Category: FAITH

  • What you do to God, He does to you. He reciprocates what you do. If you give Him something, you receive that same thing multiple fold. If you give Him money, you receive money. If you give Him effort, then He facilitates your life—and this is the rule, with no exception.

    —Fr. Jacob Magdy

  • We say that we have faith in God, but anything happens, we get worried, we get anxious. We just said we have faith in God. We just said that He resurrected from the dead, and everything is in His hands. In 50 days, we’ve been doing nothing but saying that He is risen from the dead, and He trampled death by His death. Death, which is the greatest enemy, nothing is higher than death. Any issue happens, we get scared. Why did God Leave me? Why did God allow this to happen in my life? So we say words and our actions don’t necessarily line up. This lesson from today’s Gospel is: your faith and your works have to match together. Is faith enough or is works enough? St. James tells us that you’re saved by your faith, but you show your faith by your works. “I believe that God is in control.” But what’s the true test? When something happens, Am I in peace, or am I worried? Am I anxious? Am I regretful? I can’t fall asleep. I’m always going to Abouna or to people saying, “help me, I don’t know what to do.”… If we believe that God is in control, if it’s good or it’s bad, it’s still God in control, who said that something bad is always bad, maybe something bad is an opportunity. Maybe something bad.

    —Fr. Benjamin Girgis

  • Despair is the firstborn child of pride. Those who despair cannot make any progress because despair is the murderer of hope. 

    THE TEACHINGS OF ABBA PHILEMON

  • We want something from Him, not Him at all. Is that a relationship? Do we behave in that way with our friends? Do we aim at what friendship can give us or is it the friend whom we love?

    —Met. Anthony Bloom, Beginning To Pray

  • Since I had already searched outside myself for fulfillment in nearly every possible way, I thought, why not up the ante? I decided to quit my job and sell everything that wouldn’t fit in a suitcase.  Then I set out on a journey across three continents in search of my life’s purpose. I wanted to locate the elusive intersection where my unique gifts and experiences collided with something the world needed. I hated when people asked if I was trying to “find myself” because this made me sound like a cliché, but really, that was exactly what I was doing. I was like a little kid on a scavenger hunt, scuttling over rocks and lifting logs, hoping to find something that had been in my pocket all along. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for. I found threads of it in every country I visited (there were seven in total: Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia) during my yearlong odyssey.

    The place where I truly came home to myself was much less exotic than expected—my inner, authentic self. She had been waiting patiently for me to put down my suitcase, quit distracting myself with outward pursuits, and return to join her in her natural habitat.

    The Irresistible Introvert: Harness the Power of Quiet Charisma in a Loud World
    Michaela Chung

  • “He who is unfaithful in little is also unfaithful in much.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • We cannot afford to waste our time doing things that don’t glorify God. Every second of every day was given to us as an opportunity.
    …
    Every detail matters; no factor in life is insignificant. Our mannerisms, our works, our thoughts, the music we listen to and our hobbies… these are all small, but proactive ways to glorify God.

    And we must trust that the reward is worth it.

    —Fr. Antony Paul, BATTLING AGAINST SPIRITUAL LAZINESS

  • A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • We come to realize that what previously seemed so important for our lives, loses its power over us. Our desire to be successful, well liked, and influential becomes increasingly less important as we come closer to God’s heart. To our surprise, we even may experience a strange inner freedom to follow a new call or direction as previous concerns move into the background of our consciousness.

    —Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life

  • “We spare neither labors nor means in order to teach our children secular sciences, so that they can serve well the earthly authorities. Only the knowledge of the holy Faith, the service of the Heavenly King are a matter of indifference to us. We allow them to attend spectacles but we care little whether they go to Church and stand within it reverently. We demand an account from them of what they learned in their secular institutes—why do we not demand an account from them of what they heard in the Lord’s house?”

    —St. John Chrysostom