Category Archives: Readings

∼ Words from the Church Fathers ∼

All that you lose in the name of God, you keep. All that you keep for your own sake, you lose.
All that you give in the name of God, you will receive with interest.
All that you give for the sake of your own glory and pride, you throw into the water.
All that you receive from people as from God will bring you joy.
All that you receive from people as from people will bring you worries.
– St. Nicholas of Serbia, Thoughts on Good and Evil

……………….

Do you think that the man-loving God has given you much so that you could use it only for your own benefit? No, but so that your abundance might supply the lack of others.
– St. John Chrysostom, Conversations on the Book of Genesis, 20

∼ Words from the Church Fathers ∼

‘You received divine grace from Heaven,
and by your own lips taught all to worship the One God in Trinity.

All-blessed, venerable John Chrysostom, deservedly, we praise you for you are a teacher clearly revealing things divine.’

Since it is likely that, being men, they would sin every day, St. Paul consoles his hearers by saying ‘renew yourselves’ from day to day.

This is what we do with houses: we keep constantly repairing them as they wear old. You should do the same thing to yourself. Have you sinned today? Have you made your soul old? Do not despair, do not despond, but renew your soul by repentance, and tears, and Confession, and by doing good things. And never cease doing this.

– St John Chrysostom

∼ Words from the Church Fathers ∼

TRUE PRAYER is undistracted, prolonged, performed with a contrite heart and alert intellect. The vehicle of prayer is everywhere – humility, and prayer is a manifestation of humility. For being conscious of our own weakness, we invoke the power of GOD. PRAYER unites one with GOD, being a divine conversation and spiritual communion with the Being that is most beautiful and highest.

PRAYER IS FORGETTING EARTHLY THINGS, AN ASCENT TO HEAVEN. THROUGH PRAYER WE FLEE TO GOD.

PRAYER is truly a heavenly armour, and it alone can keep safe those who have dedicated themselves to God. Prayer is the common medicine for purifying ourselves from the passions, for hindering sin and curing our faults. Prayer is an inexhaustible treasure, an unruffled harbor, the foundation of serenity, the root and mother of myriads of blessings.

+ St Nectarios
from “Modern Orthodox Saints, St. Nectarios of Aegina”, Dr. Constantine Cavarnos

∼ Words from the Church Fathers ∼

A man becomes spiritual insofar as he lives a spiritual life. He begins to see God in all things, to see His power and might in every manifestation. Always and everywhere he sees himself abiding in God and dependent on God for all things.

But insofar as a man lives a bodily life, so much he does do bodily things; He doesn’t see God in anything, even in the most wondrous manifestations of His Divine power. In all things he sees body, material, everywhere and always – “God is not before his eyes.” (Ps. 35:2)

St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ, I.5