Friday, August 31, 2012
St Theodoros the Great Ascetic
If God is love, he who has love has God within himself.
If love is absent, nothing is of the least profit to us (cf. 1 Cor. 13:3); and unless we love others we cannot say that we love God. For, writes St John, ‘If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar’ (1 John 4:20). And again he states: ‘No man has ever seen God. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us’ (1 John 4:12).
From this it is clear that love is the most comprehensive and the highest of all the divine blessings spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. And there is no form of virtue through which a man may become akin to God and united with Him that is not dependent upon love and encompassed by it; for love unites and protects the virtues in an indescribable manner.
St Theodoros the Great Ascetic
Thursday, August 30, 2012
St Justin of Serbia
Man sentenced God to death; by His Resurrection, He sentenced man to immortality.
In return for a beating, He gives an embrace; for abuse, a blessing; for death, immortality.
Man never showed so much hate for God as when he crucified Him, and God never showed more love for man than when He arose.
Man even wanted to reduce God to a mortal, but God by His Resurrection made man immortal.
The crucified God is Risen and has killed death. Death is no more. Immortality has surrounded man and all the worlds.
- St. Justin of Serbia
St Maximos the Confessor on fasting
Nature itself gives no small token of the knowledge of providence planted naturally within us whenever it urges us instinctively towards God through prayer in times of sudden crisis, and makes us seek salvation from Him.
For when we are suddenly overtaken by violent events, before thinking of anything else we involuntarily call upon God.
It is as if providence itself, without any conscious thought on our part, were drawing us to itself, outstripping the speed of our noetic faculty and showing us that divine help is stronger than anything else.
Nature would not lead us purposelessly to what does not naturally exist. It is clear to everyone that whatever is a natural consequence of something demonstrates its own authenticity with the force of truth.
St Maximos the Confessor
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
St Thalassios the Libyan
A Prayer
Christ, Master of all, free us from all these destructive passions and the thoughts born of them.
For Thy sake we came into being, so that we might delight in the paradise which Thou hast planted and in which Thou hast placed us. We brought our present disgrace upon ourselves, preferring destruction to the delights of blessedness. We have paid for this, for we have exchanged eternal life for death.
0 Master, as once Thou hast looked on us, look on us now; as Thou becamest man, save all of us. For Thou camest to save us who were lost. Do not exclude us from the company of those who are being saved. Raise up our souls and save our bodies, cleansing us from all impurity.
Break the fetters of the passions that constrain us, as once Thou hast broken the ranks of the impure demons. Free us from their tyranny, so that we may worship Thee alone, the eternal light.
Having risen from the dead and dancing with the angels in the blessed, eternal and indissoluble dance. Amen.
St Thalassios the Libyan
Dormition
For the Feast of the Dormition.....
Troparion Tone 1
In giving birth thou didst preserve thy virginity;/ in falling asleep thou didst not forsake the world, O Theotokos./ Thou wast translated to life, O Mother of Life,/ and by your prayers you deliver our souls from death.
Kontakion Tone 2
Neither the tomb nor death could hold the Theotokos,/ who is sleepless in her intercessions and an unchanging hope in her mediations./ For as the Mother of Life she was transferred to life/ by Him Who dwelt in her ever-virgin womb.
Monday, August 20, 2012
St Hesychios the Priest
The task of moral judgment is always to prompt the soul's incensive power to engage in inner warfare and to make us self-critical.
The task of wisdom is to prompt the intelligence to strict watchfulness, constancy, and spiritual contemplation.
The task of righteousness is to direct the appetitive aspect of the soul towards holiness and towards God.
Fortitude's task is to govern the five senses and to keep them always under control, so that through them neither our inner self, the heart, nor our outer self, the body,-is defiled.
St Hesychios the Priest
St Anthony the Great
Only to man does God listen. Only to man does God manifest Himself. God loves man and, wherever man may be. God too is there. Man alone is counted worthy to worship God. For man's sake God transforms Himself.
St Anthony the Great
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