• Our leisure hours are ordinarily the sweetest and pleasantest for ourselves; we can never employ them better than in refreshing our spiritual strength, by a secret and intimate communion with God. Prayer is so necessary, and the source of so many blessings, that he who has discovered the treasure cannot be prevented from having recourse to it, whenever he has an opportunity.

    —Francois Fenelon, Spiritual Progress

  • When our prayers seem to be answered, when tragedy is avoided, when God seems so close to us because everything is going pretty much as we think it should, these are the times when a certain joy and confidence descends into our hearts and we feel that we could follow Christ anywhere. It is at times like this when we wonder how anyone could not follow Christ. In those moments of joy and confidence we feel encouraged and consoled, we feel as if nothing could ever shake us from our confidence in Christ.

    Patience: What Growth In Christ Looks Like
    ARCHPRIEST MICHAEL GILLIS

  • “Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven.” 

    —St. Ephraim the Syrian

  • “I have often prayed and asked God for what seemed good in my own estimation. Like a fool, I kept on at God to grant me this; I would not leave it to him to arrange as he knows best for me. Then, having obtained the thing I had prayed for so stubbornly, I have often been sorry that I did not leave it to the will of God,for the reality often turned out very different from the way I had imagined.

    —Evagrios of Pontus

  • “If you do not want to be distracted during prayer, do not expose yourself to distracting matters when not praying.”

    —St. Isaiah of Shiheet

  • “You can’t rescue a brother who needs to save himself.”

    —Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

  • “We want God in addition to so many other things we have, we want His help, but simultaneously we are trying to get help wherever we can, and we keep God in store for our last push.”

    —Met. Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

  • Prayer is not a mindless recitation of printed symbols, but a devotion of mind and heart.  When we read or hear about the prayer of the mind that enters the heart, we are faced with the rejection of a purely mechanical recitation of words. We would find it unacceptable to offer a mindless recitation of words to our friends and loved ones; how dare we offer it to God day after day?!

    …

    If prayer is the breath of life, then it is impossible to live just by breathing for a few minutes twice a day.  Apostle Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).  Many have said that this is impossible: how can one do anything without ceasing?  But do we not breathe without ceasing?  The saints who devoted their lives to God found that not only it is possible to pray without ceasing, but that it is unceasing prayer that makes life in God possible.  The more we allow our soul to breathe prayer, the more alive in God it becomes.

    —Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov, On the Importance of Prayer

  • Likewise, in fasting, do not say: “my health cannot tolerate [it].” Do not say: “I need proteins and primary amino acids.” But say: “God first.”

    The Lord’s Place in Your Life — H.E. Metropolitan Arsenius of Minya

  • You also write that you have long ago given up eating meat. Since, in your case, this is one more occasion for pride, it is not good. Read, in the life of John Climacus, how he always ate, if only a little, of all food permitted by the monastic rule, filing down thereby the horn of self-importance. I advise you to eat meat whenever your family and all God-fearing men do; that is on any day except Wednesdays and Fridays and the days and weeks specially appointed by the Church for fasting. Eat with moderation, of course, gratefully praising our Lord for earth’s bounty.

    Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina