What is the aim of the incarnate dispensation of God’s Word, preached in all the Holy Scriptures but which we, who read them, do not know? The only aim is that, having entered into what is our own, we should participate in what is His. The Son of God has become Son of Man in order to make us, men, sons of God, raising our race by grace to what He is Himself by nature, granting us birth from above through the grace of the Holy Spirit and leading us straightway to the kingdom of heaven, or rather, granting us this kingdom of heaven within us (Luke 17:21), in order that we should not merely be fed by the hope of entering it, but entering into full possession thereof should cry: our ‘life is hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).

St. Symeon the New Theologian

O Lord and Creator of all, and especially of Your creature, man: You are the God and Father and ruler of Your children; You are the Lord of life and death; You are the guardian and benefactor of our souls.  You fashion and transform all things in their due season through Your creating Word, as You know to be best in Your deep wisdom and providence.  Receive now those who have gone ahead of us in our journey from this life.  Receive us too at the proper time, when You have guided us in our bodily life as long as may be for our profit.  Receive us prepared indeed by fear of You, but not troubled, not shrinking back on that day of death or uprooted by force like those who are lovers of the world and the flesh.  Instead, may we set out eagerly for that everlasting and blessed life which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory forever and ever.  Amen.

St. Gregory the Theologian

Be concentrated without self-display, withdrawn into your heart. For the demons fear concentration as thieves fear dogs.

St. John Climacus

Take, in the next place, the subjection by which you subject the Son to the Father. What, you say, is He not now subject, or must He, if He is God, be subject to God? You are fashioning your argument as if it concerned some robber, or some hostile deity. But look at it in this manner: that as for my sake He was called a curse, who destroyed my curse; and sin, who takes away the sin of the world; and became a new Adam to take the place of the old, just so He makes my disobedience His own as Head of the whole body. 

As long then as I am disobedient and rebellious, both by denial of God and by my passions, so long Christ also is called disobedient on my account. But when all things shall be subdued unto Him on the one hand by acknowledgment of Him, and on the other by a reformation, then He Himself also will have fulfilled His submission, bringing me whom He has saved to God. For this, according to my view, is the subjection of Christ; namely, the fulfilling of the Father’s Will. But as the Son subjects all to the Father, so does the Father to the Son; the One by His Work, the Other by His good pleasure, as we have already said. And thus He Who subjects presents to God that which he has subjected, making our condition His own. Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the expression, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ It was not He who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead, as some have thought, as if It were afraid of the Passion, and therefore withdrew Itself from Him in His Sufferings (for who compelled Him either to be born on earth at all, or to be lifted up on the Cross?) But as I said, He was in His own Person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the Sufferings of Him Who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved. Similarly, He makes His own our folly and our transgressions; and says what follows in the Psalm, for it is very evident that the 22nd Psalm refers to Christ.

St. Gregory the Theologian

As a fish cannot swim without water, and as a bird cannot fly without air, so a Christian cannot advance a single step without Christ.

St. Gregory the Theologian

When you begin to read or listen to the Holy Scriptures, pray to God thus: “Lord Jesus Christ, open the ears and eyes of my heart so that I may hear Your words and understand them, and may fulfill Your will.” Always pray to God like this, that He might illumine your mind and open to you the power of His words. Many, having trusted in their own reason, have turned away into deception.

St. Ephraim the Syrian

In order that you may move your will more easily to this one desire, in everything—to please God and to work for His glory alone—remind yourself often that He has granted you many favors in the past and has shown you His love. He has created you out of nothing in His own likeness and image, and has made all other creatures your servants; He has delivered you from your slavery to the devil, sending down, not one of the angels, but His Only-begotten Son to redeem you, not at the price of corruptible gold and silver, but by His priceless blood and His most painful and degrading death. Having done all this He protects you, every hour and every moment, from your enemies; He fights your battles by His divine grace; in His immaculate Mysteries He prepares the Body and Blood of His beloved Son for your food and protection. All this is a sign of God’s great favor and love for you; a favor so great that it is inconceivable how the great Lord of hosts could grant such favors to our nothingness and worthlessness.

St. Nicodemus of life Holy Mountain

A terrible accident has a power to awaken us to the realization of the existence of various calamities and dangers surrounding us, from which the Providence of God preserves us. At the same time it convincingly persuades us to acknowledge our own infirmity and weakness and to seek the Father’s protection and His most powerful defense, which affirms us in the Wisdom and the Word of God, which came down from above by the will of the Heavenly Father under a curtain of flesh like ours, woven by the Divine Might from the Immaculate Virgin, for our salvation. He became man and taught us to pray that we be not led into temptation. This reminds us from what Father we have our existence, and this in turn should make us seek our heavenly Fatherland and our eternal inheritance.

St. Herman of Alaska

Whatever the soul may think fit to do itself, whatever care and pains it may take, relying only upon its own power, and thinking to be able to effect a perfect success by itself, without the co-operation of the Spirit, it is greatly mistaken. It is of no use for the heavenly places; it is of no use for the kingdom – that soul, which supposes that it can achieve perfect purity of itself, and by itself alone, without the Spirit. Unless the man who is under the influence of the passions will come to God, denying the world, and will believe with patience and hope to receive a good thing foreign to his own nature, namely the power of the Holy Spirit, and unless the Lord shall drop upon the soul from on high the life of the Godhead, such a man will never experience true life, will never recover from the drunkenness of materialism; the enlightenment of the Spirit will never shine in that benighted soul, or kindle in it a holy daytime; it will never awake out of that deepest sleep of ignorance, and so come to know God of a truth through God’s power and the efficacy of grace.

St. Macarius the Great

You came into the world to save sinners; therefore You came to save Me also? You came to find and to save him who was lost; therefore You came to seek me too, for I am one of the lost. O Lord, O my God and Creator! I should have come to You as a transgressor of Your law. I should have fallen at Your feet, cast myself down before You, humbly begging forgiveness, pleading with You and craving Your mercy. But You Yourself have come to me, wretched and good-for-nothing servant that I am; my Lord has come to me, His enemy and apostate; my Master has come and has bestowed his love of mankind upon me. Listen my soul: God has come to us.

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

Where are You pasturing Your flock, O Good Shepherd, who carry the whole flock on Your shoulders? For the whole of human nature is one sheep, and You have lifted it upon Your shoulders. 

Show me the place of peace, lead me to the good pasture that will nourish me, call me by name so that I, Your sheep, may hear Your voice, and by Your speech give me eternal life. Answer me, You whom my soul loves. 

I give You the name “You whom my soul loves” because Your name is above every name and above all understanding, and there is no rational nature that can utter it or comprehend it. Therefore Your name, by which Your goodness is known, is simply the love my soul has for You. How could I not love You, when You loved me so much, even though my heart was black, that You laid down Your life for the sheep of Your flock? A greater love cannot be imagined than exchanging Your life for my salvation. 

Show me then (says my soul) where You pasture Your flock, so that I can find that saving pasture too, and fill myself with the food of heaven without which no one can come to eternal life, and run to the spring and fill myself with the drink of God. You give it, as from a spring, to those who thirst—water pouring from Your side cut open by the lance, water that, to whoever drinks it, is a fountain of water springing up to eternal life. 

If You lead me to pasture here, You will make me lie down at noon, sleeping at peace and taking my rest in light unstained by any shade. For the noon has no shade and the sun stands far above the mountain peaks. You bring Your flock to lie in this light when You bring Your children to rest with You in Your bed. But no one can be judged worthy of this noonday rest who is not a child of light and a child of the day. Whoever has separated himself equally from the shadows of evening and morning, from where evil begins and evil ends, at noon he will lie down and the sun of righteousness will shine on him. 

Show me, then (says my soul), how I should sleep and how I should graze, and where the path is to my noonday rest. Do not let me fall away from Your flock because of ignorance and find myself one of a flock of sheep that are not Yours. 

Thus spoke my soul, when she was anxious about the beauty that God’s care had given her and wanted to know how she could keep this good fortune forever.

St. Gregory of Nyssa

Can you place your hope in the world? Whom has it not deceived? To whom has it not lied? It promises much, but gives very little. Only those who hope in the Lord, according to the words of the Prophet David, do not sin, i.e., they are not deceived in their hope!

St. Ambrose of Optina

Grumbling is caused by misery and it can be put aside by doxology (giving praise). Grumbling begets grumbling and doxology begets doxology. when someone doesn’t grumble over a problem troubling him, but rather praises God, then the devil gets frustrated and goes off to someone else who grumbles, in order to cause everything to go even worse for him. You see, the more one grumbles, the more one falls into ruin. 

Sometimes the devil deceives us and makes us unable to be pleased with anything; however, one can celebrate all things in a spiritual manner, with doxology, and secure God’s constant blessing.

St. Paisios of Mount Athos

Only the foolish think that suffering is evil. A sensible man knows that suffering is not evil but only the manifestation of evil and healing from evil. Only sin in a man is a real evil, and there is no evil outside sin. Everything else that men generally call evil is not, but is a bitter medicine to heal from evil. The sicker the man, the more bitter the medicine that the doctor prescribes for him. At times, even, it seems to a sick man that the medicine is worse and more bitter than the sickness itself! And so it seems at times to the sinner: the suffering is harder and more bitter than the sin committed. But this is only an illusion – a very strong self-delusion. There is no suffering in the world that could be anywhere near as hard and destructive as sin is. All the suffering borne by men and nations is none other than the abundant healing that eternal Mercy offers to men and nations to save them from eternal death. Every sin, however small, would inevitably bring death if Mercy were not to allow suffering in order to sober men up from the inebriation of sin; for the healing that comes through suffering is brought about by the grace-filled power of the Holy and Life-giving Spirit. 

Blessed is the man who uses his sufferings, knowing that all suffering in this brief life is loosed on men by God in His love for mankind, for the benefit and assistance of men. In His mercy, God looses suffering on men because of their sins – by His mercy and not His justice. For, if it were by His justice, every sin would inevitably bring death, as the Apostle says: “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1: 15). In place of death, God gives healing through suffering. Suffering is God’s way of healing the soul of its sinful leprosy and its death.

St. Nikolai Velimirovich

I, as a sick man, should have as the harbor of my hopes not my works, not my merits, but the mercies and merits of the God-Man Jesus.

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

O, how needful it is that we entreat the Lord to give the soul His humble Holy Spirit! The lowly soul enjoys great peace, while the proud soul is a torment to herself.

St. Silouan the Athonite

The proud man thinks he can comprehend everything with his mind, but God does not grant this.  But we know the Lord:  He has made Himself manifest to us in the Holy Spirit, and the soul knows and is joyful and at ease, and in this lies our hallowed life.

St. Silouan the Athonite

However, of this much we must be sure. Never by our sole diligence or zeal nor by our most tireless efforts can we reach perfection. Human zeal is not enough to win the sublime rewards of blessedness. The Lord must be there to help us and to guide our hearts toward what is good. Every moment we must join in the prayer of David: ‘Direct my footsteps along Thy paths so that my feet do not move astray’ (Ps. 16:5) and ‘He has settled my feet on a rock and guided my footsteps’ (Ps. 39:3) – all this so that the invisible guide of the human spirit may direct back towards love of virtue our free will, which in its ignorance of the good and its obsession with passion is carried headlong into sin.

St. John Cassian

Prayer does not consist merely in standing and bowing your body or in reading written prayers….it is possible to pray at all times, in all places, with mind and spirit. You can lift up your mind and heart to God while walking, sitting, working, in a crowd and in solitude. His door is always open, unlike man’s. We can always say to Him in our hearts Lord , Lord have mercy.

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

He who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks to Him Who imparted it, shall receive also length of days forever and ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognized Him Who bestowed the gift upon him, deprives himself of the privilege of continuance forever and ever. And, for this reason, the Lord declared to those who showed themselves ungrateful towards Him: ‘If you have not been faithful in that which is little, who will give you that which is great?’ (cf. Lk. 16:11) indicating that those who, in this brief temporal life, have shown themselves ungrateful to Him Who bestowed it, shall justly not receive from Him length of days forever and ever.

St Irenaeus of Lyon