To Abba Pambo, who asked him, “What ought I to do?” the old man said: “Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.”
The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers
Henri Nouwen
Category: KNOWLEDGE & SELF-KNOWLEDGE
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Do not say, I have given you much advice, but it’s useless; you should have long-suffering.
Hearken to the apostle, saying, “…uphold the weak, be patient with all” (1 Thess. 5:14). Overcoming a deep-rooted struggle needs time and patience, so be patient with the weak until God’s grace visits and delivers them. Remember that you also have a similar nature, and put before you the words of the apostle, “Remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering” (Heb. 13:3).
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Life of Hope
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If God is really trying to tell you something, it will not only be in one way at one time. He’s not going to be limited by whether you got the memo [or not].
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He was full of wisdom, advanced in age; and we know that silence is the trait of the wise. After three years had passed, through which he persisted in asking God to help him that he may be saved, he heard a voice saying to him, “Flee, keep silence, and be still.”37 And these three words are suitable, as an approach, for all. For when you are surrounded by troubles, when you feel unsure toward something, when you need to take a critical decision, or when you are approaching a new stage [in your life], do this: “Flee, keep silence, and be still.”
Abba Arsenius The Tutor of the Emperor’s Sons
book by Bishop Macarius -
If you would wish to know the sure signs, which will secure you the real model, it is not hard to take a sketch from life. If you see a man so standing between death and life, as to select from each helps for the contemplative course, never letting death’s stupor paralyze his zeal to keep all the commandments, nor yet placing both feet in the world of the living, since he has weaned himself from secular ambitions—a man who remains more insensate than the dead themselves to everything that is found on examination to be living for the flesh, but instinct with life and energy and strength in the achievements of virtue, which are the sure marks of the spiritual life-then look to that man for the rule of your life; let him be the leading light of your course of devotion, as the constellations that never set are to the pilot; imitate his youth and his gray hairs: or, rather, imitate the old man and the stripling who are joined in him; for even now in his declining years, time has not blunted the keen activity of his soul, nor was his youth active in the sphere of youth’s well-known employments; in both seasons of life he has shown a wonderful combination of opposites, or rather an exchange of the peculiar qualities of each; for in age he shows, in the direction of the good, a young man’s energy, while, in the hours of youth, in the direction of evil, his passions were powerless.
If you wish to know what were the passions of that glorious youth of his, you will have for your imitation the intensity and glow of his godlike love of wisdom, which grew with him from his childhood, and has continued with him into his old age. But if you cannot gaze upon him, as the weak-sighted cannot gaze upon the sun, at all events watch that band of holy men who are ranged beneath him, and who by the illumination of their lives are a model for this age. God has placed them as a beacon for us who live around; many among them have been young men there in their prime, and have grown gray in the unbroken practice of continence and temperance; they were old in reasonableness before their time, and in character outstripped their years.
—Saint Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity
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Our first intuitions are the true ones. What I thought of so many things in my first youth seems to me increasingly right, and after so many detours and distractions, I now come back to it, aggrieved that I could have erected my existence on the ruin of those revelations.
—Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born
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The Scripture explained this matter in a verse which was repeated twice, within close proximity in the same Book, and this is: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”, A person may cling to this way which appears right, yet in it—and in his clinging [to it] — there is utmost harm to him. And perhaps this way which appears right to him is of the deception of the demons. On this point specifically, Abba Isaac and St. Evagrius have copious explanations, in that the one who clings to his thought, who directs himself according to his own will, may persuade himself that this thought is from God and that the Spirit is the One who inspired this thought in him!
11. How dangerous is the state of those who say that they receive their knowledge from God directly, and that they are discipled unto Christ directly. And therefore they refuse to be discipled unto people. At the same time, they cannot be sure whether the thought, which came to them, is from God or not! What is marvelous is that those who say such words are neither prophets nor one of the twelve. Nor can they say as Paul the Apostle said,
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you.”
17. There are perhaps many sources of the thought which you think is from God. It may be your own thought or your own inclination. It may be a thought settled in your subconscious from things you previously read and heard. And it may be a deception of the devil. You need to tarry and deliberate, to read the Scriptures, and to ask and seek guidance.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Come, Follow Me
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You mustn’t wage your Christian struggle with sermons and arguments, but with true secret love. When we argue, others react. When we love people, they are moved and we win them over. When we love, we think that we offer something to others, but in reality we are the first to benefit.
— St Porphyrios
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God waits for the right moment to come and illumine your intellect. What you’ve been craving for one, two, three, five, twenty, or fifty years, you’ll be given in a moment.
—Elder Aimilianos Simonopetritis -
“He alone knows himself in the best way possible who thinks of himself as being nothing.”
SO GOOD QUOTES 