavior. Let’s do this. Let’s do this with our friends.”

    —Fr. Mark Eskandar

  • Humility is not losing your true personhood. It is losing the false self that is exhausting you.

    —Fr. Elijah Estafanous

  • The drunkard, the fornicator, the proud – he will receive Gods mercy. But he who does not want to forgive, to excuse, to justify conciously, intentionally … that person closes himself to eternal life before God, and even more so in the present life. He is turned away and not heard.

    —Elder Sampson Sievers of Russia

  • He bore guilt and shame so that you can be free. That even when the devil wants to beat you up into your guilt and make you feel defeated of sins that I have confessed, of sins that I have repented and the devil is telling me, “No, don’t think that it just goes away that easy” yes it does, by the blood of Jesus. That when the devil tells you, “Don’t forget what you did last week or last year or when you were a teenager; don’t forget that”, you say, “I don’t know who you are talking about. I died with Christ. It is no longer me. You are no longer talking to me, i am not that person. And even if i were to look for him, i would never be able to find him because i am new in Christ because he died on the cross. The cross breaks the chain of our emotional bondness.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • I’ve seen lives changed on the sick bed, monsters turn into babies on the sick bed—monsters—people that no one can talk to, and they’re babies, holding the hands of their loved ones, saying, “Forgive me, I know I was difficult. I’m sorry—you endured a lot from me. I caused you a lot of pain, and I was a monster, and I was a terrible person, and I hope God can forgive me.”

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • A man’s life or death comes from his neighbor.

    —St. Antony the Great