Psalms 119:99
I have more understanding than all my teachers, for Your testimonies are my meditation.
Category: DISCERNMENT
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whatever mad or chaotic things you do, never forget that there is your ultimate wisdom that must keep you safe and whole. …
—May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude -
Scripture says that seven spirits will rest upon the Lord: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of spiritual knowledge, the spirit of cognitive insight, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of strength, and the spirit of the fear of God (cf. Isa. 11:2). The effects produced by these spiritual gifts are as follows: by fear, abstention from evil; by strength, the practice of goodness; by counsel, discrimination with respect to the demons; by cognitive insight, a clear perception of what one has to do; by spiritual knowledge, the active grasping of the divine principles inherent in the virtues; by understanding, the soul’s total empathy with the things that it has come to know; and by wisdom, an indivisible union with God, whereby the saints attain the actual enjoyment of the things for which they long. He who shares in wisdom becomes god by participation and, immersed in the ever-flowing, secret outpouring of God’s mysteries, he imparts to those who long for it a knowledge of divine blessedness.
—St Maximos the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice Third Century
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Since our Lord Jesus Christ has said: “Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened for you” (Mt 7.7), then pray to this good God in order that he might send his Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to us. When this comes,it shall teach us about everything (Jn 14.26) and reveal all of the mysteries to us. Seek to be guided by this Spirit. It will not allow deceit or distraction in the heart. It will not permit despondency or melancholy in the mind. It illumines the eyes, supports the heart, and uplifts the intellect.“
Other Old Man John
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While the “knowledge that comes from men is strengthened by careful meditation and diligent exercise,” the knowledge “that by God’s grace has come to be within us” requires the virtues of justice, angerlessness, and compassion. “The first [knowledge] can be received by those still subject to passion; the second [knowledge] is received only by those [who have obtained] passionlessness—those who are also able at the time of prayer to contemplate the illuminating gentle radiance proper to their intellect.” Thus Evagrius heard from the mouth of his teacher Basil, “the pillar of truth.”
The “external wisdom,” that of the “wise of this world,” is only a question of intellectual accomplishment. Its preferred means, next to study and practice, is “dialectic.” An error in this domain is, so to speak, only a “technical failure,” which as such does not bring discredit to the “scientist” and likewise can hardly be imputed to him as a moral failure.
Standing in complete contrast to this is the knowledge that flows toward us “from God,” “from God’s grace”—to become a partaker of which intellectual accomplishments do not suffice.
The knowledge of Christ requires not a soul [skilled in] dialectic, but one that sees: for while impure souls may become dialecticians, seeing is reserved for the pure.
“Purity” means “passionlessness”: above all, freedom from “wrath, resentment and what follows these,” such as envy, suspicions, resentment, and the like.
Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness by Gabriel Bunge
SO GOOD QUOTES 