The way to succeed in any good work. When you are praying at home, at evening, or at morning prayer, or in the church during Divine service, be solicitous in your heart to accomplish this particular good work, and heartily desire to fulfill it to the glory of God. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly teach you, will instill in your heart some bright idea how to accomplish it. If you wish to write a discourse or a sermon, and do not know what to write about, if there is no living water in your heart, you have only to be solicitous of this during your prayer. The Lord and His Most-pure Mother will unfailingly and clearly show you the subject for your sermon and its parts, and your mind and heart will be enlightened by a clear knowledge of all sides of the subject.
—St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ
Category: KNOWLEDGE
-
-
Conversations are the basis of relationships, and relationships are built on trust. You will find that the more open you are about the limitations of your knowledge, the more weight people will give to your opinion when you offer it. If you don’t know something, just say “I don’t know.” Those three words can strengthen the bond between you and another person. And just as important, they are a gateway to further exploration and growth. You can’t learn unless you admit that you have something to learn.
-
“You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.”
—St. Athanasius the Apostolic -
The stress that is placed upon the importance of educating the mind is enormous, yet misplaced. Without a good solid education, we are told, our life will amount to nothing. One of my grandmothers grew up in Wisconsin as a simple, uneducated woman. She worked much of her life as a laundry woman, spoke in simple ways, and loved God and her family with all her heart and soul. By the world’s standards she was not a well spoken woman, but when she spoke, her words went straight to the heart. While many rushed to become educated while ignoring the heart, my grandmother started with the heart. Her intellectual abilities were limited but her amazing heart is what made her a great lady.
—Abbot Tryphon -
“We cannot have trust in someone whom we know only superficially. We must know this someone, we must have created a relationship with him. In the end it is necessary to love this someone in order to have confidence in him. Our knowledge of God does not come from books, nor is it the result of reflection. To arrive at knowledge of God, it is necessary to cultivate a relationship with Him. We do not know God as an idea, as the result of a process of thought. It is something else entirely: God is known through an immediate relationship, and it is this which we must seek.”
—Alexander Schmemann -
However, in making the assertion that a certain service—in this case, raising children—can in fact be prayer, I am bolstered by the testimony of contemplatives themselves. Carlo Carretto, one of the twentieth century’s best spiritual writers, spent many years in the Sahara Desert by himself praying. Yet he once confessed that he felt that his mother, who spent nearly thirty years raising children, was much more contemplative than he was, and less selfish. If that is true, and Carretto suggests that it is, the conclusion we should draw is not that there was anything wrong with his long hours of solitude in the desert, but that there was something very right about the years his mother lived an interrupted life amid the noise and demands of small children.
…
For years, while she is raising small children, her time is not her own, her own needs have to be put into second place, and every time she turns around some hand is reaching out demanding something. Years of this will mature most anyone. It is because of this that she does not need, during this time, to pray for an hour a day. And it is precisely because of this that the rest of us, who do not have constant contact with small children, need to pray privately daily.
Domestic Monastery
Ronald Rolheiser -
Passion-free knowledge of divine things does not persuade the intellect to scorn material things completely; it is like the passion-free thought of a sensible thing. It is therefore possible to find many men who have much knowledge and yet wallow in the passions of the flesh like pigs in the mire. Through their diligence they temporarily cleanse themselves and attain knowledge, but then they grow negligent. In this they resemble Saul: for Saul was granted the kingdom, but conducted himself unworthily and was driven out with terrible wrath (cf. 1 Sam. 10-15).
—St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love -
He who cultivates the virtues for the sake of self-esteem also seeks after spiritual knowledge for the same reason. Such a man plainly does not do anything or discuss anything for the edification of others. On the contrary, he always seeks the praise of those who see him or hear him. His passion is brought to light when some of these people censure his actions or words. This distresses him greatly, not because he has failed to edify them – for that was not his aim – but because he has been humiliated.
—St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love -
A certain member of what was then considered the circle of the wise once approached the just Antony and asked him: “How do you ever manage to carry on, Father, deprived as you are of the consolation of books?” His reply: “My book, sir philosopher, is the nature of created things, and it is always at hand when I wish to read the words of God.”
Dragon’s Wine and Angel’s Bread: The Teaching of Evagrius Ponticus on Anger and Meekness
Gabriel Bunge
SO GOOD QUOTES 