But God does not listen to such entreaty; rather, instead of consolation he sends boredom, and instead of light, darkness. Right there, halfway along our road, we don’t know whether we are going backwards or forwards.
Letters from the Desert
by Carlo Carretto
Category: FAITH
-
“Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know. ”
-
As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.
Walden
by Henry David Thoreau -
Let’s be honest. Christian perspectives are also about social ethics; they’re about the same.
—Archbishop Angaelos -
Many, at their time of death weep, not for their sins, but because death will deprive them of the pleasures of life. They weep because death will separate them from their beloved ones and from their lusts; the world is still sweet in their eyes even at the hour of death. Do not think that death surely brings dread to man. No, this is not true for every one. The thief on the right benefitted from the hour of death whereas the thief on the left did not. Whilst the thief on the left was blaspheming and reviling, his companion was praying and supplicating, saying “Remember me, O Lord, when You come into Your kingdom.”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Father, Forgive Them
-
In the case of physical illness, even if doctors tell us it is beyond hope, we do all we can to save the body. But on the other hand, when it comes to the spirit and its maladies, for which recovery is never beyond reach, we plunge into despair as if there is nothing we can do. Focusing on your spirit more than your body will save both; focusing on just the body will cause you to lose both.
ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
ON REPENTANCE & DEFEATING DESPAIR
Letters to Theodore -
Such a person does good without waiting for a commandment. His good nature makes him in no need of a call to do good.
He does good because it is in his nature, being in God’s image. He does good as a habitual thing, as a breath coming out, without feeling that he is doing something strange or beyond his ability.
So, seeing it is something normal, he does not boast of doing it.
On the contrary, he who does not love good finds God’s commandment heavy, and he becomes an enemy to God! He feels that God deprives him of the pleasure of sinning, and that His commandment restricts him, leading him in a way he does not want. Thus God’s way becomes difficult to him and he walks in it forcibly, if ever he does!
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit
-
A believer trusts that his own prayer has reached God, and that God has heard it and will respond. He is sure that God will act. That is why some of David’s psalms start with request and concludes with response. For instance he concludes Psalm (6) with the words: “Depart from me, all you workers of iniquity; for the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication..” (Ps 6: 8)
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit -
A person who has no longsuffering falls in anxiety, annoyance and disturbance. He becomes worried and loses his inner peace.
Such a person will be always anxious, looking at his watch every minute and every moment. He may also be rash and do himself much harm. Such an impatient person may in his rashness take decisions or actions haphazardly, like one who thinks God has not responded to his prayers and so swears never to enter the church, as if protesting against God!
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit
SO GOOD QUOTES 