St. Anthony also said, “I saw many monks who were confused because they depended solely on their own knowledge and did not heed the advice, ‘Ask your father and he will tell you; ask your elders, they will inform you.’” (Paradise of Monks)
—H.H.Pope Kyrillos VI, Christian Behavior according to Saint Pope Kyrillos the Sixth
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“Remember everything is right until it’s wrong. You’ll know when it’s wrong.”
—Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden
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Every encounter is an encounter in God and in his sight. We are sent everyone we meet on our way, either to give or to receive, sometimes without even knowing it. It is for us to be Christʼs presence on earth, sometimes victorious and sometimes crucified. We must be able to be quiet and meditative, look calmly at all the things that puzzle us, for we will not be able to understand everything until we see Godʼs whole plan… Human wisdom must give way to the capacity to contemplate the mystery before us, to try and discern the invisible hand of God whose wisdom is so different from human wisdom. But his wisdom is in the human heart…. We must learn to wait till we understand. We must try and discern Godʼs plan by attentive prayer and silent meditation….
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Courage to Pray -
We have to learn to discern two kinds of silence. Godʼs silence and our own inner silence. An encounter does not become deep and full until the two parties to it are capable of being silent with one another…When our silence is deep enough, we can begin to speak from its depths, but carefully and cautiously so as not to break it by the noisy disorder of our words. Then our thought is contemplative.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, Courage to Pray
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“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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“No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself.”
—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
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“Those who have jumped out of obedience will tell you of its value; for it was only then that they fully realized the heaven in which they had been living.”
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“Acquire the knowledge of truth. Devote yourself to meditation; in this do I take more pleasure than in the studies of learned men; no discourse could be more agreeable to me than seeing persons walking in the path of truth and speaking unto righteousness.”
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“For it is a sign of the truest faith if we obey our superiors without any hesitation, even when we see the opposite of what we had hoped for happening.”
—St. John Climacus
