(In this category are various sources from whom I have only one quote.)
If a man wants God to hear his prayer quickly, then before he prays for anything else, even his own soul, when he stands and stretches out his hands towards God, he must pray with all his heart for his enemies. Through this action God will hear everything that he asks.
Featured image: Photographer Kevin Dooley. Taken with Diana+ mini. 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
Beguiling and deceptive is the life of the world, fruitless its labor, perilous its delight, poor its riches, delusive its honors, inconstant, insignificant; and woe to those who hope in its seeming goods: because of this many die without repentance.
Featured image: From attic window in Seattle, WA. c. 2019. Alana Solomon
When you see someone who does not live a righteous life, but he speaks with persuasive words, remember the demon who spoke to Christ in the Bible when he went to the desert.
– St. Paphnutius the Ascetic, The Lausiac History
Featured image: Sinai desert, “Elijah’s hollow.” Photo department of American Colony, c. 1920-1933. Library of Congress
Fasting is acceptable to God when abstention from food is accompanied by refraining from sins, from envy, from hatred, from calumny, from vainglory, from wordiness, from other evils. He who is fasting the true fast that is agreeable to God ought to shun all these things with all his strength and zeal, and remain impregnable and unshakable against all the attacks of the Evil one.
On the other hand, he who practices abstention from food, but does not keep self-control in the face of those passions, is like one who lays down splendid foundations for a house, yet takes serpents and scorpions and vipers as fellow-dwellers therein.
– St. Photios the Great, in his sermon on the Wednesday of Cheesefare
Featured image: Seal of St. Photios, featuring the Theotokos and Christ child. source
Even if we make images of pious men it is not so that we might adore them as gods but that when we see them we might be prompted to imitate them; and if we make images of Christ, it is so that our minds might wing aloft in yearning for Him.
Featured image: Source unknown
Although the divine Paul always lived in the mountains and in desert places, and shared his solitude and his food with wild animals, there were nevertheless times when he went down to the Lavra in order to visit the brethren.
He counseled them, exhorting them not to be fainthearted and not to neglect the assiduous practice of the virtues, but to persevere with all attentiveness and discrimination in their efforts to live according to the Gospels and in their courageous fight against the spirits of evil. He also taught them a method by which they could expunge ingrained passion-imbued dispositions as well as counteract new seeds of passion. You see how this holy father teaches his uninitiated disciples a method through which they could ward off the attacks of the passions? This method was none other than the art of keeping watch over the intellect, for it is only by keeping such watch that we can ward off the passions.
– from the Life of St. Paul of Mt. Latros, told by Nikiphoros the Monk. Philokalia Vol. 4
Featured image: Sinai desert. Photo department of American Colony, c. 1920-1933. Library of Congress
All people have a cross to carry. There is no man in this world without a cross. Those who met Christ from the time of their childhood have for their Cross, the Cross of our Christ. Those who met Jesus and have repented on behalf of their previous life, have a cross, the cross of the good and penitent thief. And those who have met Jesus and have not received Him, have in their life the cross of the unrepentant thief. So we all have our cross. Everyone carries his cross and ascends his own Golgotha, the Golgotha of his personal life.
– Archimandrite Chrysostom, Abbot of the St. Nikodemos Holy Monastery in Pentapolos, Greece. From the homily: “A Few Flowers from The garden of St. John of Sinai”
Featured image: Abbot Alexios, 79, center, reciting a prayer during the early morning prayer in the church of Xenophontos Monastery, Mt. Athos. source
We all have to die, beloved brethren, and it will be hard for us if, while we are in this world, we do not love each other, if we are not reconciled to our enemies, whom we have offended, and if one has grieved another, if we do not forgive him. Then we will not have eternal blessedness in that world, and the heavenly Father will not forgive our sins.
– St. Peter of Cetinje, Letter to Radulovichs, 1805
Featured image: On the Iset river, Russia. From the Prokudin-Gorskii collection. Photographer: Sergei Mikhailovich. 1863-1944. Library of Congress