St. Acacius of Kavsokalyvia: Spiritual Sensitivity

 Saint Acacius taught that whoever desires to see Christ in eternity must acquire here below, by the access of grace within him, a spiritual sensitivity that would allow him to contemplate spiritual and heavenly realities as naturally as he sees material things.

+St. Acacius of Kavsokalyvia, from his entry for April 12 in The Synaxarion, volume 4.

Fr. Stanley Harakas: We are united with Christ in the Divine Liturgy

 

The Divine Liturgy... becomes the location where we are at the most intense level united with Christ and growing in the image and likeness of God. It is the place of "remembering" and actually sharing in the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, as well as His whole incarnate life. It is that action which most of all characterizes us as the Church, emphasizing our real existence as members of God's Kingdom, beginning in this life and extending into eternity. It is the location where time past, time present, and time future are gathered up for us in ultimate meaning and significance.

+Fr. Stanley Harakas, from Living the Liturgy, Chapter 1, Liturgical Living

Fr. Alexander Elchaninov: Why must we offer alms?

 Why must we offer alms to every passing beggar, without inquiring into his merits, and even when we know that he is undeserving? Apart from the fact that the man who gives is spiritually enriched, while whoever closes his heart and purse robs himself - apart from this, if we refuse alms, especially near church doors, we do great harm to the beggar, inciting him to anger, killing his faith, stirring up his hatred of the rich, the satiated, the pious.

+Fr. Alexander Elchaninov, from The Diary of a Russian Priest

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov: Spiritual life and guidance in these last days

 The divine word and the words of the Holy Fathers are limitless, like sand in the ocean. By studying them without laziness, we can give instruction to those who come to us. Or it would be more proper to say that it is not we who give the advice (we are not worthy) but the Holy Fathers themselves inspired by the Holy Scriptures. All the holy ascetic writers of the last few centuries maintain that because of the general diminution of Spirit-inspired guides, the study of the Holy Scriptures (especially the New Testament) and the Fathers - as well as the assiduous and constant following of their advice in one’s life and in the guiding of others - is the only path to spiritual progress, given by God to the monastics of the last days. St Nilus announced that he would reject any monk who did not want to live according to this rule.¹ It is that important; it is that essential!

+St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, from The Field: Cultivating Salvation, chapter 34.
¹The Rule of St. Nilus of Sora

St. Isaac the Syrian: Thirst for Jesus

 Thirst for Jesus, that He may make you drunk with His love. Close your eyes to the delights of this life, that God my deem you worthy to have His peace reigning in your heart. Abstain from what your eyes behold that you may be accounted worthy of the spiritual joy.

+St. Isaac the Syrian, from Ascetic Homilies, homily 3.

Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra: On the monastic life

 You did not come here today to flee from human beings but from human concerns. You did not come to break away from society, but from vanity and corruption. But even that is not what you came for, that is to flee from human concerns and vanity. That's not enough.

You must work wonders and "signs and wonders" (cf Acts 5:12) in your lives, or else you are not disciples of Christ. These will be the signs that you are His disciples: learn to exercise the eyes of your souls to see God working in secret. Let your spirits become accustomed to and practiced in searching out the depths of God. Your hearts and powers of reasoning should not be untrained vines, overgrown with passions, weaknesses, pettiness and personal desires.

The soul of each one of you should be "a walled garden" (cf. SS 4:12), as Scripture puts it, in the farthest corner of which your treasure, Christ, will be stored. Or rather, each one of you, with pangs, will be bearing and embodying the Word.

God will be present every day among you in the Holy Spirit. In a way, God will forever be getting under your feet. He will talk to you, you will ask Him and He will answer you.

Believe this my children. Desire it. "Wait upon the Lord" (cf Ps 26:14) and you will see and feel things you didn't dare hope for and didn't even imagine. Keep your gaze fixed on God. See Him before you, behind everything and everybody. Don't be cast down by or concerned about any difficulties which might come your way: anxieties, desertions, impasses or Golgothas.

Do but delight in the Lord, and He will give you your hearts' desires (ps 36:4).

+Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra, from On the occasion of the Installation of the Monastic Sisterhood of the Saints Theodore in Meteora, in Spiritual Instruction and Discourses, volume 1, The Authentic Seal

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov: On the Beginning of the Spiritual Life

 Brother! If you have not yet sensed the union of mind, soul, and body, then practice attentive prayer, uniting the prayer of the lips - sometimes spoken, sometimes whispered - with the mind. Act according to the commandments of the Gospel, battling the passions with endurance and long-suffering, never slipping into despair or hopelessness when you are defeated by sinful thoughts or emotions. At the same time, do not allow yourself to be defeated easily. Having fallen down, stand up. If you fall again, stand up again, until you learn how to walk without tripping. The cup of infirmity has its uses; until a proper time, the providence of God allows it, so that the ascetic can be purified of pride, anger, remembrance of evil, condemnation of others, arrogance, and vanity. It is especially important to recognize the action of vanity within yourself and to rein it in. While it acts in you, you will not be able to enter the domain of the spiritual life, for [the] price of entrance is a lack of passionate attachments, which is a gift received after the coming of the peace of Christ.

+St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, from The Refuge: Anchoring the Soul in God, Chapter 16 The Prayer of the Mind, the Heart, and the Soul.

St. Theophan the Recluse: On seeing all things spiritually

 A cause of our distracted state is constantly seeing and listening to things that prevent recollection. If this is checked, inner peace will be undisturbed. Obviously, the quickest way to achieve this would be to shut off all feeling, but not everyone can or ought to do this. So the holy Fathers devised a salutary remedy: It is to direct your sensitivity towards the things of the spirit. This fortifies it instead of letting it become distracted. This is accomplished by giving spiritual significance to everything - to the point at which a glance at an object will not bring an awareness of the object itself but of its spiritual interpretation. Whoever does this with everything he meets will grow in understanding. Light and darkness, man an beast, stones and plants, houses and fields, everything from great to small will be a lesson for him, and how salutary this can be.

His pupils once asked a staretz why he wept when he saw a beautiful but heavily made up woman. "I weep", he replied, "at the destruction of God's intelligent creation, but also I weep because I have not so much zeal for the salvation of my soul as she has for the spoiling of her body." And another elder who heard a woman; mourning at a graveside remarked: "That is the way in which Christians should mourn over their own sins.

+St. Theophan the Recluse, quoted in The Heart of Salvation, The Life and Teachings of St. Theophan the Recluse, Chapter 2, Spiritual Vision

St. Niphon of Constantiana: On humility and life with Christ

 Place yourself below everybody else and you will live in Christ's company.

+St. Niphon of Constantiana, quoted in his life in The Synaxaria, Volume 2, entry for December 23

St. Joseph the Hesychast: These times

 The lamps are going out, and we are walking in tangible darkness. Rarely do you hear anything about how to be saved. Only gossip and criticism. Everyone wants to teach the others. Seldom does someone give his life as proof of the Gospel - as a continuation of the life of the Fathers. All that is left is a great fear of temptations and inordinate boasting.

+St. Joseph the Hesychast, from Monastic Wisdom, Letter 26.

Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou): Developing the hypostatic principle

 Every person has been created in a unique way and has his own unrepeatable path to salvation.... The hypostatic principle in man develops and becomes perfected in three main ways. Firstly, by invoking the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ; secondly, through the observance of His words and commandments; and thirdly, through participation in the mystery of the Divine Eucharist. All his life, the Elder [Sophrony] worked on this three-fold method of uniting man with God and would lead those who asked for his support onto this path.

+Archimandrite Zacharias (Zacharou), from Man, The Target of God, chapter 6, The Hypostatic Mode of Being.

St. Theophan the Recluse: Begin each day as if it were the first

 First of all, do not ever think that you have already succeeded in doing something. Our weakness is that when some tiny good shows itself inside of us, we immediately cry out, "There, I've done it!" Drive out such thoughts. For good never comes easily and all at once as the adversary suggests. If you yield to this suggestion, you energy will immediately weaken, and then discord will be close again. So that you do not fall under this evil thought, each day, when you get up, put yourself in such a frame of mind as if you were beginning to labor on this path for the first time.

+St. Theophan the Recluse, from The Spiritual Life and how to be Attuned to It, #44 Warnings to one on the True Path

St. Macarius the Great: Our faith is food and drink

 The Christian religion is a food and drink. The more one eats of it, the more strongly his mind is enticed by its sweetness, so much so that he can never be restrained or satisfied, but insatiably asks for more and continually eats more. If a man has a great thirst and is given a pleasing drink, then, as he begins to taste of it, the more he wants to have it, the more eagerly he drinks of it. So is the taste of the Spirit; it can hardly be stopped or satisfied, just like the above comparison. And these are not idle words, but the working of the Holy Spirit, working in a hidden way in the mind.

+St. Macarius the Great, from Fifty Spiritual Homilies, homily 17, #13

Fr. Stephen Freeman: Sharing in the Divine Life

 Jesus did not come to make bad men good; He came to make dead men live.

Thus God came into our world, becoming one of us, so that by His sharing in our life, we might have a share in His life. In Holy Baptism we are united to Him, and everything else He gives us in the Life of His Church is for the purpose of strengthening, nurturing, and renewing this Life within us. All the sacraments have this as their focus. It is the primary purpose of prayer.

Thus, stated simply, to have communion with God means to have a share in His Divine Life. He lives in me and I in Him. I come to know God even as I know myself. I come to love even as God loves, because it is His love that dwells in 1ne. I come to forgive as God forgives, because it is His mercy that dwells within me.

Without such an understanding of communion, many vitally important parts of the Christian life are reduced to mere moralisms. We are told to love our enemies as though it were a simple moral obligation. Instead, we love our enemies because God loves our enemies, and We want to live in the Life of God. We’re not trying to be good, or to prove anything to God by loving our enemies. It is simply the case that if the Love of God dwells in us, then we will love as God loves.

Of course all this is the free gift of God, though living daily in communion With God is difficult. The disease of broken communion that was so long at work in us is difficult to cure. It takes time, and we must be patient with ourselves and our broken humanity - though never using this as an excuse not to seek the healing that God gives.

We were created for communion with God - it is our very life. Thinking about communion with God is not a substitute for that communion. Theology as abstraction has no life within it. Theology is a life lived in Christ. The ancient Christian writer Evagrius Ponticus famously said, “A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”

+Fr. Stephen Freeman, from Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, chapter 2, Sitting in a Cave in Mar Saba

Matthew the Poor: On Contrition

 One fact should shame us all. While we persist in sinning against God and in defying His rights and commandments, He still looks upon us with compassion without ever diminishing His love for us. How can we not feel contrite when pondering the great love of God who humbled Himself and even underwent contrition for us on the cross! And at whose hands? Was it not at the hands of mankind, of which you and I are members? The thought of the sufferings of the crucified God is enough to occasion contrition upon contrition.

Contrition cannot be grasped in a day or be taught from a book. It is life that flows between the soul and God. At first glance, it looks arduous, being a struggle against self-regard and a humiliation of one's pride. But after awhile, when the soul is cleansed from its false majesty and conceit, the life of contrition becomes a poignant, sweet melody that makes shorter the soul's long journey to God. It invites the soul to make its approach to God's dwelling place until it finds its complete rest in Him.

A contrite soul is full of peace. As it grows in grace and perfection, contrition and humility flow out. Any perversion toward pride or vainglory makes it shudder as a musician shudders at a discordant note in a beautiful symphony.

+Matthew the Poor, from Orthodox Prayer Life, The Interior Way, Chapter 6 Contrition of the Spirit

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. Gurias of Kazan: On Spiritual persistence

 The whole of the present life is a time of labors. The reward will be granted in the life to come. The joys of heaven will only be granted to him who has struggled in spirit during this life and who has left corruptible goods for the sake of the good things that are incorruptible. In the spiritual life, we have to press on in spite of every adversity and misfortune for, as the Apostle says: "The sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us" (Rom 8:18).

+St. Gurias of Kazan, quoted in The Synaxarion Volume 1, entry for October 4th.

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

Holy Apostle Paul: Further blessings

 Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.
 Blessed are those who guard the chastity of their flesh for they shall be the temple of God.
 Blessed are those who have renounced this world for they shall be acceptable to God.
 Blessed are those who fear the words of God for they shall be comforted.
 Blessed are those who embrace the wisdom of Jesus Christ for they shall be called sons of the most high.
 Blessed are those who have guarded their baptism for they shall find rest with the Father and the Son.
 Blessed are those who have understood the knowledge of Jesus Christ for they shall be in the light.
 Blessed are those who have rejected the outward appearances of this world for the love of God for they shall judge the angels and shall be glorified at the right hand of the Father.
 Blessed are the bodies of the virgins for the word of the Father shall be their justification in the day of His Son and they shall enjoy rest forever and ever.
+Holy Apostle Paul, attributed to him from the apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla in The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, volume 1, entry for the Holy Protomartyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles Thecla (Sep 24).

Carl Jung: On spiritual guides

 

If we had good spiritual guides we would not need psychiatrists and psychoanalysts.

+Carl Jung, original source unknown, quoted in Jesus Christ: The Life of the World, by Monk Moses of Athos