Category: DISCERNMENT

As we begin to grow in our knowledge of God, St. Isaac tells us, we begin to really love: love both God and neighbour. This knowledge of God is not a knowledge about God, not what most Protestant and Catholic Christians would refer to as a “theological” knowledge.  Rather, this knowledge of God that St. Isaac is talking about is a personal knowledge, a knowledge of encounter, an intuitive knowledge based on experience.  It is what Orthodox writers usually mean when they speak of theological knowledge.  It’s not something that one can get from a book—although many saints and saintly people have written about their theological knowledge.

—Fr. Michael Gillis, A Small Affliction Born For God’s Sake

“The awareness of God shall be with you as clearly as a toothache.  When you have a toothache, you don’t forget it at all.  You may be talking, you may be reading, you may be scrubbing, you may be singing, you may be doing anything; the toothache is there continuously present and you cannot escape the ache of its presence.”

—St. Theophan the Recluse

St. Anthony also said, “I saw many monks who were confused because they depended solely on their own knowledge and did not heed the advice, ‘Ask your father and he will tell you; ask your elders, they will inform you.’” (Paradise of Monks)

—H.H.Pope Kyrillos VI, Christian Behavior according to Saint Pope Kyrillos the Sixth

“Remember everything is right until it’s wrong. You’ll know when it’s wrong.”

—Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

Every encounter is an encounter in God and in his sight. We are sent everyone we meet on our way, either to give or to receive, sometimes without even knowing it. It is for us to be Christʼs presence on earth, sometimes victorious and sometimes crucified. We must be able to be quiet and meditative, look calmly at all the things that puzzle us, for we will not be able to understand everything until we see Godʼs whole plan… Human wisdom must give way to the capacity to contemplate the mystery before us, to try and discern the invisible hand of God whose wisdom is so different from human wisdom. But his wisdom is in the human heart…. We must learn to wait till we understand. We must try and discern Godʼs plan by attentive prayer and silent meditation….

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Courage to Pray

We have to learn to discern two kinds of silence. Godʼs silence and our own inner silence. An encounter does not become deep and full until the two parties to it are capable of being silent with one another…When our silence is deep enough, we can begin to speak from its depths, but carefully and cautiously so as not to break it by the noisy disorder of our words. Then our thought is contemplative.

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Courage to Pray

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet