Category: Uncategorized

April 27

He who follows the spiritual path must pay great attention to discrimination, since the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and to scrutinize and understand the various tricks through which the devil by means of plausible fantasies leads most people astray, keeps us safe and helps us in every way….

For the devil cannot bring about love either for God or for one’s neighbor, or gentleness, or humility, or joy, or peace, or equilibrium in one’s thoughts, or hatred of the world, or spiritual repose, or desire for celestial things; nor can he quell the passions and sensual pleasure. These things are clearly the workings of grace. For the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace and so on (Galatians 5:22), while the devil is most apt and powerful in promoting vanity and haughtiness.

You know from its effect whether the intellectual light shining in your soul is from God or from Satan.

~St Makarios of Egypt (paraphrased by St Symeon Metaphrastis)

The Holy Imposition

“I am satisfied with myself,”

I heard him say.

“Of course I could be better,

but in general I’m okay.”

 

“Eternal life? It can’t be known.

Since nobody can prove it.

I’ll live this life right here and now,

before it’s time to lose it.”

 

She goes to church religiously,

each Sunday in the morning.

She often finds it boring,

though sometimes she stays ’til three.

 

Yet after church she hurries home,

not a moment to be squandered.

All her worries to be pondered,

fears, anxieties free to roam.

 

Minds filled with doubts and vanity,

like little ones tucked in at night,

we comfort and we hold so tight,

divorced from peace and sanity.

 

Entertained into a stupor,

wandering lives lived aimlessly,

rushed from one place to another,

running headlong into the sea.

 

Yet for those with courage of acceptance,

there’s a life of transformation,

founded on Christ’s Incarnation,

built with faith, hope and repentance.

 

There’s a Holy Imposition,

for all with worldly ambition;

there’s a heavenly infusion,

to cure malaise and our confusion.

 

We’re the sick and we’re the dying,

without Him there is no healing,

there’s only hiding and or crying,

human tricks to numb the feeling.

 

Loving God alone with all our heart,

loving enemy and brother,

sacrificing all which keep us apart,

seeking God above all other.

 

Patience and humility,

joy and simplicity,

honesty and purity,

praise and thanksgiving!

 

Peace and sanity,

silence and sanctity,

stillness and divinity,

grant us Holy Living!

 

Give us Holy Life!

 

~FS

April 25

…our Lord has commanded us to practice constant prayerful watchfulness over ourselves…”Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation,” said the Lord to His disciples. “And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” (Mark 13:37)

St Hesychius of Jerusalem defines vigilance (watchfulness) thus: “Sobriety or vigilance is the way to every virtue and commandment of God”…vigilance comes from the most careful and constant study of the Gospel commandments, and consequently of the whole of sacred Scripture. Vigilance strives unremittingly to abide by all the Gospel commandments in one’s actions, words, thoughts, and feelings….it unceasingly cries to God for help with the most vigorous prayer….

“It gives the person who practices it a sure knowledge of the incomprehensible God, so far as He can be comprehended, and a solution to divine and hidden mysteries….it is really purity of heart, which, on account of its greatness and value, or to speak more accurately, on account of our listlessness (acedia), is now very rare among [us].”

“Vigilance is constant silence of the heart, free from all thoughts, always unremittingly and constantly calling upon Christ Jesus, Son of God and God, breathing Him alone, courageously fighting with Him against the enemies, confessing to Him Who alone has power to forgive sins….vigilance is a firm control of the mind…”

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

 

April 24

When the vice of acedia (lack of care; boredom, apathy) has got hold of an unhappy man’s mind, it breeds detestation of the place of his habitation…it will not let him rest…he complains and sighs…it inflicts him with weariness of body, and such appetite for food…then again, he looks anxiously about him and sighs…thus, as if beset by an unreasonable confusion of mind, he is, as it were, filled with a dark mist, and rendered useless and unprofitable…whenever acedia in any manner begins to get the better of a man, it either makes him stay idle and overcome…or drives him out…it makes him wander…with no other end in view than to find somewhere, on any pretext, an opportunity of obtaining a meal….

The blessed Apostle, as a true physician of the soul…does all he can to forestall [acedia] with the salutary remedies of his precepts….”But concerning brotherly love…study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your hands…” (1 Thessalonians 4:9-11)…”study to be quiet”–that is to say…be not disturbed with the variety of gossip which arises from the projects and tales of the idle, and ye shall not involve others also in a like disturbance. And “do your own business”, not by your inquisitiveness into worldly affairs, and by prying out the way of life of this man or that; giving your diligence to the amendment of your own conduct, or to the pursuit of virtue, rather than carping at [others]. “Work with your hands”…for no one can be either restless, or busied in other men’s affairs, save one who is not content to be diligent in the work of his own hands.

~St John Cassian

April 23

When people say that it is impossible to attain perfection, to be once and for all free from the passions, or to participate fully in the Holy Spirit, we should cite Holy Scripture against them…for the Lord said: ‘Become perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matthew 5:48), perfection denoting total purity…and St Paul is saying the same as Christ when he writes: ‘…so that we may present every man perfect in Christ’ (Colossians 1:28); and: ‘…until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ’ (Ephesians 4:13).

Those who deny the possibility of perfection inflict the greatest damage on the soul in three ways. First, they manifestly disbelieve the inspired Scriptures. Then, because they do not make the greatest and fullest goal of Christianity their own, and so do not aspire to attain it, they can have no longing and diligence, no hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6); on the contrary, content with outward show and behavior and with minor accomplishments of this kind, they abandon that blessed expectation together with the pursuit of perfection and of the total purification of the passions. Third, thinking they have reached the goal when they have acquired a few virtues, and not pressing on to the true goal, not only are they incapable of having any humility, poverty and contrition of heart but, justifying themselves on the grounds that they have already arrived, they make no efforts to progress and grow day by day.

~St Makarios of Egypt (paraphrased by St Symeon Metaphrastis)

 

April 22

He who cultivates prayer has to fight with all diligence and watchfulness, all endurance, all struggle of soul and toil of body, so that he does not become sluggish and surrender himself to distraction of thought, to excessive sleep, to listlessness, debility and confusion…satisfied merely with standing or kneeling for a long time, while his intellect wanders far away….

Unless humility and love, simplicity and goodness regulate our prayer, this prayer–or, rather, this pretense of prayer–cannot profit us at all. And this applies not only to prayer, but to every labor and hardship undertaken for the sake of virtue…if we do not see in ourselves the fruits of love, peace, joy, simplicity, humility, gentleness, guilelessness, faith, forbearance and kindliness, then we endure our hardship to no purpose….if the fruits of love are not in us, our labor is useless….

The person who has surrendered himself entirely to sin indulges with enjoyment and pleasure in unnatural and shameful passions–licentiousness, unchastity, greed, hatred, guile and other forms of vices–as though they were natural. The genuine and perfected Christian, on the other hand, with great enjoyment and spiritual pleasure participates effortlessly and without impediment in all the virtues and all the supranatural fruits of the Spirit–love, peace, patient endurance, faith, humility and the entire truly golden galaxy of virtue–as though they were natural.

~St Makarios of Egypt (paraphrased by St Symeon Metaphrastis)

April 21

Our sufferings for the most part are extremely trifling, so that at first sight it seems impossible to regard them as sufferings at all. But that is only the cunning of our enemy who has acquired in the struggle with feeble man uncommon skill and experience, thanks to long practice. The fallen spirit saw that cruel, coarse, obvious temptations (sufferings) provoke in people flaming zeal and courage to bear them. He saw this, and changed his tactics. He changed his coarse temptations to weak but subtle ones which act very powerfully. They do not evoke zeal from our heart, they do not cause it to struggle, but they keep it in a kind of irresolute state and fill the mind with doubt.

They weary and gradually exhaust the powers of a man’s soul, they throw him into despondency and inaction, and they ruin him by making him an abode of passions on account of his weakness, despondency, and inertia….

We must not give way to listlessness, despondency, and inertia. On the contrary, let us direct all our attention and all our energy to carrying out the commandments of the Gospel. This obedience will reveal to us the countless snares of the enemy, and that cunning forethought with which his traps are planned and set. We shall see that the outwardly slight troubles and trials of today are directed, like the grim troubles and trials of old, to draw men away from Christ and to destroy true Christianity on earth, only leaving the shell to deceive people more easily. We shall see that temptations that are slight but are planned and carried out with hellish wickedness act much more successfully in the eyes of Satan than grave but obvious and direct attacks.

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

April 20

Life according to the will of God is becoming very difficult. That is because, when you live in the midst of temptations and have them constantly before your eyes, it is impossible not to be influenced by them. Just as ice in the presence of warmth loses its firmness and is converted into the softest water, so even a heart overflowing with goodwill, if exposed to the constant influence of temptations, is weakened and changed. Life according to the laws of God is becoming very difficult on account of the widespread, general apostasy.

The increasing apostates, by calling themselves and appearing outwardly to be Christians, will all the more easily be able to persecute the true followers of Christ. The increasing apostates surround true Christians with countless snares, and put countless obstacles in the way of their salvation and their good intention to serve God…the Savior of the world could scarcely find refuge in insignificant and remote Nazareth in order to hide from Herod and from…[those] who so hated Him. So too, in the last times a true [Christian] will hardly be able to find some remote and unknown refuge in which to serve God with some degree of freedom, and not be drawn by the violence of apostasy and the apostates into the service of Satan.

O disastrous time!…O moral disaster, unnoticeable for people who live only the life of the senses, yet incomparably greater than all material, glaring disasters! O disaster that begins in time and does not end in time, but passes into eternity! O disaster of disasters, realized only by certain true Christians and true monks, but unknown to those whom it seizes and destroys!

~Ignatius Brianchaninov

April 19

The crown of every good endeavor and the highest of achievements is diligence in prayer. Through it, God guiding us and lending a helping hand, we come to acquire the other virtues. It is in prayer that the saints experience communion in the hidden energy of God’s holiness and inner union with it, and their intellect itself is brought through unutterable love into the presence of the Lord.

…Just as the work of prayer is greater than other work, so it demands greater effort and attention from the person ardently devoted to it, lest without him being aware the devil deprives him of it….he must keep strict watch, so that fruits of love and humility, simplicity and goodness–and, along with them, fruits of discrimination–may grow daily from the constancy of his prayer. These will make evident his progress and increase in holiness, thus encouraging others to make similar efforts.

~St Makarios of Egypt (paraphrased by St Symeon Metaphrastis)

April 18

Moses indicates figuratively that the soul should not be divided in will between good and evil, but should pursue the good alone; and that it must cultivate not the dual fruits of virtue and vice but those of virtue only. For he says: “Do not yoke together on your threshing floor animals of a different species, such as ox and ass; but yoke together animals of the same species and so thresh your corn” (Deuteronomy 22:10). This is to say, do not let virtue and vice work together on the threshing floor of your heart, but let virtue alone work there.

Again he says: “Do not weave flax into a woolen garment, or wool into a linen garment” (Deut. 22:11); and: “Do not cultivate two kinds of fruit together on the same patch of your land” (Deut. 22:9)….All this is a concealed way of saying that you must not cultivate virtue and vice together in yourself, but you must devote yourself singlemindedly to producing the fruits of virtue; and you must not share your soul with two spirits–the Spirit of God and the spirit of the world–but you must give it solely to the Spirit of God and must reap only the fruits of the Spirit.

~St Makarios of Egypt (paraphrased by St Symeon Metaphrastis)