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Many times, Christ comes, and He knocks on your door. You have Him sit in the living room of your soul, but you are absorbed with your tasks and forget the Great Visitor. He waits for you to appear, waits and when you are too late, He gets up and leaves. Another time you’re so busy that you answer Him from the window. You don’t even have the time to open the door.
– St. Amphilochios Makris of Patmos
Featured image: source
Fire and water are incompatible; and so is judging others in one who wants to repent. If you see someone falling into sin at the very moment of his death, even then do not judge him, because the Divine judgment is hidden from men. Some have fallen openly into great sins, but they have done greater good deeds in secret; so their critics were tricked, getting smoke instead of the sun.
– St. John Climacus (John of the Ladder)
Featured image: Panel Miniature with St. John Climacus. Late 14th century. source
When someone begins to say, ‘What does it matter if I say that word, eat that little morsel, feast my eyes on that?’ he falls into bad habits and runs the risk of gradually falling into insensibility. For both virtues and vices start from slight things and lead to greater ones, either good or bad.
Featured image: source
Let us who are weak and passionate have the courage to offer our infirmity and natural weakness to Christ with unhesitating faith, and confess it to Him; and we shall be certain to obtain His help, even beyond our merit.
– St. John Climacus (John of the Ladder)
Featured image: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, fresco on the north wall of the Chapel of Sucevita Monastery in Romania. Painted by the brothers Ioan and Sofronie of Suceava in 1595. source
In former times, God, who is without form or body, could never be depicted. But now when God is seen in the flesh conversing with men, I make an image of the God whom I see.
I do not worship matter; I worship the Creator of matter who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God.
Featured image: from The Complete Works of St. John of Damascus. Translated by Jacques de Billy. Published 1619, Paris
If your heart has been softened either by repentance before God or by learning the boundless love of God towards you, do not be proud with those whose hearts are still hard. Remember how long your heart was hard and incorrigible.
Seven brothers were ill in one hospital. One recovered from his illness and got up and rushed to serve his other brothers with brotherly love, to speed their recovery. Be like this brother. Consider all men to be your brothers, and sick brothers at that. And if you come to feel that God has given you better health than others, know that it is given through mercy, so in health you may serve your frailer brothers.
– St. Nikolai of Žiča & South Canaan
Featured image: On the Suna river. From the Prokudin-Gorskii collection. Photographer: Sergei Mikhailovich, 1863-1944. Library of Congress
Absolutely nothing will help us if we are not lenient toward the weaknesses of men and forgive them. For how can we hope that God will forgive us if we do not forgive others?
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Never again would I worry about where I ought to live, once I saw the massive barns and granaries crumble and fall, and the wide solitary fields of my childhood covered in industrial and human filth.
Instead of industrial society it is fashionable to say consumer society, in order to avoid the problem by pretending to confront it.
Living with continuous musical sound, as in a humid atmosphere, a thick vapor of sounds, is conducive to a certain stupor, a heavy dulling of the spirit, which primes gentle souls for outrageous demands.
Prior to the industrial age, it was possible to trust in the future without being totally stupid.
But who can believe today’s prophecies, since we are yesterday’s splendid future?
The scars of industry on long-suffering soil insult the beauty of the land, and this foolish recklessness reveals hollow victory. Modern, industrial man looks upon his endeavors and is puffed up with pride. In his blind audacity, he believes he has secured a promise of infinite ascension merely because a light has briefly shone upon him. Confident in his rights, he disdains the traditional instruments of his triumph. Ashamed his spirit would ever be so humbled, he severs the true and silent source of his sap.
Only the handmade object has a soul.
In order to compel the technician to devote all attention to his work, industrial society, without disfiguring his skull, compresses his brain.
Civilization is in agony when agriculture becomes an industry and is no longer regarded as a way of life.
If there is no fear of God before your eyes, you will think it a trivial matter to officiate unworthily, for you will be deceived by your own self-love into imagining that God will be charitable to you.
Long ago Dathan and Abiram imagined the same thing until the earth opened beneath them and swallowed them up (Num. 16:25-33). Standing with genuine awe and fear before Him who is to be feared, recognize how grave a matter it is to officiate, and either engage in the priesthood worthily and purely – as it were like an angel – or wisely keep away from the dread ministry. Otherwise, slighting your office, and using specious arguments against your conscience when it rebukes you, you will say in your agony as you are condemned on the day that all things are judged and set aright: The fear that I feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has visited me (Job 3:25).
– St. Theognostos, “On the Practice of the Virtues, Contemplation, and the Priesthood.” Philokalia, Vol. 2