Do not allow any evil habit to master you. While it is yet young, pluck the evil root out of your heart, so it doesn’t fasten on and strike root.
Featured image: The Mar-Saba Monastery (Monastery of St. Sava the Sanctified) where St. John of Damascus served as a hieromonk, and reposed. source
The church has always recognized that an incarnational faith must be manifest in a fully incarnate liturgy, where the arts work together to edify all the senses…While sacred texts have the ability to explain facts and abstractions with great specificity and clarity, they are unable to impact our hearts with the sudden intensity of a tolling church bell or the astonishing beauty of an iconostasis.
– Andrew Gould, from An Icon of the Kingdom of God, pt. 1: The Integrated Expression of all the Liturgical Arts
Orthodox Arts Journal, 2012
Featured image: source
If religious works such as those of the Renaissance painters cannot be called icons, much less can sentimental, arbitrary products of the imagination, simply because they happen to have a religious subject, and still less should one give the name of “icon” to the creations of certain artists who, seeking to be “original” at any cost and thoroughly “modern”, wantonly distort and dehumanize the forms of sacred personages.
– Fr. Constantine Cavarnos, hieroschemamonk, iconographer, author. Byzantine Iconography Theologia, 1972
Featured image: from the cover of one of the many books written by Fr. Constantine
Be a help to your friends, kind to the ones with whom you live, gentle to your servant, patient with those who are troublesome, loving towards the lowly, comforting those in trouble, visiting those in affliction, never despising anyone, gracious in friendship, cheerful in answering others, courteous, approachable to everyone, never speaking your own praises, nor getting others to speak of them, never taking part in unbecoming conversations, and concealing where you may whatever gifts you possess.
Featured image: Monks in Palaiokastrizza, 1910.
It is not only one church which is in peril, nor only two or three which have fallen under this terrible storm. The mischief of heresy spreads almost from the borders of Illyricum to the Thebaid. Its bad seeds were first sown by the infamous Arius; they then took deep root through the labors of many who vigorously cultivated the impiety between his time and ours.
Now they have produced their deadly fruit. The doctrines of true religion are overthrown. The laws of the Church are in confusion. The ambition of men, who have no fear of God, rushes into high posts, and exalted office is now publicly known as the prize of impiety. The result is, that the worse a man blasphemes, the fitter the people think him to be a bishop. Clerical dignity is a thing of the past. There is a complete lack of men shepherding the Lord’s flock with knowledge.
As it is impossible to verbally describe the sweetness of honey to one who has never tasted honey, so the goodness of God cannot be clearly communicated by way of teaching if we ourselves are not able to penetrate into the goodness of the Lord by our own experience.
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
In going to church, think that thou art going to the house of the King of heaven, where with fear and joy one ought to stand as in heaven before the King of heaven.
While standing in church, do not look around to the sides and do not look at how someone is standing and praying, lest thou be condemned with the Pharisee, since thou didst not come to judge others, but to ask for mercy for thyself from God the Judge and Knower of hearts.
Gaze with compunction toward the altar alone, where the holy sacrifice is offered.
More than anything else, beware of laughter and conversations, for whoever laughs or converses while standing in church does not render honor to the holy place and tempts others and prevents others from praying.
Featured image: source
Those of whom I speak and whom I call heretics are those who say that there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers…Now those who say that this is impossible have not fallen into one particular heresy, but rather into all of them, if I may say so, since this one surpasses and covers them all in impiety and abundance of blasphemy.
One who makes this claim subverts all the divine Scriptures. I think (that by making this claim) such a person states that the Holy Gospel is now recited in vain, that the writings of Basil the Great and of our other priests and holy Fathers are irrelevant or have even been frivolously written. If, then, it is impossible for us to carry out in action and observe without fail all the things that God says, and all that the saints, after first practicing them, have left in writing for our instruction, why did they at that time trouble to write them down and why do we read them in Church?
Those who make these claims shut up the heaven that Christ opened for us, and cut off the way to it that he inaugurated for us. God who is above all, stands, as it were, at the gate of heaven and peers out of it so that the faithful see him, and through his Holy Gospel cries out and says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest (Mt. 11:28). But these opponents of God or, rather, antichrists say, ‘It is impossible, impossible.’
– St. Symeon the New Theologian
Featured image: On Saimaa lake, Russia. From the Prokudin-Gorskii collection. Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich, 1863-1944. Library of Congress