However, I know that it is not because of your strength, your long hours of studying, or your own understanding that you passed this milestone, but it was through God’s great strength and blessings that you succeeded. Do you also believe this?
—Fr. Mina the Hermit (Pope Kyrillos VI) to his nephew Hegumen Philemon Labib
via Pope Kyrillos: The Patron and Beloved of the Children, Fr. Rafael Ava Mina
Category: GRACE
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…and he changed them all. By what means? By means of the earnest. How was he sufficient for these things?
By the grace of the Spirit. Unskilled, ill-clothed, ill-shod he was upheld by Him Who also has given the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore he says, “And who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16). “But our sufficiency is of God, who has made us sufficient as ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter but of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:5-6).
—Saint John Chrysostom, On the Vanity of Riches
HOMILY Two
After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive -
What does “enduring because of conscience toward God” mean? While you can talk back politely to the one speaking with you, or you can answer “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,” or you can ignore them completely and not answer them, or any other kind of reaction, here however he is saying to you: “For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully” Then he continues, saying, “For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently?” That is to say, if I did something wrong, and then someone yelled at me, and I remain silent and endure it, here I deserve it because I had done something wrong. Then he goes on to say, “But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God,” meaning that, if I am walking uprightly, and then someone rebukes me or yells at me, and I take it patiently, this is commendable before God.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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Do not be this person, who does not have the grace of God. Do not be the person who embitters those around him, causing trouble in the community.
Do not be the person by whom others become defiled, through a thought of judging someone, a thought of / anger, a thought of revenge, and so on. Do not be this character.—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice
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Often we are greatly exaggerated with our sorrows, we observe every sorrow, but we do not observe the graces we receive from the Lord, believing it to be a given thing and therefore remain ungrateful to the Lord.
And only when our sorrows visit us do we begin to properly appreciate the happy moment when the sorrows were not there, and we promise that if the sorrows pass, we will be grateful to God for a peaceful, tranquil existence and gratitude.
—Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov) -
Be not anxious about the future; it is opposed to grace. When God sends you consolation, regard Him only in it, enjoy it day by day as the Israelites received their manna, and do not endeavor to lay it up in store. There are two peculiarities of pure faith; it sees God alone under all the imperfect envelopes which conceal Him,4 and it holds the soul incessantly in suspense. We are kept constantly in the air, without being suffered to touch a foot to solid ground. The comfort of the present instant will be wholly inappropriate to the next; we must let God act with the most perfect freedom, in whatever belongs to Him, and think only of being faithful in all that depends upon ourselves. This momentary dependence, this darkness and this peace of the soul, under the utter uncertainty of the future, is a true martyrdom, which take place silently and without any stir. It is death by a slow fire; and the end comes so imperceptibly and interiorly, that it is often almost as much hidden from the sufferer himself, as from those who are unacquainted with his state. When God removes his gifts from you, He knows how and when to replace them, either by others or by Himself. He can raise up children from the very stones.
—Francois Fenelon, Spiritual Progress -
As he advances through this humility towards divine and unfailing love, he accepts sufferings as though he deserved them. Indeed, he thinks he deserves more suffering than he encounters; and he is glad that he has been granted some affliction in this world, since through it he may be spared a portion of the punishments which he has prepared for himself in the world to be. And because in all this he knows his own weakness, and that he should not exult, and because he has been found worthy of knowing and enduring these things by the grace of God, he is filled with a strong longing for God.
—St Peter of Damaskos -
Woe to our times: we now depart from the narrow and sorrowful path leading to eternal life and we seek a happy and peaceful path. But the merciful Lord leads many people from this path, against their will, and places them on the sorrowful one. Through unwanted sorrows and illnesses we draw closer to the Lord, for they humble us by constraint, and humility, when we acquire it, can save us even without works, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.
—St. Macarius of Optina -
Or perhaps God wants to give you a period of rest
from the burden of sin, so that your soul is not swallowed
up by despair.
Since the continual succession of falls, drags the sinner to
despair. That is why God’s mercies reach out to him, giving him rest, even if it is for a short while, and lifts the war from him. Grace protects and supports him, even if it is for some time. So he passes through a period of calmness, in which sin does not trouble him. Not because he has been purified, but because he is not fighting.—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity
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“Those who have been humbled by their passions may take courage. For even if they fall into every pit and are trapped in all the snares and suffer all maladies, yet after their restoration to health they become physicians, beacons, lamps, and pilots for all, teaching us the habits of every disease and from their own personal experience able to prevent their neighbours from falling.”
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent
SO GOOD QUOTES 