Category: GRACE

  • Once you have grace, you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don’t really want to do.

    —Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain

  • But on the other hand, from the divine perspective, nothing a human being can do forces God’s hand or makes God reveal Himself. When the time is right, when everything is ready, then God comes to us. God comes to us very seldom as a rushing wind or a bright light, but God comes to us most often as a gentle breeze, as an apprehension of some profound beauty resonating deeply in our psyche, in our souls. God comes to us and if we are ready, we perceive Him in some small way, in a way that we can never forget or deny, but almost always in a way that we cannot explain or defend.

    A Small Affliction Born For God’s Sake
    ARCHPRIEST MICHAEL GILLIS

  • Overcoming a deep-rooted struggle needs time and patience, so be patient with the weak until God’s grace visits and delivers them.

    —Pope Shenouda III, Life of Hope

  • “I honestly have no idea what happened. One day I was just done with it.”

    —Julia E Hubbel

  • Until God’s grace visits you, it is impossible for you to change for the better.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ

  • Keep on the spiritual readings, even without understanding. Keep on praying, even without warmth, confess always even though you feel no penitence. Perhaps because of your perseverance, the Grace of God may seek you and give you the understanding, warmth and penitence.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III

  • “As soon as the flame is burning within you, run; for you do not know when it will go out and leave you in darkness.”

    —John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • Thus, the inner ascent from zeal to zealous dedication to God is nothing other than the revelation and appearance to our consciousness of God’s work in us, or the working of our salvation and purification. The zealot becomes enlightened about this reality through frequent failures met in spite of all his efforts, and unexpected and great successes met without particularly trying. Mistakes and falls are especially enlightening as they bereave us of grace. All of these bring a man to the thought and belief that he is nothing, while God and His all-mighty grace are everything.

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

  • And where did our ancestors get it all? God sends down men endowed with special gifts and special strength of will, and they make new discoveries and improve human life. But if you were to ask any one of these inventors how he has arrived at one thing or another, he would answer: ‘I do not know; it just came into my mind, developed, took shape and matured.’ So it has always been, and so it will always be to the end of the world: the means of livelihood for the soul are not ours—they are given.

    Unseen Warfare
    Lorenzo Scupoli

  • Jacob’s well (cf. John 4:5-15) is Scripture. The water is the spiritual knowledge found in Scripture. The depth of the well is the meaning, only to be attained with great difficulty, of the obscure sayings in Scripture. The bucket is learning gained from the written text of the word of God, which the Lord did not possess because He is the Logos Himself; and so He does not give believers the knowledge that comes from learning and study, but grants to those found worthy ever-flowing waters of wisdom that spill from the fountain of spiritual grace and never run dry. For the bucket – that is to say, learning – can only grasp a very small amount of knowledge and leaves behind all that it cannot lay hold of, however it tries. But the knowledge which is received through grace, without study, contains all the wisdom that man can attain, springing forth in different ways according to his needs. 

    —St Maximos the Confessor, Various Texts on Theology, the Divine Economy, and Virtue and Vice Second Century, Philokalia