FORGIVENESS SUNDAY Let us all make haste to humble the flesh by abstinence, as we set out upon the God-given course of the holy Fast; and with prayer and tears let us seek our Lord and Savior. Laying aside all memories of evil, let us cry aloud, “We have sinned against You, Christ our King; save us Like the people of Nineveh in days of old, and in Your compassion make us sharers in Your
Do not direct your gaze towards the enemy. Never get into a controversy with him whom you cannot possibly resist. With his millennia of experience he knows the very trick that can render you helpless at once. No, stand in the middle of your heart’s field and keep your gaze upward; then the heart is protected from all sides at once: the Lord Himself sends His angels to guard it both from right and left
Whoever engages in inner warfare needs at every moment four things: humility, the greatest vigilance, the will to resist and prayer. It is a matter of dominating, with God’s help, the “Ethiopians of thought”, thrusting them out by the door of the heart, and crushing at once those who dash your little ones against the rocks (Psalm 137: 9). Humility is a prerequisite, for the proud man is once and for all shut out. Vigilance
Fr. Maximos never ceased repeating that our greatest enemy is our ego, what psychologists would call “narcissism,” and that we can work on that ego as we go about our daily affairs. He then mentioned Abba Dorotheos, an early Father of the Ecclesia who instructed his monks on how to confront their desires so that they might undermine their egotism. “He taught them simple exercises. If for example they were hungry and curious to find
Before the Ship Sinks An illness that has become chronic, like a habit of wrong-doing that has become ingrained is very hard to heal. If after that, as very often happens, the habit turns into second nature, a cure is out of the question. So the ideal would be to have no contact with evil. But there is another possibility: to distance yourself from evil, to run away from it as if from a poisonous
Saint Anthony the Great is known as the Father of monasticism, and the long ascetical sermon in The Life of St Anthony by St Athanasius (Sections 16-34), could be called the first monastic Rule. He was born in Egypt in the village of Coma, near the desert of the Thebaid, in the year 251. His parents were pious Christians of illustrious lineage. Anthony was a serious child and was respectful and obedient to his parents.
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