Quotes on Orthodoxy – Page 9

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. Ambrose of Optina

“Boredom is the grandson of depression.”

Boredom is the grandson of depression, and laziness is the daughter. To send her away, labor actively- do not be lazy in prayer, then boredom will pass and zeal will come. And if you add to this patience and humility, then you will escape much evil.

– St. Ambrose of Optina

Misc. Quotes on Orthodoxy / Quotes on Orthodoxy

“Let it be understood.”

Let it be understood that those who are not found living as He taught are not Christian- even though they profess with the lips the teaching of Christ.

– St. Justin Martyr

Featured image: Wooden church of Kizhi Pogost, Novaya Vil’ya, Kareliya. Photo by Elena Rostunova.

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia

“We leave everything to you, O Lord. Whatever your will.”

We should refer all our problems, whatever they are, to God, just as we say in the Divine Liturgy that we ‘commend our whole life to Christ our God.’ We leave everything to You, O Lord. Whatever You Will. Let Your Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

– St. Porphyrios of Kafsokalivia

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Seraphim of Sarov

“Sin is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle.”

Sin, to one who loves God, is nothing other than an arrow from the enemy in battle. The true Christian is a warrior fighting his way through the regiments of the unseen enemy to his heavenly homeland. According to the word of the Apostle, our homeland is in heaven; and about the warrior he says: ‘our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.’

– St. Seraphim of Sarov, Letters, Little Russian Philokalia, V. III

Featured image: Wooden church in Northern Russia. Photograph by Richard Davies.

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain

“The Fathers develop the hidden meanings in Scripture.”

Having read Holy Scripture very carefully, you should also read the holy Fathers who interpret the Scriptures. You will receive no less delight from reading the Fathers than you do from the Scriptures. The Fathers develop the hidden meanings in Scripture and with their own writings help us to understand what we did not before…There will be ineffable joy and gladness that will come to your soul from the interpretations and the words of the holy Fathers. You too will be shouting, as did David, those enthusiastic words in the Psalms.

– St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain

Featured image: source

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Kosmas of Aetolia

“God was crucified for her as much as you.”

My Christian, you must love your wife as your companion, and not consider her as your slave, for she is a creature of God, just as you are. God was crucified for her as much as you. You call God ‘Father,’ she calls Him ‘Father’ too. Both of you have the same Faith, the same Baptism, the same Book of the Gospels, the same Holy Communion, the same Paradise to enjoy. God does not regard her as inferior to you.

– St. Kosmas of Aetolia

Featured image: Russian Orthodox priest from Voronezh, and family. c.1910

Hiero-Schemamonk Constantine Cavarnos / Iconography & Liturgical Arts

“True iconography is opposed to the ideas that art should express the imagination or personality of the artist, or the spirit of his time.”

True iconography is opposed to the ideas that art should copy nature, or should express the imagination or personality of the artist, or the spirit of his time. Its goal is to give the most effective expression to the universal truths and values of Christian religion; to lift the contemplator to the apprehension and experience of them; to transform and sanctify him. To this end the icon painter adheres faithfully to the classical Christian tradition of sacred painting, the Byzantine, employing its consecrated archetypes and techniques, avoiding arbitrariness and improvisation, as well as all that is vague, superfluous, subjective, sensual-in general, everything which tends to keep the contemplator of art objects chained to a lower level of being. The art of authentic iconography is eminently deliberate, clear, precise, simple, objective, universal, spiritual.

– Fr. Constantine Cavarnos, hieroschemamonk, iconographer, author. Byzantine Iconography Theologia, 1972

Featured image: source

Quotes on Orthodoxy / St. Anthony the Great

“Those who are inconstant and uninstructed should not argue with intelligent men.”

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