Keep in mind that you must always be setting an example through your moral life and your actions. For the sick find and recognize good doctors, not just through their words, but through their actions.
– St. Anthony the Great, from the Philokalia
Featured image: St. Anthony the Hermit. Reproduction of an engraving by Dürer, 1519.
Nothing is more precious to man than intelligence. Its power is such as to enable us to adore God through intelligent speech and thanksgiving. By contrast, when we use futile or slanderous speech we condemn our soul. Now it is characteristic of an obtuse man to lay the blame for his sins on the conditions of his birth or on something else, while in fact his words and actions are evil through his own free choice.
– St. Anthony the Great, from the Philokalia
Featured image: The Temptation of St. Anthony, c.1525. By a follower of Hieronymus Bosch
The devil is afraid of us when we pray and make sacrifices. He is also afraid when we are humble and good. He is especially afraid when we love Jesus very much. He runs away when we make the Sign of the Cross.
Featured image: Martin Schöngauer, c. 1470-75. Copper engraving
There is no profit in studying doctrines unless the life of one’s soul is acceptable and conforms to God’s will. The cause of all evils is delusion, self-deception and ignorance of God.
Featured image: Diptych from the vestry of Ipatevskii Monastery. Kostroma. Photographer Sergeĭ Mikhaĭlovich, 1911. Prokudin-Gorskiĭ Collection, Library of Congress
Those who are inconstant and uninstructed should not argue with intelligent men. An intelligent man is one who conforms to God and mostly keeps silent; when he speaks he says very little, and only what is necessary and acceptable to God.
– St. Anthony the Great, the Philokalia
Featured image: Holy Ascension Russian Orthodox Church. Unalaska Island, Unalaska, Aleutian Islands, AK. Library of Congress
Men must not acquire anything superfluous or, if they possess it, must know with certainty that all things in this life are by nature perishable, and easily plundered, lost or broken; and they must not be disheartened by anything that happens.
– St. Anthony the Great, from the Philokalia
Featured image: St. Anthony Tempted by a Heap of Gold. By the Master of the Osservanza Triptych, c. 1435
The uneducated and foolish regard instruction as ridiculous and do not want to receive it, because it would show up their uncouthness, and they want everyone to be like themselves. Likewise those who are dissipated in their life and habits are anxious to prove that everyone else is worse than themselves, seeking to present themselves as innocent in comparison with all the sinners around them.
The lax soul is turbid and perishes through wickedness, since it contains within itself profligacy, pride, insatiate desire, anger, impetuosity, frenzy, murderousness, querulousness, jealousy, greed, rapacity, self-pity, lying, sensual pleasure, sloth, dejection, cowardice, morbidity, hatred, censoriousness, debility, delusion, ignorance, deceit and forgetfulness of God. Through these and suchlike evils the wretched soul is punished when it is separated from God.
– St. Anthony the Great, from the Philokalia
Featured image: Boëtius Adamsz, after Abraham Bloemaert. 1590 – 1612