Bishop Irinei (Steenberg): The Call of God

 The Christian today hears two calls: that of God, and that of the world. And truly, this is as it has always been, since Christ first spoke into the world the Gospel that sets "father... against son,... mother against daughter," (Luke 12:53) and the Kingdom against the saeculum. The constant temptation is to answer both, as if both were of equal value, or of a value that could be held hand-in-hand with the other; but this is to ignore the word of the Lord. "Let the dead bury their own dead" (Matt. 8:22, Luke 9:60) was a statement uttered by Christ not as a cold, uncaring dismissal of the world, but in order to teach His disciples that the call of a world that leads to death must be left to respond to itself. The call of the Kingdom must be the sole focus of the Christian heart. Only be responding to this call, and this call alone, can a man truly be merciful to "the dead" - to those who are lost in sin, who succumb to the call of the world - for the only antidote to death is resurrection, and resurrection comes only through the power of the risen Lord.

+Bishop Irinei (Steenberg), from The Beginnings of a Life of Prayer

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. Nicodemus the Hagiorite: Acquisition and Loss of Grace in Baptism

 No sooner are we baptized than the soul shines brighter than the sun, being purified by the Holy Spirit. And not only to we see the glory of God but we also receive from it a certain splendor just as a piece of silver in the rays of the sun reflects those very rays which it receives. But what a pity! It is only right to sigh here bitterly! For this glory which is ineffable and awesome remains within us only one or two days.¹ For we extinguish it, being led astray by the winter of worldly cares, the dense clouds of which block out its rays. For the care pertaining to living are indeed a heavy winter and even more sullen than winter.

+St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, from A Handbook of Spiritual Counsel, Chapter 1, The Attributes of the Mind and the Body
¹At the time this was written, most people were still being baptized as adults.

How difficult is our approach to God, especially in the case of some of us, when everything - even nature, heredity, and the entire composition of man - builds up a wall between him and God.
The kind of man we most often encounter presents a combination of three traits: (1) pride - faith in his own strength, delight in his own creation; (2) a passionate love of earthly life; and (3) the absence of any sense of sin. How can such men approach God? As they now are, they are hopelessly isolated from God; they do not even feel the need of Him. And this is precisely the kind of personality that is developed in the conditions of modern life, through education, literature and so on. The idea of God is erased from the soul What catastrophes are required, before such a man can be reborn!
+Father Alexander Elchaninov, from The Diary of a Russian Priest, Fragments of a Diary.