The first day of my new life

…I cannot ignore the direction the Holy Spirit has taken me in and I cannot ignore the voice of God when He calls to me and leads me. He has led me to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the very Church that Christ founded that has remained unchanged in faith since the days of Christ otherwise known as the Orthodox Church. Despite being a happy Anglican I never felt like I quite fitted in and I didn’t know why until I found Orthodoxy and now I know why; tomorrow (Sunday) morning I will make the biggest step of my life so far and become a member of the Orthodox Church through Chrismation and I know that this is what God wants me to do.

… Today is my last day as an Anglican and tomorrow is the first day of my new life in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church.

- James, talking about his conversion to Orthodoxy

Do not seek the perfection…

Do not seek the perfection of the law in human virtues, for it is not found perfect in them. Its perfection is hidden in the Cross of Christ. 

- St. Mark the Ascetic

One of the shortest ways

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbor disparagingly, but rather say to him: “Stop, brother! I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?” In this way you will achieve two things; you will heal yourself and your neighbor with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”

- St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The keys to our salvation

God leaves keys to our salvation everywhere, a day at a time. He yearns for us to keep praying, to find the keys He lovingly leaves for us.

- Father Raphael

The Lord is the accomplishment…

The Lord is the accomplishment of everything good that I think, feel and do.

- St. John of Kronstadt

Try to live like this…

We should try to live in such a way that if the Gospels were lost, they could be re-written by looking at us.

- Met. Anthony of Sourozh

God is present in each and every created human

We need to see the image of God in every person we meet, because God is present in each and every created human, regardless of what they do.  So listening is an important part of our prayer life because as we listen to God and to other human beings we welcome them as we’d welcome Christ. Thus prayer is a conversation with God and through God with our fellow human beings as God empowers us to welcome them.

- An excerpt from “Listening to the Heartbeat of God”, by Hieromonk Peter-Michael Preble

Man needs humility…

Man needs humility and the fear of God as much as he needs the air which he breathes.

- Abba Poimen

Good works

Every day you provide your bodies with good to keep them from failing. In the same way your good works should be the daily nourishment of your hearts. Your bodies are fed with food and your spirits with good works. You aren’t to deny your soul, which is going to live forever, what you grant to your body, which is going to die.

- St. Gregory the Great

On prayer

Prayer rising in a man’s heart will open up the doors of heaven…

- St. Ephraim the Syrian

Let us rejoice

Even if we are entirely despised in the eyes of men, let us rejoice that we are honoured in the sight of God.

- Abba John

Humility…

Humility is the door of the Kingdom of heaven that introduces those who draw near to it… We who wish to understand this must not cease to examine ourselves; if in the perception of our heart we consider that our neighbor excels us in all things, then Divine mercy is near us.

- St. John Climacus

In order to enter Paradise…

In order to enter Paradise, one must have a heart as wide as the heavens, a heart that embraces all men. If a heart excludes just one person, it will not be accepted by the Lord because He will not be able to dwell in it.

- Fr. Zechariah

The Lord is always waiting for us

The Lord is always waiting for us to unite ourselves with Him in love; but instead, we drift further and further away from Him. We know that there can be no life without love. This means that there is no life without God, for God is Love. But His love is not according to the understanding of the world. The love that the world gives us consists of suffering and enslavement, because the spirits of evil interfere with it. There is a little bit of love, but mostly it is just enslavement.

- Elder Thaddeus