Orthodox Spirituality

When a man reads in a common way lines that contain great meaning, he makes his heart common and devoid of that holy power which gives the heart a most sweet taste through perceptions that awe the soul. Everything is wont to run to its kindred; and the soul that has a share of the Spirit, on hearing a phrase that has spiritual power hidden within, ardently draws out its content for herself. Not every man is wakened to wonder by what is said spiritually and has great power concealed in it. A word concerning virtue has need of a heart unbusied with the earth and its converse; for when a man’s mind wearies itself with care about transitory things, the concerns of virtue do not awaken his thought to a longing and a quest to gain them. +St. Isaac the Syrian

"Let us go within the cloud. Give me the tables of your heart; I will be your Moses, though this be a bold thing to say; I will write on them with the finger of God a new Decalogue. I will write on them a shorter method of salvation. [...] I will baptize you and make you a disciple in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; and These Three have One common name, the Godhead. [...] Believe that all that is in the world, both all that is seen and all that is unseen, was made out of nothing by God, and is governed by the Providence of its Creator, and will receive a change to a better state. Believe that evil has no substance or kingdom, either unoriginate or self-existent or created by God; but that it is our work, and the evil one’s, and came upon us through our heedlessness, but not from our Creator. Believe that the Son of God, the Eternal Word, Who was begotten of the Father before all time and without body, was in these latter days for your sake made also Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary ineffably and stainlessly…. Believe that in His own Person He was made at once entire Man and perfect God, for the sake of the entire sufferer, that He may bestow salvation on your whole being, having destroyed the whole condemnation of your sins. Believe that He was impassible in His Godhead, passible in that which He assumed; as much Man for your sake as you are made God for His. Believe that for us sinners He was led to death; was crucified and buried, so far as to taste of death; and that He rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, that He might take you with Him who were lying low. Believe that He will come again with His glorious Presence to judge the quick and the dead; no longer flesh, nor yet without a body, according to the laws which He alone knows of a more godlike body, that He may be seen by those who pierced Him, and on the other hand may remain as God without carnality. Receive besides this the Resurrection, the Judgment and the Reward according to the righteous scales of God; and believe that this will be Light to those whose mind is purified (that is, God—seen and known) proportionate to their degree of purity, which we call the Kingdom of heaven." + Saint Gregory Nazianzus

Because of our sins, the path of God occasionally seems wrong to us. If we were without sin and if our minds were not distorted by sin, it would not be possible for us, even for a moment, to conceive that another path is right except God's path. To a distorted mind, many wrong paths seem right, and the only right path seems wrong. + Saint Nikolai Velimirovic

He who aspires to divine realities willingly allows providence to lead him by principle of wisdom toward the grace of deification. He who does not so aspire is drawn, by the just judgement of God and against his will, away from evil by various forms of discipline. The first, as a lover of God, is deified by providence; the second, although a lover of matter, is held back from perdition by God's judgement. For since God is goodness itself, he heals those who desire it through the principles of wisdom, and through various forms of discipline cures those who are sluggish in virtue. +St. Maximos the Confessor

The arrogant accomplish nothing godly, and the vainglorious produce nothing natural. Pride is a combination of these two vices. It is contemptuous toward God and accordingly reproaches his providence to the point of blasphemy. Pride is a stranger to nature, and accordingly manipulates everything natural against nature, and in its abusive way distorts the beauty of nature. + Saint Maximus the Confessor

Bishop admonishes young souls to turn off the Internet and turn to quiet, humble labours When a “young soul abandons the prayer book for a laptop”, engaging in online culture wars and pursuing “blogging in place of prayer, he “places himself in great peril”, says Bishop Gerasim of Fort Worth. “A young man that turned to the Orthodox Faith without proper mentoring and instruction, without strong, positive role models before his eyes, is in grave danger of becoming the equivalent of a monster. An Orthodox monster. An Orthodox Bolshevik… ready to take either a cudgel, or a cross to beat his neighbor over the head because this neighbor does not agree with his …concept of orthodox tradition…” The Bishop warns “there is no substitute for what Father Seraphim (Rose) called ‘quiet and humble labours’.”

The palace of Herod lies in ruins, but the cave of the Child of Bethlehem remains. The crowns of the caesars have been lost, but the bones of the martyrs have been preserved. The palaces of the pagan kings have been transformed into piles of stone and dust, but the caves of the ascetics have grown into most beautiful churches. The golden idols have been scattered into nothing, but the chains of the Apostle Peter are preserved as a holy relic. The powerful Roman Empire is now only a tale of the dead, while the hut of Christianity, the Holy Church, is today the most powerful realm in the world. Where are the Jews, the murderers of God? They are dispersed throughout the world. Where are the powerful Romans? In the grave. Where is the power of bloody Nero? Where is the power of the evil Diocletian and the depraved Maximian? Where is the success of Julian the Apostate? Where are those high towers? They are where the tower of Babel is--beneath dust and ashes, beneath shame and damnation. + Saint Nikolai Velimirovic

He who does not know himself does not know God, either. And he who does not know God does not know the truth and the nature of things in general... He who does not know himself continually sins against God and continually moves farther away from Him. He who does not know the nature of things and what they truly are in themselves is powerless to evaluate them according to their worth and to discriminate between the mean and the precious, the worthless and the valuable. Wherefore, such a person wears himself out in the pursuit of vain and trivial things, and is unconcerned about and indifferent to the things that are eternal and most precious. Man ought to will to know himself, to know God, and to understand the nature of things as they are in themselves, and this becomes an image and likeness of God. + Saint Nectarios of Aegina