Category: FAITH

  • In order to have peace and confidence, one can remind himself of God’s protecting power.

    Trust that God exists, and that He works for you. Trust that every problem has a solution, and God has many solutions; for what is impossible with people is possible with God. Even more, all things are possible to him who believes (Mk 9: 23).

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit

  • God forms character in obscurity. Right now you might feel forgotten. Do not despise the hidden season. Hidden years are not wasted years.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • “I went to my home parish, and was awaiting a Bible Study to conclude so that I could speak to the person affected. During the Bible Study, I asked our God for help, and looked to Saint Mary’s icon and asked her to help me with what to say, that I wanted to be obedient but was also scared of the repercussions of the conversation I was about to have. I found myself, by His grace and the  prayers of our Lady, finding words that I know I didn’t have.”

    Confession and Guidance: An Approach by Antony Paul

  • Clement possessed all the characteristics of the talented master: a flashing intellect, a fiery enthusiasm, and an ever youthful soul. He believed that teaching was a divine mission, and gave himself wholeheartedly to it. He went as far as opening his School to all who came, regardless of age and sex. And the people from all walks of life crowded to hear him: the rich and learned aristocrats; the women of high rank, powdered and perfumed; young “ne’er-do-wells,” coming from sheer curiosity, philosophers and rhetoricians. A medley of a crowd, if ever there was one. A cynic, looking at such a crowd, might well have declared that it was void of all good.


    THE STORY OF THE COPTS
    THE TRUE STORY OF THE CHRISTIANS OF EGYPT WHO HAVE LIVED THE BIBLE FOR 2,000 YEARS

    BY IRIS HABIB EL MASRI

  • We refrain from committing sin, because we love God, others, and ourselves.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality

  • The question in every life: How to truthfully discern what is from God what is obedience to Him (Lord, what do You want from me?) and what is from “this world” (and from the one behind it)? Questions about one’s calling. My own life is that of a churchman. But every year I feel more and more burdened-from weakness. Or is my real calling something different? I truly suffer from constantly asking myself this question. I live a double life-one consuming the other. Does God want this? Is this the condition of my salvation? When I ask this question, I have no answer. And I am 55!

    What else is needed? Look—all of you who rush about in vain. Do not think that something else is needed. See the fight of light with darkness, the descent into death. It is at the same time the revelation of the power of evil and its destruction. That is where one would find the answer which everyone is seeking and often finding in pitiful idols. Lazarus and Palms: “Rejoice, and again I say rejoice…” at the very beginning of Holy Week and at the same time, the onslaught of darkness. (“I am deeply grieved, even to death…” and

    “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”) and of light (“Now the Son of Man has been glorified and God has been glorified in Him…”) up to the bright silence of Holy Saturday. Where else should one search for the solution to problems? Where else can one see, feel the only ray of light which illumines and solves everything?

    What God reveals to people is unheard, impossible, and the tragedy consists of this deafness. And this revelation can no longer penetrate Western life without ripping it apart. What is revealed surpasses and therefore tears apart life-the gift of joy “which nobody will take away from you.” Genuine Christianity is bound to disturb the heart with this tearing-that is the force of eschatology. But one does not feel it in these smooth ceremonies where everything is neat, right, but without eschatological “other worldliness.” This is, maybe, the basic spiritual quality of any bourgeois state of mind. It is closed to the sense of tragedy to which the very existence of God condemns us.

    I don’t know. It’s so difficult to express it, but I clearly feel that here is a different perception of life, and the bourgeois state (religious, theological, spiritual, pious, cultured, etc.) is blind to something essential in Christianity.

    —Alexander Schmemann
    Journals

  • View situations with simplicity and let them take their natural course.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

  • Even all the incidents you experience are permitted by God so you can gain a spiritual benefit from them…

    There are those who become nervously, psychologically or mentally affected by incidents. Others are affected spiritually by whatever events they experience; everything that happens to them makes them closer to God….

    The people that you meet, are sent by God. Passing your way, they are for your own spiritual benefit, if you know how to benefit from them.

    The righteous present you with an example and a blessing, while you benefit endurance, patience, and forgiveness for others from evil.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II

  • Truly God has many solutions… We think of our problems, using our human mind, which is limited. As for God He is unlimited in His knowledge and His wisdom. When matters become complicated, their complication is relative for us human beings. As for God nothing becomes complicated, everything is easy and the solutions are many. God interferes at the right time and in the suitable way. It could be a solution that never crossed our minds, one that we never thought of or expected…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II

  • Some cannot wait for death, and some are terrified of death. This becomes a marker for which life I’m walking.

    —Fr. Mina Dimitri