Abouna Matta had written the two brief pages of the Epilogue to Orthodox Prayer Life: The Interior Way on October 28, 1995. The coherent Coptic epilogist refers to Prayer: Access into the Father’s Presence, and tells of the Holy Spirit speaking within Christians and through them. The Holy Spirit “speaks words known well to those who have experienced him, hot and flaming words that set the whole body on fire. They make man forget his disability and insignificance, nearly lifting him off the ground. For the burden that weighed him down with sins and bound him to this earth disappears.
ABOUNA MATTA EL MESKEEN
CONTEMPORARY DESERT MYSTIC
By John Watson
COPTIC CHURCH REVIEW
Volume 27, Numbers 3 & 4
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Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion, which then becomes that of the majority, i.e., becomes nonsense by having the whole [mass] on its side, while Truth again reverts to a new minority.
—Søren Kierkegaard -
On Docility
Docility is the willingness to be taught and guided. The virtue of docility refers to our yielding to the influence of the Holy Spirit, the teachings of the Lord, the Church and our spiritual fathers. It is one of the striking contrasts between the disciples and the Pharisees. “But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear…Therefore hear the parable” (Mt 13:16-18). Docility is a reminder that so much of the spiritual life is not about what we do for God but letting God attract us, instruct us and guide us. What makes the disciples’ eyes and ears “blessed” is that they are in a state of humble receptivity. The Pharisees, however, display a cold rigidity which blinds them. Jesus tells them, “but since you claim, we see,’ your guilt remains” (Un 9:41).
The spiritually mature person is always docile to the workings of God through a humble openness which accepts correction from others. One day, St. Pachomius the Great was visiting one of the monastic communities under his care and he sat down to weave some mats. A young boy visiting the monastery that day saw the saint doing his work and, not knowing that this was not only a revered elder but the father of the whole community, approached him saying, “Not so father! Do not turn the thread this way. Father Theodore showed us another style of weaving.” St. Pachomius rose and said to the boy, “Yes, teach me this style!” After the boy taught him, the saint sat to work gladly.
All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim -
Truth can come through anyone, they say: poets, scientists, little children, even animals and birds—For a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which has wings shall tell the matter (Ecc. 10: 20).
…Be like the honeybee, they say, going from one saintly flower to the next, in foraging for the nectar of Truth.
God’s Path to Sanity
Dee Pennock -
How do we acquire faith, the deep conviction that produces the most zeal? The saints teach that it comes from gathering knowledge. He who does not know the truth cannot have true faith; for in the nature of things, knowledge comes before faith (Hesychius).
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How quickly you can have faith depends upon how quick, and how willing, you are to put available facts together into knowledge.
God’s Path to Sanity
Dee Pennock -
“Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.”
—Anne Sexton -
One who wants to learn a foreign language is not a competent instructor of himself; he gets himself taught by experts, and can then talk with foreigners. So, for this high life, which does not advance in nature’s groove, but is estranged from her by the novelty of its course, a man cannot be instructed thoroughly unless he puts himself into the hands of one who has himself led it in perfection; and indeed in all the other professions of life the candidate is more likely to achieve success if he gets from tutors a scientific knowledge of each part of the subject of his choice, than if he undertook to study it by himself; and this particular profession is not one where everything is so clear that judgment as to our best course in it is necessarily left to ourselves; it is one where to hazard a step into the unknown at once brings us into danger. The science of medicine once did not exist; it has come into being by the experiments which men have made, and has gradually been revealed through their various observations; the healing and the harmful drug became known from the attestation of those who had tried them, and this distinction was adopted into the theory of the art, so that the close observation of former practitioners became a precept for those who succeeded; and now any one who studies to attain this art is under no necessity to ascertain at his own peril the power of any drug, whether it be a poison or a medicine; he has only to learn from others the known facts, and may then practise with success.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23 -
It is so also with that medicine of the soul, philosophy, from which we learn the remedy for every weakness that can touch the soul.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 23
SO GOOD QUOTES 