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.
Category: KNOWLEDGE & SELF-KNOWLEDGE
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It is a natural and holy impulse which makes a believer wish to impart to others the word which has proved helpful to himself; and Macarius draws an unfavourable picture of the man who is so intoxicated with the revelations made to him that he is unable to think of the needs of others or to minister the word to them (VIII. 4). But he has heart-searching things to say about those who attempt to edify others by “words borrowed from various parts of the Bible” without having themselves the experience of their spiritual force (XVIII.
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
Introduction
A.J. MASON, D.D. -
Let us suppose that you want God to save you from the habit of being quick-tempered. If you have read influential books by the most famous psychologists, and have made use of unfailing exercises, and have strengthened your determination to the uttermost, yet have not asked for the grace and help of God, you will certainly fail. Nevertheless, if you abide by the following steps, the Lord, through His grace, will crown your struggle with success.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Pray -
“You were within me, but I was outside myself.”
—St. Augustine -
“He alone knows himself in the best way possible who thinks of himself as being nothing.”
—St. John Chrysostom -
St. Antony sought knowledge from every available source. That was his first quality as a student. He did not seek knowledge just from great teachers, but from everything and everybody, from every event, every person and even from sinners.
He learned his first lesson from a dead man. Isn’t it amazing that he gets his first lesson in monasticism not from a living person but from a dead man, and that dead man was his father? When his father died he looked at his body and learned something from it. He looked at his dead father who owned 300 acres of the best farm land in upper Egypt and who had the wealth, power, and influence and said, “Where is your power, your greatness and your might? You have departed from this world not by your choice; I however, will leave it by my choice before I am forced out.” That was his first lesson about dying to the world. “Behold that great rich man filling the world with power and influence, now lies motionless with no control over his own body!”
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Contemplations on the Life of St. Antony the Great -
So those who wish to live virtuously should not hanker after praise, be involved with too many people, keep going out, or abuse others (however much they deserve it), or talk excessively, even if they can speak well on every subject.
—St. Diadochus -
[There] is a disease of today’s Orthodox Christians which can be deadly: the “correctness disease.” If you are critical of others, self-confident about your correctness, eager to quote canons to prove someone else is wrong, constantly “knowing better” than others – you have the germs of the “correctness disease.” These are signs of immaturity in spiritual life.
—Father Seraphim Rose -
St. Mark, in his new reply to these statements, repeats the Orthodox view that “it is possible for one to be a Teacher and all the same not say everything absolutely correctly, for what need then would the Fathers have had for Ecumenical Councils?—and such private teachings (as opposed to the infallible Scripture and Church Tradition) “we must not believe absolutely or accept without investigation.” He then goes into great detail, with many citations from his works, to show that St. Gregory of Nyssa actually did teach the error ascribed to him (which is nothing less than the denial of eternal torment in hell, and universal salvation), and gives the final authoritative word on this matter to Augustine himself.
“That only the canonical Scriptures have infallibility is testified by Blessed Augustine in the words which he writes to Jerome: ‘It is fitting to bestow such honor and veneration only to the books of Scripture which are called “canonical,” for I absolutely believe that none of the authors who wrote them erred in anything…. As for other writings, no matter how great was the excellence of their authors in sanctity and learning, in reading them I do not accept their teaching as true solely on the basis that they thus wrote and thought.‘ Then, in a letter to Fortunatus [St. Mark continues in his citations of Augustine] he writes the following: ‘We should not hold the judgment of a man, even though this man might have been orthodox and had a high reputation, as the same kind of authority as the canonical Scriptures, to the extent of considering it inadmissible for us, out of the reverence we owe such men, to disapprove and reject something in their writing if we should happen to discover that they taught other than the truth which, with God’s help, has been attained by others or by ourselves. This is how I am with regard to the writings of other men; and I desire that the reader will act thus with regard to my writings also.” (St. Mark, “Second Homily on Purgatorial Fire,” chs. 15-16; Pogodin, pp. 127-32).
The Place of Blessed Augustine in the Orthodox Church
Fr. Seraphim Rose
SO GOOD QUOTES 