St. Sophrony (Sakharov): When God comes to us

 God is indivisible in Himself. When He comes, He comes wholly, as He is in His eternal Being. We do not contain Him. He reveals Himself to us at the 'point' where we knock: "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you" (Luke 11:9). He speaks in brief dicta but life is not long enough to uncover their full content. Reverently we sense His Fatherhood, His clemency. We see that He hungers to communicate to us His eternal life: to have us attain the perfection of His Son, Who is the equal mold of the Father. Incomprehensible is His design for us. From 'nothing' He creates gods like Himself. And our whole being bows before Him - not in dread before the stern Master but in humble love for the Father.

+St. Sophrony (Sakharov), from On Prayer, chapter 2 Prayer - The Way to Knowledge.

St. Sophrony (Sakharov): Indifference to salvation

 The word accidie means, etymologically, 'lack of care', i.e., about one's salvation. With few exceptions, all humanity is not living in the state of accidie. People have become indifferent about their salvation. They do not seek divine life. They confine themselves to forms of life which appertain to the flesh, to everyday needs, to the passions of this world, to mundane activities. God, though, created us out of nothing, in the image of the Absolute and after His likeness. If this revelation is true, then the absence of concern for salvation is nothing else than the death of the human person.

+St. Sophrony (Sakharov), from Words of Life

St. Sophrony (Sakharov): Spiritual Strugge

 Sin begins with delectation and ends in tragic downfall. Deliverance from the power of sin over us starts with painful repentance but the end is - joyous victory. More than one have I heard people say, "I am ready to accept religion if it will bring me happiness". But they expect happiness from the very outset of their believing, which is not always possible. Yet the same people will put up with all sorts of difficulties to make a base for themselves for their striving after their daily bread, or for some advantage or other. Artists who would prefect themselves in their chosen field have to struggle even harder. Poets, painters, writers and musicians often willingly throughout their lives undergo every sort of deprivation for the wake of their art. So will the man who has been singled out for contact with the heavenly fire be even more prepared to endure all things.

+St. Sophrony (Sakharov), from We Shall See Him as He Is, The Bliss of Knowing the Way

St. Sophrony (Sakharov): God is humility

Generation and generation of those who have prayed before us - and, indeed, the Holy Scriptures also - have addressed God after His theophany, in respect of His relations to us, His manifestations: God is Light, God is Truth, Love, Mercy, and much else. I would make bold to add: God is humility. Nothing which is unclean - which means proud - can draw near Him. Pride is abomination, the opposite of Divine goodness. Pride is the principle of evil, the root of all tragedy, the sower of enmity, the destroyer of peace, the adversary of divinely-established order. In pride lies the essence of hell.
Pride is the 'outer darkness' where man loses contact with the God of love. "Men loved darkness" (John 3:19). Repentance alone can deliver us from this hell.
+St. Sophrony (Sakharov) from We Shall See Him as He Is, chapter 3, Concerning Repentance.