Category: LOVE

  • When we think back to the places where we felt most at home, we quickly see that it was where our hosts gave us the precious freedom to come and go on our own terms and did not claim us for their own needs. Only in a free space can re-creation take place and new life be found. The real host is the one who offers that space where we do not have to be afraid and where we can listen to our own inner voices and find our own personal way of being human. But to be such a host we have to first of all be at home in our own house.

    —Henri Nouwen

  • To calm your restlessness,

    sit and recite the book of psalms

    and have pity and compassion

    for all those around you.

    —Evagrius of Pontus

  • “Better a stupid and unlettered brother who, working the good things he knows, merits life in Heaven than one who though being distinguished for his learning in the Scriptures, or even holding the place of a doctor, lacks the bread of love.”

    —St. Bede the Venerable

  • We should have the same attitude toward all of our fellow men. We must not classify people, saying, “This one I like, but so and so I do not.” By doing so, you will have declared war on the other person and that person will not tolerate you. Even though you may not have given any outward sign of dislike by word or gesture, you have done so by your thoughts and that is enough.

    Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: the Life and Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • If there are some men you hate and some you neither love nor hate, and others you love strongly and others again you love but moderately, recognize from this inequality that you are far from perfect love. For perfect love presupposes that you love all men equally.

    —St. Maximus the Confessor

  • Prayer is learning to live, without expecting to see results; it is learning to love, without hoping to see return; it is learning to be, without demanding to have. We cannot live and love and simply be, unless we are consumed by a total commitment to detachment.

    In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers

  • And if you feel like you don’t do very much, and you feel like there’s no way God loves you. There are some people, they’re shocked, when I hear the struggles that they have in their life, the crosses that they bear, and I tell them, “If you only knew…” like they’re waiting for me to tell them that their problem is going to go away, and I tell them “No, your crown is going to be glorious in heaven.” And you say “I’m just a normal person, Abouna, I don’t do what all these other people do, I don’t do all these great things.” You’re comparing yourself to others.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • If you have something to eat and notice your thought wanting to eat alone on account of desire and not of need, in this respect you do not regard him as yourself. Even if you only have enough for whatever you need, if you do not give him some of this, in this respect you do not regard him as yourself.“

    Other Old Man” John, Letters From The Desert: A Selection of Questions and Responses (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press Popular Patristics Series)

  • Where there is great love there is often little display of it.

    —Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

  • The litmus test of true love for God is our love for our neighbor.

    —Archbishop Averky (Taushev)