Category: Nikitas Stithatos

Nothing so inspires the soul with longing for God and love for one’s fellow beings as humility, compunction and pure prayer. Humility shatters the spirit and engenders tears, while by making us aware of the shortness of human life it teaches us to know the frailty of our limitations. Compunction purifies the intellect of materiality, illumines the eye of the heart, and makes the soul completely radiant. Pure prayer binds the whole person to God, making us share the life of the angels, allowing us to taste the sweetness of the immortal blessings of God, and bestowing on us the treasures of the great mysteries. Enkindling us with love, it gives us the courage to lay down our life for our friends (cf. John 15:13), for we have transcended the body’s low estate.

~Nikitas Stithatos

If the soul, its powers disordered, is still at war with itself and has not yet become receptive to the divine rays; if it is still enslaved to the will of the flesh and without peace; and if its battle with the rebellious passions has but recently come to an end, it needs to preserve strict silence, so that with David it too can say: ‘But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man who does not open his mouth’ (Psalm 38:13). It should always be full of grief and should walk sorrowfully along the road of Christ’s commandments; for it is still afflicted by the enemy and awaits the coming of the Paraclete, through whom it will receive the prize of true freedom for its compunction and cleansing tears.

~Nikitas Stithatos

Stillness is an undisturbed state of the intellect, the calm of a free and joyful soul, the tranquil unwavering stability of the heart in God, the contemplation of light, the knowledge of the mysteries of God, consciousness of wisdom by virtue of a pure mind, the abyss of divine intellections, the rapture of the intellect, intercourse with God, an unsleeping watchfulness, spiritual prayer, untroubled repose in the midst of great hardship and, finally, solidarity and union with God.

~Nikitas Stithatos

Humility is the greatest of the virtues. If as a result of sincere repentance it is implanted in you, you will also be given the gift of prayer and self-control, and will be freed from servitude to the passions. Peace will suffuse your powers, tears will cleanse your heart, and through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit you will be filled with tranquility. When you have attained this state, your consciousness of the knowledge of God will grow lucid and you will begin to contemplate the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven and the inner essences of created things. The more you descend into the depths of the Spirit, the more you plumb the abyss of humility. Correspondingly you gain greater knowledge of your own limitations and recognize the weakness of human nature; at the same time your love for God and your fellow beings waxes until you think that sanctification flows simply from a greeting or from the proximity of those with whom you live.

~Nikitas Stithatos

When you know yourself you cease from all outward tasks undertaken with a view to serving God and enter into the very sanctuary of God, into the noetic liturgy of the Spirit, the divine haven of dispassion and humility. But until you come to know yourself through humility and spiritual knowledge your life is one of toil and sweat. It was of this that David cryptically spoke when he said, ‘Toil lies before me until I enter the sanctuary of God’ (Psalm 73: 12-17 LXX).

~Nikitas Stithatos

‘Know thyself’: this is true humility, the humility that teaches us to be inwardly humble and makes our heart contrite. Such humility you must cultivate and guard. For if you do not yet know yourself you cannot know what humility is, and have not yet embarked truly on the task of cultivating and guarding. To know oneself is the goal of the practice of the virtues.

~ Nikitas Stithatos

The fruits of the Holy Spirit are love, joy, peace, goodness, long-suffering, kindness, faith, gentleness, self-control (cf. Galatians 5:22-23). The fruits of the spirit of evil are hatred, worldly despondency, restlessness of soul, a troubled heart, guile, inquisitiveness, negligence, anger, lack of faith, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, abusiveness, censoriousness, the lust of the eyes (cf. 1 John 2:16), vanity and pretentiousness of soul. By these fruits you may know the tree (cf. Matthew 12:33), and in this way you will certainly recognize what kind of spirit you have to deal with. An even clearer indication of these things is given by the Lord Himself when He says, ‘A good man out of the good treasury of his heart brings forth good things; and an evil man out of the evil treasury of his heart brings forth evil things’ (Matthew 12:35). For as the tree, so is the fruit.

~Nikitas Stithatos

To speak humbly is one thing, to act humbly is another, and to be inwardly humble is something else again. Through all manner of hardship and through the outward labors of virtue those engaged in spiritual warfare can attain the qualities of speaking and acting humbly, for these qualities require no more than bodily effort and discipline. But because the soul of such people often lacks inner stability, when temptation confronts them they are easily shaken. Inward humility, on the other hand, is something exalted and divine, bestowed through the indwelling of the Paraclete only on those who have passed the midpoint of the spiritual way–who have, that is to say, through acting in all humility traversed the rigorous path of virtue.

~Nikitas Stithatos

The vehemence of our trials and temptations depends upon the degree to which we are debilitated by the passions and infected by sin; and the bitter cup of God’s judgment varies accordingly. If the nature of the sin within us is such that it is easily treated and cured–if, that is to say, it consists of thoughts that are self-indulgent or worldly–then the Healer of our souls in His compassion adds but a mild dose of wormwood to the cup of trial and temptation He administers, since these are merely human ailments by which we are afflicted. But if the sin is deep-seated and hard to cure–a lethal infection of pretentious arrogant thoughts–then in keenness of His wrath He gives us the cup undiluted, so that, dissolved and refined in the fire of successive trials and the humility they induce, the sickness may be removed from our soul and we may wash away our brackish thoughts with tears, thus presenting ourselves pure in the light of humility to our Healer.

~Nikitas Stithatos

‘Devote yourselves to stillness and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10). This is the voice of the divine Logos and is experienced as such by those who put the words into practice. Thus once you have renounced the turmoil and frightening vanity of life you should in stillness scrutinize yourself and the inner reality of things with the utmost attentiveness and should seek to know more fully the God within yourself, for His kingdom is within us (Luke 17:21). Yet even if you do this over a long period of time it will be difficult for you to erase the imprint of evil from your soul and to restore it wholly to its Creator in all its primal beauty.

~Nikitas Stithatos