In case you think I am simply using the teaching of philosophers to make light of the trails of poverty, which no one feels to be a burden unless he thinks it that, first consider that by far the greater proportion of men are poor, but you will not see them looking at all more gloomy and anxious than the rich. In fact, I rather suspect that they are happier in proportion as their minds have less to harry them.
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
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The Christian must follow after those pleasures which are both natural and necessary. The pleasures which are considered healthy are those that are not bound up with pain, and bring no cause for repentance, and result in no other harm, and keep us within the bounds of moderation, and do not draw us away from serious occupations, and do not make slaves of us.
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Finally, to see how necessary it is to love yourself, look at God’s great commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. If you don’t love yourself, you can’t even get off the ground with that commandment. In the early days of Christianity, people were taught not to try to obey that commandment until they had developed a healthy love for themselves first, and learned to protect and benefit themselves in many ways. One holy teacher said it’s better to be regarded as a destitute tramp than to try to benefit your neighbor before you have learned to benefit yourself. Running around doing a lot of charitable things for others when you still aren’t able to do anything charitable for yourself is a dangerous waste of time, because it nourishes hypocrisy and arrogance and resentment and cruelty. And you can’t possibly understand how to protect and comfort another person, how to meet his needs or lead him into a good life, unless you’ve learned to do those things first for your own self. So before you worry much about anything else or think about really benefitting any other people in the world, take hold of the natural self-love God has given you and become a faithful benefactor to yourself.
Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
Dee Pennock -
One Sunday, Met. Anthony Bloom gave a sermon as follows: “Last night a woman with a child came to this church. She was in trousers and with no headscarf. Someone scolded her. She left. I do not know who did that, but I am commanding that person to pray for her and her child to the end of his days to God for their salvation. Because of you, she may not go to church ever again.” He turned around and entered the altar. That was the entire sermon.
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God is perfect, He is faultless. And so, when Divine love becomes manifest in us in the fullness of Grace, we radiate this love — not only on the earth, but throughout the entire universe as well. So God is in us, and He is present everywhere. It is God’s all-encompassing love that manifests itself in us. When this happens, we see no difference between people: everyone is good, everyone is our brother, and we consider ourselves to be the worst of men — servants of every created thing.
—Elder Thaddeus
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“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else’s imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!”
—Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain
SO GOOD QUOTES 