There was another remarkable thing about John. If anyone came to borrow something from him, he did not take it in his own hands and lend it, but said, ‘Come in, take what you need.’ When a borrower brought anything back, John used to say, ‘Put it back where you found it.’ If a man borrowed something and did not bring it back, John said nothing to him about it.
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Benedicta Ward
-
-
A hermit said, ‘If you lose gold or silver, you can find something as good as you lost. But the man who loses time can never make up what he has lost.’
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks
Benedicta Ward -
“Once when I was talking to some brothers for the good of their soul they became so drowsy that they could not even keep their eyelids open. I wanted to show them that this was the devil’s work, so I started gossiping: and at once they sat up and began to enjoy what I was saying.”
—Saint John Cassian -
Maybe you think that you are more tempted by arrogance than by self-rejection. But isn’t arrogance, in fact, the other side of self-rejection? Isn’t arrogance putting yourself on a pedestal to avoid being seen as you see yourself? Isn’t arrogance, in the final analysis, just another way of dealing with the feelings of worthlessness? Both self-rejection and arrogance pull us out of the common reality of existence and make a gentle community of people extremely difficult, if not impossible, to attain. I know too well that beneath my arrogance there lies much self-doubt, just as there is a great mount of pride hidden in my self-rejection. Whether I am inflated or deflated, I lose touch with my truth and distort my vision of reality.
—Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
-
We come to realize that what previously seemed so important for our lives, loses its power over us. Our desire to be successful, well liked, and influential becomes increasingly less important as we come closer to God’s heart. To our surprise, we even may experience a strange inner freedom to follow a new call or direction as previous concerns move into the background of our consciousness.
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
-
“We spare neither labors nor means in order to teach our children secular sciences, so that they can serve well the earthly authorities. Only the knowledge of the holy Faith, the service of the Heavenly King are a matter of indifference to us. We allow them to attend spectacles but we care little whether they go to Church and stand within it reverently. We demand an account from them of what they learned in their secular institutes—why do we not demand an account from them of what they heard in the Lord’s house?”
—St. John Chrysostom -
Such persons are so caught up in God’s love that everything else can only receive its meaning and purpose in the context of that love. They ask only one question: “What is pleasing to the Spirit of God?” And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers.
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life
-
“Pray as if everything depends on God. Work as if everything depends on you.”
—St. Ignatius
SO GOOD QUOTES 