Category: GRACE

  • CHAPTER IV: How vainglory attacks a monk on the right had and on the left. For where the devil cannot create vainglory in a man by means of his well-fitting and neat dress, he tries to introduce it by means of a dirty, cheap, and uncared-for style. If he cannot drag a man down by honour, he overthrows him by humility. If he cannot make him puffed up by the grace of knowledge and eloquence, he pulls him down by the weight of silence. If a man fasts openly, he is attacked by the pride of vanity.

    John Cassian, Institutes

  • If your weakness is cognitive, grace can fix that.

    —Fr. Antony Paul

  • It is a grace. It is not that person’s intellect—it is God has gifted them of seeing with real sight — he graced them, he gifted them with something that doesn’t belong to them by nature.

    —Fr. Antony Paul

  • God does not immediately grant the grace and the refreshment and rejoicing of the Spirit, being patient with them,” in the sense of Luke 18: 7, i. e., being willing to spend time over the business, instead of hurrying it on, “and reserving the gift. This He does not idly, nor unseasonably, nor at random, but with unspeakable wisdom, for the testing of their free will, to see whether they have counted God faithful and true who promised” (XXIX. 2, cp. XLVII. 13).

    Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
    Introduction
    A.J. MASON, D.D.

  • He arranges for the afflictions which make a man think of giving up the world. Then He teaches him that there is an inward renunciation to be made, as well as the outward. “And when thou deemest thyself to have done all by renouncing, the Lord taketh account with thee. ‘Why dost thou boast? Did not I create thy body and thy soul? Did not I make the gold and silver? What hast thou done?’ The soul begins to make confession, and to beseech the Lord and say, ‘All things are Thine. The house I am in is Thine. My clothes are Thine. From Thee is my food, and of Thee am I supplied for every need.’

    Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
    Introduction
    A.J. MASON, D.D.

  • “That the war comes upon you is not your doing; but to hate it is; and then the Lord, seeing your mind, that you are striving … parts death from your soul” (XXVI.

    Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
    Introduction
    A.J. MASON, D.D.

  • Some men, indeed, are bad because they choose to be bad; but others are bad in spite of themselves. They fight against it and resent it, but do not succeed in overcoming it.

    Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
    Introduction
    A.J. MASON, D.D.

  • “Until a man … makes progress, he is not poor in spirit, but has some opinion of himself; but … grace itself teaches him to be poor in spirit, which means that a man, being righteous and chosen of God, does not esteem himself to be anything, but holds his soul in abasement and disregard, as if he knew nothing and had nothing, though he knows and has” (XII. 3).

    Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
    Introduction
    A.J. MASON, D.D.

  • Isaac the Syrian, describing the second form, writes, “God’s grace comes of itself without any ambitious striving on our part. It will only come to the heart that is pure.”

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina

  • “God’s grace comes of itself, suddenly, without our seeing it approach. It comes when the place is clean.””

    —St Isaac the Syrian