God also knows what help matches each personality. And so it’s important for you to seek God as you are, because God will respond to you as you are. He’ll always move you towards truth, but He’s not gonna be like, Well, here’s the thing, bro, you need to now take a vow of silence. But you’re like Moses, and you just want to laugh and chill with people, you’re not Arsenius. Cool, right? He does do that.
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If your weakness is cognitive, grace can fix that.
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It is a grace. It is not that person’s intellect—it is God has gifted them of seeing with real sight — he graced them, he gifted them with something that doesn’t belong to them by nature.
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God does not immediately grant the grace and the refreshment and rejoicing of the Spirit, being patient with them,” in the sense of Luke 18: 7, i. e., being willing to spend time over the business, instead of hurrying it on, “and reserving the gift. This He does not idly, nor unseasonably, nor at random, but with unspeakable wisdom, for the testing of their free will, to see whether they have counted God faithful and true who promised” (XXIX. 2, cp. XLVII. 13).
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
Introduction
A.J. MASON, D.D. -
He arranges for the afflictions which make a man think of giving up the world. Then He teaches him that there is an inward renunciation to be made, as well as the outward. “And when thou deemest thyself to have done all by renouncing, the Lord taketh account with thee. ‘Why dost thou boast? Did not I create thy body and thy soul? Did not I make the gold and silver? What hast thou done?’ The soul begins to make confession, and to beseech the Lord and say, ‘All things are Thine. The house I am in is Thine. My clothes are Thine. From Thee is my food, and of Thee am I supplied for every need.’
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
Introduction
A.J. MASON, D.D. -
It is a natural and holy impulse which makes a believer wish to impart to others the word which has proved helpful to himself; and Macarius draws an unfavourable picture of the man who is so intoxicated with the revelations made to him that he is unable to think of the needs of others or to minister the word to them (VIII. 4). But he has heart-searching things to say about those who attempt to edify others by “words borrowed from various parts of the Bible” without having themselves the experience of their spiritual force (XVIII.
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
Introduction
A.J. MASON, D.D. -
Saints of God, he says, may be found sitting in the theatres, apparently looking on at the performance, while their hearts are holding intercourse with God (XV. 8, cp. XXIX. 1). It is part of Christian perfection to pass no judgment upon those who remain in the world, not even upon those whose lives are notoriously bad (XVIII. 8, cp. XLII.)
Fifty Spiritual Homilies of Saint Macarius the Egyptian
Introduction
A.J. MASON, D.D.
SO GOOD QUOTES 