13 June 2008
Groan after you have sinned, not because you are to be punished (for this is nothing), but because you have offended your Master, one so gentle, one so kind, one Who loves you so much and longs for your salvation as to have given even His Son for you. On account of this, groan.
–St. John Chrysostom
10 June 2008
No one would be an idolater if we were true Christians: if we kept Christ’s commandments if we are wronged and our property is stolen; if we blessed if we are abused; if we did good when we suffered hardships. No one would be such a brute, that he would not hasten to piety if we kept this approach.
–St. John Chrysostom, quoted in “Witness to the Ethos of Orthodoxy or Syncretistic Coexistence?” published by the Cyprianite Synod in Resistance.
10 June 2008
Bless mine enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them and do not curse them.
Bless them and multiply them; multiply them and make them even more bitter against me—
so that my fleeing to Thee may have no return;
so that all hope in men may be scattered like cobwebs;
so that absolute serenity may begin to reign in my soul;
so that my heart may become the grave of my two evil twins: arrogance and anger;
so that I might amass all my treasure in Heaven;
ah, so that I may for once be freed from self-deception, which has entangled me in the dreadful web of illusory life.
Enemies have taught me to know—what hardly anyone knows—that a person has no enemies in the world except himself.
One hates his enemies only when he fails to realize that they are not enemies, but cruel friends.
It is truly difficult for me to say who has done me more good and who has done me more evil in the world: friends or enemies.
Therefore bless, O Lord, both my friends and mine enemies.
From Prayers by the Lake, by St. Nikolai Velimirovic.
2 June 2008
“My brother, if your soul were pure and upright before the Lord, you would be able to profit from all things of this life. If you were to see a wandering peddler, you would say to yourself: ‘my soul, from the desire to earn fleeting, earthly goods, the peddler toils a great deal and endures much, concentrating on things which will not ultimately remain under his domain. Why, then, do you not look after those things which are eternal and incorruptible?’ Once again, if you were to see those who dispute in court over financial matters, you would say: ‘My soul, these people, often having not a single need, show such ardor and quarrel with such shouting between themselves. You, who owe to God a myriad of talents, why do you not implore God, bowing down as one should, to obtain cancellation of that debt?’
“If you were to see a builder making houses, you would again say: ‘my soul, these same, even if they build houses from mud, show such great zeal to finish the work they have laid out. You, why are you indifferent to eternal structures and why do you not struggle to erect the abode of God within the soul, forming and joining the virtues by the will?’
“Now, in order not to be prolix in citing various circumstances one by one, let us say that we must take care to transform our worldly thoughts and observations, which are born of our material perspective on things of the present life, to spiritual ones. Thereby, we shall profit from all things with the help and assistance of Divine Grace” (Saint Ephraim).
–Taken from Archimandrite [Archbishop] Chrysostomos’s The Ancient Fathers of the Desert, Copyright 1980, Hellenic College Press, Brookline, MA.
26 May 2008
What is left of a man when the soul is removed from his body? A corpse. What is left of Europe when God is torn from its body? A corpse. With God banished from the Cosmos, has it not become a corpse? What is a man who denies the soul within him and in the world around him? Nothing but molded clay, a walking coffin of molded clay. The result is devastating. Enamored of things, European man himself finally becomes a “thing.” Personality is devalued and destroyed. What is left is a man-thing. There is no whole, integrated, bodily husk from which the immortal spirit has been driven out. Although this husk is burnished and adorned, it is still a husk. European culture has deprived man of his soul; it has made him artificial and mechanical. It is like a monstrous machine that devours men and makes them into things. The end result is touchingly sad and movingly tragic: a soulless thing among soulless things.
–Fr. Justin Popovich, “Humanistic and Theanthropic Culture” in The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism, pp. 103-104, as quoted in “The Life and Works of Our Holy Father Archimandrite Justin of Chelije” in the current (Vol. 53, No. 5) issue of The Orthodox Word, September-October 2007.
