Category: FAITH

  • Everyone who enters into the covenant knows the world to be a spiritual arena in which the love of God manifests itself. He walks no longer on a sodden earth and under a gray sky, for he knows that, although all people misunderstand him, he is understood, and followed with loving sympathy, in Heaven.

    The Art of Being a Good Friend
    Hugh Black

  • The wreck of friendship is also a blow to religion. Many have lost their faith in God, because they have lost, through faithlessness, their faith in man.

    The Art of Being a Good Friend
    Hugh Black

  • But death is the climax of life.

    The Art of Being a Good Friend
    Hugh Black

  • None of us is judged for what he does not know, any more than one is counted blessed because he is learned and possesses knowledge. It is rather in regard to these questions that each faces judgment: whether he has kept the faith and sincerely observed the commandments.

    —Athanasius, The Life of Antony

  • And let us not consider, when we look at the world, that we have given up things of some greatness, for even the entire earth is itself quite small in relation to all of heaven.

    —Athanasius, The Life of Antony

  • “Faith does not mean understanding, but trust. It is not opposed to rational thought, but transcends and surpasses it. It is not anti-reason, but beyond reason.”

    —Fr. Michael Gillis

  • Abba Isaiah was asked: “What is the love of money?” and he answered: “It is not believing in God that He is taking care of you.”

    Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers
    John Wortley

  • The thought that you could live like a Christian while holding on to the world and worldliness is an empty, deluded thought. Whoever lives by this thought will never learn anything more than pharisaism and imaginary life, that is, he will be a Christian only in his own opinion, and not in fact. At first he will destroy with one hand what he created with another, that is, what he gathered while away from the world will be stolen from him at his first re-entrance into it. From this it is a direct path to opinion, for what was stolen from the heart may still remain in the memory and imagination. Now, remembering and imagining how it was before, the man might think that it is still that way; meanwhile it has evaporated and only traces of it are left in the memory. He will think that he has what he has not. The judgment upon him is this: For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them (Matthew 25.29). It is one step from opinion to pharisaism, and hardened pharisaism is a terrible state.

    —St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation

  • Take the trouble to spend only one single day according to God’s commandments, and you will see yourself, you will feel by your own heart, how good it is to fulfill God’s will.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • When you see that you’re making no progress in your spiritual life, don’t despair. But neither should you be content with whatever progress you may have already made.

    —Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra, Mount Athos