Category: Nikitas Stithatos

As you pray and sing psalms to the Lord, watch out for the guile of the demons. Either they deceive us into saying one thing instead of another, snatching the soul’s attention and turning the verses of the psalms into blasphemies, so that we say things that we should not say; or, when we have started with a psalm, they cause us to skip to the end of it, distracting the intellect from what lies between; or else they make us return time and again to the same verse, through absentmindedness preventing us from going on to what comes next; or, when we are in the middle of a psalm, they suddenly blank out the intellect’s memory of the sequence of the verses, so that we cannot even remember what verse of the psalm it was that we were saying, and thus we repeat it once more….

We should persevere strongly, however, and continue the psalm more slowly, so that through contemplation we may reap the profit of prayer from the verses and become rich with the light of the Holy Spirit that fills the souls of those who pray.

~Nikitas Stithatos

If you generate the honey of the virtues in stillness, you will through struggle and self-discipline transcend the lowly estate of man’s fallen condition and by overcoming your presumption you will restore the soul’s powers to their natural state. Your heart purified by tears, you will now become receptive to the rays of the Spirit, will clothe yourself in the incorruption of the life-quickening deadness of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 15:53, 2 Cor. 4:10), and will receive the Paraclete in tongues of fire in the upper room of your stillness (cf. Acts 2:3).

You will then be under an obligation to speak unreservedly of the wonderful works of God (cf. Acts 2:11) and to ‘declare His righteousness in the great congregation’ (cf. Psalm 40:10), for you will have received inwardly the law of the Spirit (cf. John 7:38; Romans 8:2); otherwise, like the wicked servant who hid the talent of his own master, you will be cast into eternal fire (cf. Matthew 25:30).

~Nikitas Stithatos

The mystery of prayer is not consummated at a certain specific time or place. For if you restrict prayer to particular times or places, you will waste the rest of the time in vain pursuits. Prayer may be defined as the intellect’s unceasing intercourse with God. Its task is to engage the soul totally in things divine, its fulfillment–to adapt the words of St Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:17)–lies in so wedding the mind to God that it becomes one spirit with Him.

~Nikitas Stithatos

You cannot be indifferent to both fame and disgrace, or rise above pleasure and pain, unless you are enabled by grace to perceive the upshot of all worldly preoccupations. For when you realize that the resultant of fame, pleasure, indulgence, wealth and prosperity is naught, since death and decay await them, then you will recognize the blatant vanity of all things worldly and will turn your eyes to the consummation of things divine.

You will cleave to the realities that truly exist and cannot perish; and, making these things your own, you will rise above pain and pleasure; above pain in that you have defeated that which in your soul loves pleasure, fame and money; above pleasure, in that you have become impervious to worldly sensations. Thus you are the same whether you are honored or scorned, attacked by bodily pain or endued with bodily ease. In all things you will give thanks to God and you will not be cast down.

~Nikitas Stithatos

If you are not called by God to a high status, never try to attain it through money or human support or by demanding it, even if you know you can help others. For if you do, three things lie in wait for you, and of them one will surely happen: either God’s anger and wrath will fall upon you in the form of diverse assaults and misfortunes–for not only men but virtually the whole of creation will turn on you, and your life will be full of anguish; or your enemies will gain the upper hand and expel you from your position in deep disgrace; or you will die before your time, cut off from the present life.

~Nikitas Stithatos

If you love money you do not love Christ; if you do not love Christ, but love money, think to whose likeness that tyrant will reduce you: it will make you like the disciple who was unfaithful, who appeared to be a friend but was a traitor, who acted viciously towards the Master of All, and who fell miserably from both faith and love, plunging into the depths of despair. Fear his example and listen to my counsel: spurn money and love for money, so that you may gain the love of Christ. If not, well, you know the place prepared for those who have fallen.

~Nikitas Stithatos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you aspire to friendship with Christ, you will hate money and the gluttonous love of money; for money lures towards itself the mind of whoever loves it and diverts it from love for Jesus, a love which, I think, is expressed not in words but in action, in the carrying out of His commandments (cf. John 14:15). If, alas, what you want is money, you will hoard away as much of it as you can, setting this desire for money above love for Christ, and regarding wealth as a gain and not as the greatest disaster that can befall you. You should realize, however, that money is in fact disastrous to you, and the disaster will be all the greater because you will also lose your true wealth, God, without whom the life of salvation is impossible.

~Nikitas Stithatos

Blessed in my eyes is the man who, changed through the practice of the virtues, transcends the encompassing walls of the passion-embroiled state and rises on the wings of dispassion–wings silver-toned with divine knowledge (cf. Psalm 68:13)–to the spiritual sphere in which he contemplates the essences of created things, and who from there enters the divine darkness of theology where in the life of blessedness he ceases from all outward labors and reposes in God. For he has become a terrestrial angel and a celestial man; he has glorified God in himself, and God will glorify him (cf. John 13:31-32).

~Nikitas Stithatos

Do not say in your heart, it is now impossible for me to acquire a virginal purity, for I have succumbed in so many ways to the seduction and delirium of the body. For once the soul engages fervently and strenuously in the labors of repentance and we shed tears of compunction, then the prison-house is razed to the ground, the fire of the passions is extinguished, we are spiritually reborn through the abiding presence of the Paraclete, and once again the soul becomes a palace of purity and virginity.

~Nikitas Stithatos

Unceasing prayer is prayer that does not leave the soul day or night. It consists not in what is outwardly perceived–outstretched hands, bodily stance, or verbal utterances–but in our inner concentration on the intellect’s activity and on mindfulness of God born of unwavering compunction; and it can be perceived noetically by those capable of such perception.

~Nikitas Stithatos