Category: FAITH

  • “The man who prays in faith never employs (or is engaged in) ways and means.”

    —St Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies

  • There is no better teacher than death. Have death before your minds: the time when you will leave this unreal world and will go to the other one, which is eternal.

    —St. Cosmas Aitolos

  • “Remember always: if your way of life is hard and sorrowful, it is correct; but if you live in comfort, wealth and honour, and still more, in carnal pleasures, you are on the road to perdition. It is quite impossible to attain serenity of mind without enduring many sorrows and depression and for many years.”

    —Father Ilian of Mount Athos

  • “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”

    ― C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

  • Some things have to be believed to be seen.

    —Laurel Lee

  • I was doing just what I pleased, and instead of being filled with happiness and wellbeing, I was miserable.

    —Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain

  • And he advised her thus: “Never give up the church, never stay away from the Communion. For these things happened to you because you did not attend the mysteries for five weeks.”

    —Palladius, The Lausiac History , CHAPTER XVII. — MACARIUS OF EGYPT 112

  • “Nothing ever happens either in the world or in the universe without the will of God or His permission. All that is good and noble is God’s will, and all that is negative and bad happens because He allows it. He knows why He allows these things to happen and for how long. If the incorporeal angelic powers or we men were allowed to do as we please, there would be total chaos in the world and in the entire universe. But God is present everywhere and He is Light, a Light that penetrates all.” 

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • When Dr. Payson was asked by a friend, in a season of severe illness, if he could see any particular reason for the present dispensation, he replied- “No; but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand. God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.”

    … 

    in suffering and weakness, you are brought to “Lie passive in His hands, And know no will but His!”

    …

    The discipline of patience is another light blending with the shadows of sickness. No unimportant or untimely grace of the Spirit is this; the development and culture of which finds no school more appropriate, or discipline more effectual, than that of ‘pining sickness.’

    The continuous endurance of unmitigated pain- the prolonged and deathly weakness- the failure of skill and remedies to promote a cure- the morbid irritability and fretting almost inseparable from the prolongation of suffering- and the remembrance of duties neglected, of affairs deranged, of expenses incurred- all conspire to render the discipline of patience the most needed and precious; and when attained, to shed one of the most luminous graces of the Spirit upon the shaded picture of bodily disease.

    Lights and Shadows of Spiritual Life
    Octavius Winslow

  • We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!” Imagine.

    Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: “You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.” There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: “There is nothing new under the sun… don’t let yourself be fooled.”

    When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

    So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:2–5).

    —Henri Nouwen