Suffering unjustly
Saint Arsenie Boca It’s better for you to suffer evil than to become the cause of evil. The sorrow of someone who’s suffering unjustly is preferable to the joy of someone who’s working with injustice. Source: pemptousia.com ABOUT THE ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN NETWORK Orthodox Christian Network (OCN) is...
Seek & practice virtue
Saint John of Damascus They are truly blessed who seek virtue and practice it and examine carefully what it is. If you wish to be governed by God, don’t wish to sin. Because if you sin, how will you be governed by God? Source: pemptousia.com ABOUT THE...
The way to peace
Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite The way to acquire peace is as follows: forget entirely your fall and the sin and give yourself over to the thought of God’s great and ineffable goodness and the fact that He is willing and desires to forgive every sin, however serious, inviting sinners...
Tasted and sweetened
Saint John the Sinaite Acquisition of divine love makes us angels, immortal, incorruptible. The pure flame of love extinguishes all other desire for earthly longings. You get the impression that those who love God aren’t interested in anything else, not even nourishment, since they’ve tasted God and been sweetened...
They don’t get up again
Saint Andronik of the Monastery of Glinsk Spend your life wisely, live purely, repent, pray not to be surprised by sudden death and God’s dread anger. Many people have lain down to sleep and not risen again. We, too, lie down and don’t know if we’ll wake the next...
Again, on sorrows and patience
Saint Dimitri of Rostov Patience in trials is a sure way of uniting ourselves to God. Complaining separates us from God, so patience forges our union with Him. So if you suffer all your trials with patience and gratitude, for His sake, He will reward you with eternal bliss....
Rely on the Grace
Archimandrite Georgios Kapsanis, Abbot of the Holy Monastery of Gregoriou † If you allow the thought that you can rely on your own powers and proceed in that vein, then pride enters. You lose what you’ve gained and you need to start again from the beginning, to humble yourself,...
Like the starving
Saint Justin Popovich In the first place, church attendance is a need of the soul. Just as the hungry have need of food and the thirsty require water, so, too, do Christians have need of their ‘daily bread, which is the word of God and the spotless sacraments, the...
It’s up to us
Saint Peter the Damascan Nobody’s the cause of perdition; only our own will is. God’s the cause of salvation: He gave us life and bliss, knowledge and power and His own Self. Not even the devil can bring us to perdition against our will; all he can do is...
The Wisdom of Obedience
Fr. Andreas Agathokleous The various Books of the Elders, ancient and modern, take us into the world of the monastic state. There the genuine way of the Christian/Gospel life continues, as does the human reality of blunders and failures, which are overcome through asceticism. One very important and substantial...
