Remember the Lord…
In what I ask you, the most important is: remember the Lord and tremble before Him. All my will is contained in these words. In your life, everything else is of lesser importance.
-Fr. Pavel Florensky
Miracles are a consequence of the Creator’s love
Miracles are not impossible from a logical standpoint, and right reason does not deny them. Natural laws do not have the claim to be the only ones, nor are they threatened with being overturned by the appearance of other laws, supernatural ones, which also are conducive to the development and furtherance of creation…Miracles are a consequence of the Creator’s love for His creatures.
- Saint Nektarios the Wonderworker
To be humble in spirit
… My advice is that instead of having longings, nourish your soul with prayer to God and trust in Him, without Whose will, even birds do not perish, let alone a human being. Be calm in spirit.
- Abbot Anthony of Optina Monastery
Collecting our mind…
When we strive with diligent sobriety to keep watch over our rational faculties, to control and correct them, how else can we succeed in this task except by collecting our mind, which is dispersed abroad through the senses, and bringing it back into the world within, into the heart itself, which is the storehouse of all our thoughts?
- Saint Gregory Palamas
On the Jesus Prayer
This short prayer – “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” – contains our entire Orthodox confession of faith; all dogma is built on it. If you say it attentively, then the Lord will gradually purify your inner world.
- Fr. Nikolai Vedernikov, 21st Century Russian priest, 2013 article
Unceasingly praise Him
Bringing doxology to the One born of the Virgin in church hymns and spiritual songs, we must, outside the church as well, unceasingly praise Him and give Him thanks for His ineffable lovingkindness to us sinners, who are atoned by His honourable blood and who have received through this promise life eternal, blessed, and unceasing.
- St. Ambrose of Optina
We should live on the earth…
We should live on the earth as a wheel turns – as one point touches the earth, all the rest reaches upward; but we lie on the earth and cannot get up.
- St. Ambrose of Optina
Do not grieve
Do not grieve if you do not at once receive from God that which you ask. He wishes to benefit you still more by making you persist longer in your patient prayer before him. For what can be higher than to address one’s converse to God, and be in communion with him?
- Saint Nilus of Mount Sinai
The blessings of God
Just as the blessings of God are unutterably great, so their acquisition requires much hardship and toil undertaken with hope and faith.
- St. Macarius the Great
Let us accomplish all the things…
Let us accomplish all the things that are pleasing to God: chanting, prayer, reading, spiritual instruction, manual labour, and service of every kind, living in interior communion with God.
- St. Nilus of Sora
To live without speaking…
To live without speaking is better than to speak without living. For the former who lives rightly does good even by his silence, but the latter does no good even when he speaks. When words and life correspond to one another they are together the whole of divine philosophy.
- Venerable Isidore of Pelusium
As least of all…
Christ takes on the appearance of each of the poor and assimilates Himself to all of them so that no one who believes in Him will be arrogant towards his fellow being. On the contrary, he will look on his fellow being and his neighbor as his God, regarding himself as least of all in comparison just as much with his neighbor as with his Creator, honoring his neighbor as if he were his Creator, and exhausting his all in his service, just as Christ our God poured out His blood for our salvation.
- Saint Symeon the New Theologian, “Practical and Theological Texts,” #114, The Philokalia, Vol. 4
Christ manifested Himself to the world
Christ manifested Himself to the world; He filled it with light and joy; He sanctified the waters and diffused His light in the souls of men.
- St. Proclus
When we must obey someone
Both the Emperor’s commands and yours (person in authority) must be obeyed if they are not contrary to the God of heaven. If they are, they must not only not be obeyed; they must be resisted.
— The words of St. Euphemia, d. July 11, 303
On repentance
No one is as good and kind as the Lord is; but He does not forgive one who does not repent.
- St. Mark the Ascetic
