Weep over your sin

Weep over your sin: it is a spiritual ailment; it is death to your immortal soul; it deserves ceaseless, unending weeping and crying; let all tears flow for it, and sighing come forth without ceasing from the depths of your heart.

In profound humility I weep for all my sins, voluntary and involuntary, conscious and unconscious, covert and overt, great and little, committed by word and deed, in thought and intention, day and night, at every hour and minute of my life.

- St. Basil the Great

If you are not successful in prayer…

Labor, for nothing will come from you otherwise. If you are not successful in prayer, do not expect success in anything else. It is the root off everything.

- Saint Theophan the Recluse

Thinking of Marriage?

I always emphasize that young people should try to live as spiritually as they can before marriage, since preserving chastity secures their physical and spiritual health. The spiritual life is a basic perquisite to whatever life one chooses. The world has become like a wheat field that is ready for harvest, but swine enter and trample it. So now everything is in disarray – weeds, mud, wheat stalks, but here and there on some edge, there is an occasional wheat stalk standing on upright… The more  spiritual work one does during his youth the easier it will be for him in all things later in life… The better equipped and prepared one is before the battle, the better off they will be when bullets are flying and bombs are falling.

- Elder Paisios of Mount Athos [x]

Like salt in food

Patience is necessary, like salt in food. For there is no other road for us to gain, get rich and reign. This is the road that our Christ traced out. And all we who love Him ought to follow Him for the sake of His love. Even though the wormwood is bitter to us, it nevertheless cleanses the blood and makes our body healthy. Without temptations, pure souls are not known, virtue does not show, patience is not discernible. Without temptations, it is impossible for the soul to become healthy. They are the cleansing fire which makes the soul pure and bright.

- Elder Joseph the Hesychast, “Letter Thirty-Eight,” Monastic Wisdom

Even a little…

Should you pray, even a little, from the heart for salvation, you will be saved.

- Counsels of the Optina Elder Moses (Putilov)

Christ is our hope

Christ is our hope, our cleansing and santification, our resurrection, life and repose. He alone is what we all need, and therefore, the Orthodox Church constantaly pronounces these words aloud so that we may hear them during Holy Services of the Church, and be constantly renewed. For we are inclined to forget the only thing we need. With death all will be taken from us, all earthly goods, riches, beauty of body and raiment, spacious dwellings, etc., but the virtue of the soul, that incorruptible raiment, shall remain with us eternally.

- Saint John of Kronstadt

The correction of the soul

God requires not the doing of the commandments for their own sake, but the correction of the soul, for whose sake He established the commandments.

- St. Isaac the Syrian

The saints speak of that which they have truly seen and know

Each of us can discuss God inasmuch as he has known the grace of the Holy Spirit; for how can we think of or discuss what we haven’t seen, or haven’t head of, or don’t know? The saints say that they have seen God, but there are people who say that there is no God. Clearly, they say this because they haven’t known God, but this does not at all mean that He is not. The saints speak of that which they have truly seen and know.

- St. Silouan the Athonite, Writings, VIII.9