Better by far

"And it is a far greater thing to be blessed than to be rich."

Saint Ambrose of Milan

Seven Exegetical Works

Slippery wanderings of the heart

"In order to preserve the mind and body in a perfect condition abstinence from food is not alone sufficient:  unless the other virtues are as well joined to it.  And so humility must first be learned ... the desire for [the possession of money] must be utterly rooted out ... the madness of anger should be controlled; the downcast look of dejection be overcome ... the disdainfulness of pride be trampled underfoot, and the shifting and wandering thoughts of the mind restrained by continual recollection of God.  And the slippery wanderings of the heart should be brought back again to the contemplation of God as often as our crafty enemy, in his endeavour to lead away the mind captive from this consideration, creeps into the innermost recesses of the heart."

Saint John Cassian

Apathy? Really?

On apatheia or passionlessness:

Rather than the  Stoic meaning of absence of all emotion, for the Byzantine [Orthodox Christian] it means absence "only of wrong emotions, such as malice and the attachment to material things and carnal pleasures .... 'passionlessness' is associated with the manifestation of the highest emotion, that of spiritual love."

Constantine Cavarnos

Byzantine Thought and Art

As if to fire

"One should hurry to rise for prayer as if to a fire."

Saint Anthony of Optina

Are we heard and delivered?

"Pharaoh entreated saying:  'May God take away from me this death' (Exodus 10:17), and he was heard.  Similarly, when the demons asked the Lord not to cast them into the abyss, their request was granted (Luke 8:31).  How much more, then, will a Christian be heard when he prays to be delivered from spiritual death?"

Saint John of Karpathos

Texts for the Monks in India

Moments gifted

"Live each moment which is given unto you entirely for God."

Archimandrite Arsenie (papacioc) of Romania

Dream of such sleep

"And grant us, O Lord, when we go to sleep, repose of body and soul; and keep us from the murky slumbering of sin .... And grant us, O God, a watchful mind, a chaste thought, a sober heart, and sleep light and free from all satanic phantasies."

Monk Antiochus

one of the Prayers "After the Supper Service"

quoted by Constantine Cavarnos in

The Priest as Spiritual Father