By Elder Moses the Athonite † Saint John Chrysostom shows us five practical ways to repent. He says: The first way is to condemn yourself for your sins. The Lord esteems this action greatly. If, of your own volition, you condemn your sins, you’re less likely to repeat them. No fault will be found at the heavenly tribunal over the timely awakening of your conscience through self-criticism. The second valuable path of repentance is not
Published by Pemptousia Partnership on October 16, 2021 Protopresbyter Themistoklis Mourtzanos ‘When our conscience tells us to do something and we ignore it, and when it then tells us to do something else and we don’t do it, we steadily and relentlessly stamp upon it; we bury it and it can’t shout aloud within us anymore, because of the weight that’s covering it’ (Abbas Dorotheos). Nowadays, our conscience has been banished from the stage of upbringing, education, and
To preserve inner peace: First of all, keep your outer senses in order and flee all licentiousness in your external conduct, – namely, neither look, speak, gesticulate, walk nor do anything else with agitation, but always quietly and decorously. Accustomed to behave with decorous quietness in your external movements and actions, you will easily and without labour acquire peace within yourself, in the heart; for, according to the testimony of the fathers, the inner man
God Tests us by our Conscience The tree of life represents the Holy Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the faithful, as St Paul says: ‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?’ [1 Cor. 6:19] The tree of knowledge of good and evil represents our senses which produce contrasting fruits: pleasure and pain. Each of these is divided again into two: there is pleasure arising from
When God made human beings, he put in them a kind of divine faculty, more alive and splendid than a spark, to illuminate the spirit and show it the difference between good and evil. It is the conscience with that law which is part of its nature. The patriarchs and all the saints were able to please God by obeying the law of conscience. But people trampled on it and muddied it with their sinfulness.
Another woman raised her hand. “I apologize for my Greek,” she said shyly. “Don’t worry, my English is worse,” Fr. Maximos reassured her. “Christ claims,” the woman continued, “that the only way to reach the Father is through Him. This is always a question that is raised among people. What will happen to the rest of the world, to the billions of people who are not born Christian and who may not have even heard
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