Category: Ignatius Brianchaninov

March 9

The man who practices human righteousness is full of self-opinion, arrogance, self-deception. He preaches and blows his own trumpet about his good deeds without paying the least attention to what our Lord forbids. He repays with hatred and revenge those who dare to open their mouths for the most reasonable and well-meaning contradiction of his righteousness….

On the other hand, one who practices the commandments of the Gospel is always immersed in humility. Comparing the loftiness and purity of the holy commandments with his own fulfillment of them, he constantly admits that his efforts are extremely unsatisfactory and unworthy of God….

Whenever trouble or suffering comes his way by the ordering of divine providence, he submissively bows his head, knowing that by means of suffering God trains and educates His servants during their earthly pilgrimage. He is kind and merciful to his enemies and prays for them as brothers who have been lured away by demons, as members of one body who are spiritually sick, as his benefactors, and as instruments of the providence of God.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

March 7

The Lord said: ‘He who rejects Me, and does not receive My words, has that which judges him–the word that I have spoken will judge him in the last day’…from these words of the Lord, it is evident that we shall be judged by the Gospel, and that negligence in carrying out the commands of the Gospel is an actual rejection of the Lord Himself.

Let us take all care, brothers, to become doers of the commandments of the Gospel. When death will come is unknown. We may be suddenly called to judgment when we are least expecting it. Blessed are those who have prepared themselves for their passage to eternity by a life in accordance with the Gospel!

Woe to the easy-going, the careless, the self-willed, the self-opinionated! Woe to those who have not broken fellowship with Satan! Woe to those who have not entered into fellowship with God! Greater woe to those who have entered into fellowship with God, and then abandoned it!

~Ignatius Brianchaninov