Category: FAITH

  • To Abba Pambo, who asked him, “What ought I to do?”  the old man said: “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”

    The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
    Henri Nouwen

  • Within the repentant person there is first fear, then the lightness of hope; sorrow, then comfort; terror to the point of despair, then the breath of the consolation of mercy. One thing replaces another, and this supplies or keeps a person who is in a state of corruption or parting with life in the hope, however, of receiving new life.

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

  • A lot of times, we think there is a problem in my life because of this or that. We rarely think that it’s my sins that are causing a problem. 

    It’s not my coworker, it’s not my life situation, it’s not my illness, not my family situation, or anything else; it’s my sins. My sins are making me incapable of dealing with this problem in a way that a true christian would deal with it. No matter your problems, no matter whose fault it is, it’s also always your fault. That’s the way a Christian thinks.

    —Fr. Seraphim Holland

  • “If you are weak, do not despair of your weakness… and if you see a person who is weak, do not despise their weakness.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

  • “I will not forsake you; I will not desert you.” If a person made such a promise, you would trust him. God makes it, and you hesitate?

    —St. Augustine

  • Patience is also a form of action.

    —Auguste Rodin

  • If a man has a friend and he is absolutely certain that his friend loves him, and if that friend does something to cause him suffering and be troublesome to him, he will be convinced that his friend acts out of love and he will never believe that his friend does it to harm him. How much more ought we to be convinced about God who created us, who drew us out of nothingness to existence and life, and who became a man for our sake and died for us, and who does everything out of love for us?

    —Abba Dorotheos of Gaza

  • And beware you do not blindly insist that things must work out according to what you consider to be right and good. God sometimes does permit such blind insistence to be followed by the fulfilment of our ardent desires. This always leads to misery and disaster (intended to open our eyes on our folly), and happens particularly often when our desires are founded on wild passions.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina

  • Whether it was an angel or whether it was a demon that had left the purse, we distributed the money. As for you and me, whether what happened in our cases occured on account of an angel or on account of a demon, let us give glory to God, for occurences like these do not profit the soul at all except to purify it. Nevertheless, I give glory to you for having received food from an angel. Yes, it is possible for demons to steal some loaves of bread and bring them to someone, but such loaves will not nourish the body because things that belong to demons stink and if something comes from the demons the soul is confused when it sees it. If, however, it comes from the angels, the soul is not confused but remains steadfast and at peace at that time.

    The Life of Evagrius
    Coptic Church Review, Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2000

  • God is answering in four ways: delaying, reversing the request, not answering, or answering immediately.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III