St. Nikon of Optina – Alana Nickels

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Nikon of Optina

“Prepare your heart for suffering.”

If you want to serve God, prepare your heart not for food, not for drink, not for rest, not for ease, but for suffering, so that you may endure all temptations, trouble and sorrow. Prepare for severities, fasts, spiritual struggles and many afflictions, for by many afflictions is it appointed to us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Acts 14,22); The Heavenly Kingdom is taken by force, and they who use force seize it (Matt 11:12).

– St. Nikon of Optina

Featured image: Kizhi Pogost, Church of the Transfiguration (built 1714). Photo by Richard Davies.

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Nikon of Optina

“Glory be to God! Glory be to God! For all things, glory be to God!”

Having the sincere desire to serve the Lord God and fully entrusting yourself, everything, and everyone to the all-good, perfect will of God bring divine peace to the heart, even when enduring various sorrows, both outward and interior, spiritual ones. Pray to God to be delivered from misfortune and cut off your own will as being sinful and blind.
Entrust yourself, your body and soul, your circumstances, both present and future; entrust those close to your heart, and your neighbors to the holy and most wise will of God…
Glory be to God! Glory be to God! For all things, glory be to God! Through these wonderful and holy words, the dark thoughts and heaviness will flee. Peace, comfort, and joy then come to the soul of a person. May Thy will be done, O Lord! Glory be to God for all things!

– St. Nikon of Optina

Featured image: Metropolitan Tikhon, at St. Tikhon’s Monastery church. source

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Nikon of Optina

“Seal yourself with the Holy Cross.”

Do not do anything without signing yourself with the sign of the Cross! When you depart on a journey, when you begin your work, when you go to study, when you are alone, and when you are with other people, seal yourself with the Holy Cross on your forehead, your body, your chest, your heart, your lips, your eyes, your ears. All of you should be sealed with the sign of Christ’s victory over hell. Then you will no longer be afraid of charms, evil spirits, or sorcery, because these are dissolved by the power of the Cross like wax before fire and like dust before the wind.

– St. Nikon of Optina

Featured image: source

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Nikon of Optina

“If the spiritual father shows the way and the disciple doesn’t move…”

The spiritual father only shows the way, like a signpost, but we have to traverse it ourselves. If the spiritual father shows the way and the disciple doesn’t move himself, then he won’t get anywhere, and will rot near the signpost.

– St. Nikon of Optina

Featured image: Signs beside the Trinity Orthodox Church, in Antarctica