The holy fathers of Scete predicted concerning the last generation, saying: “What have we accomplished?” In reply one of them, great in life and name, Abba Ischyrion, said: “We have carried out the commandments of God.” In reply the elders said: “But those who come after us, what will they accomplish?” He said: “They are going to attain the half of what we have done.” They said: “And what of those after them?” and he said: “Those of that generation will do no work at all. Temptation is going to come upon them and those who are found to be tried and tested in that age will be found greater both than us and than our fathers.”
Give Me a Word: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers
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“People who write in water are engaged in drawing the shapes of the letters in the liquid by writing with the hand, but nothing remains of the shape of the letters, and the interest in the writing consists solely in the act of writing (for the surface of the water continually follows the hand, obliterating what is written). In the same way all enjoyable interest and activity disappears with its accomplishment. When the activity ceases the enjoyment too is wiped out, and nothing is stored up for the future, nor is any trace or remnant of happiness left to the pleasure takers when the pleasant activity passes away. This is what the text means when it says ‘there is no advantage under the sun’ for those who labor for such things, whose end is futility.”
—St. Gregory of Nyssa
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Fortune has no jurisdiction over character. Let him so regulate his character that in perfect peace he may bring to perfection that spirit within him which feels neither loss nor gain, but remains in the same attitude, no matter how things fall out. A spirit like this, if it is heaped with worldly goods, rises superior to its wealth; if, on the other hand, chance has stripped him of a part of his wealth, or even at all, it is not impaired.
—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic -
“If a schoolchild receives a lesson that two plus two is four year after year, but after ten years still cannot solve this simple problem, something is wrong. And if a Christian thinks of himself as still a novice ten or fifteen years after entering the Body of Christ, if year after year he still cannot fast because he is too busy trying not to devour his neighbor (at least, that is the excuse), then he should rethink his strategy. There is a strategy, right?”
—Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov -
“We spent time talking about the gift of the Sabbath, and the actual aim of Lent — which isn’t to give up something you love, but give up something that you grasp in times of turmoil or indecision or boring, as a coping mechanism, instead of confronting what’s actually going on. You don’t give up chocolate cake because God doesn’t want you have things that you love. You give up chocolate cake if it’s what you turn towards instead of God.“
switching between inboxes until i pass out
Anne Helen Petersen -
“Rather, our problem is that we pay too much attention to resisting sin and not enough attention to fleeing to Christ.”
—Fr. Michael Gillis -
“Through humility the saint makes himself almost unobserved, but he appears when there is need for consolation, for encouragement or help. For him no difficulty is insurmountable, because he believes firmly in the help of God sought through prayer. He is the most human and humble of beings, yet at the same time of an appearance that is unusual and amazing and gives rise in others to the sense of discovering in him, and in themselves too, what is truly human. He is a presence simultaneously most dear, and unintentionally, most impressing, the one who draws the most attention. For you he becomes the most intimate one of all and the most understanding; you never feel more at ease than near him, yet at the same time he forces you into a corner and makes you see your moral inadequacies and failings.”
—Dumitru Staniloae, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Experience of God, Vol. 1: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune God
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“Every single thing you do is work on a physical level. Every single thing you do is work. To get up and eat, you did work. Like, even that was a work right. I think the sensitivity is about merit. Is this concern about earning it, as though you weren’t good enough to have it, and I think that’s where the conversation went wrong. Like, am I? Did I earn it by being good enough for God to give me money? Right? And that’s the age old fight between, like, the Protestants and traditional Christianity, where it’s like, I don’t think anyone’s actually fighting about that, right? What we’re saying is, if you don’t eat, you die, right? Like, that’s what we’re saying. We’re not saying if you’re good enough, you eat. We’re saying you must eat, right? And that you have to eat him. And he gave himself, we didn’t give him, right? And so that differentiation maybe matters, like philosophically. But no, I don’t think it was actually making the argument right, actually making the argument about that. And I get, I guess I get, that there can be a mistakenness Even with what I’m saying, that when I’m saying, you have to work to receive grace, I have not once said that you You’ve earned it right or deserved it, right? That’s not a that’s not a thing, right? And that’s why, that’s what I’m saying with God, one out of 100 is amazing, right? Good job buddy, right? Like, that’s why he doesn’t have this scale that we created. But he’s saying, but participate with me, right? That this is, this is all for us.
And so grace can come as different gifts, right? And so, like the things we’re talking about yesterday, God can grace you with these things, right? So if you had, if you were cognitively, the reason for your falls or incapacity or your weakness is cognitive. grace can fix that.”
SO GOOD QUOTES 