SUNDAY 1. Be always with Christ and trust God in everything 2. Pray as you can, not as you think you must 3. Have a keepable rule of prayer done by discipline 4. Say the Lord’s Prayer several times each day 5. Repeat a short prayer when your mind is not occupied 6. Make some prostrations when you pray 7. Eat good foods in moderation and fast on fasting days MONDAY 8. Practice silence, inner
Now that you have thus become aware of your own wretchedness, your insufficiency, and your wickedness, you call upon the Lord as did the Publican (Luke 18: 13): God, be merciful to me a sinner. And you add: Behold, I am far worse than the Publican, for I cannot resist eyeing the Pharisee askance, and my heart is proud and says: I thank Thee that I am not like him! But, say the saints, now
It is not the Body that Sins Do not believe anyone who maintains that our bodies have nothing to do with God. I might say in passing that people who regard the body as corrupt most often defile it with impure actions. But what can possibly be wrong about this marvelous body of ours? Look at the beauty, the harmony of it. The eyes are shining, the ears are placed in the most convenient position
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
Life is a Dream with Many Changes of Scene I am not telling a lie: human life is a dream. In our dreams we look without seeing, we listen without hearing, we taste and touch without tasting or touching, we speak without saying anything, we walk without moving. We seem to be moving normally even though we stay still and to be making our habitual gestures even though we are not. The mind invents realities
Let us begin by trying to understand the nature of malicious gossip and passing judgment on others. “Malicious gossip is to talk about your neighbor’s sins and mistakes, for example, to say that someone lied or became angry or committed fornication … Saying any of this is denigration, that is to say, speaking maliciously against somebody, talking maliciously about his sin. Passing judgment is when you condemn the actual person, saying he is a liar,
There are always two worlds. The world as it operates is largely about power; the world as it should be, or “the Reign of God,” is always about love. Conversion is almost entirely about moving from one world to the next, and yet having to live in both worlds at the same time. As you allow yourself to loosen your grip on the ego or bad forms of power, you will gradually see the inadequacy
Fr. Maximos was fond of referring to a story of John Chrysostom, fourth-century patriarch of Constantinople who later was canonized as a major saint of the Church, both of the East and of the West. He was persecuted by the wife of the then emperor for being critical of her abuse of power and exploitation of the poor and weak. When John was warned by friends to stop his sermons against her on the ground
Theognostos (fourteenth century?) is known to us only as the author of the work included in the Philokalia. “When you fall from a higher state, do not become panic-stricken, but through remorse, grief, rigorous self-reproach, and, above all, through copious tears shed in a contrite spirit, correct yourself and return quickly to your former condition. Rising up again after your fall, you will enter the joyous valley of salvation, taking care so far as possible
ST. ISAIAH THE SOLITARY I, ON GUARDING THE INTELLECT, SEC. 22 Here Isaiah the Solitary expresses the same confidence that Paul speaks of in Romans 8:38-39, that “nothing can separate us from the love of God.” All that is required is for the sinner to repent and return to God. “Be attentive to yourself, so that nothing destructive can separate you from the love of God. Guard your heart, and do not grow listless
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