Christ accepts a hundred, accepts all thirty, accepts all five you will give him.
If you can't remember him a thousand times, a hundred times, fifty
times a day, remember him ten times and tell him with love: "Jesus!"
Not beg him for your poverty, for your mother, for your sickness, for your success.
No, no, no!
Beg him to enter your heart.
Can't you ten times a day?
Five times can't you?
If you feel it and call it twice a day, after a month you will sweeten
and ask for it ten times, then twenty times, then you will start feeling
it in your heart.
From Elder Amilianos of Simonopetra (photo)
"Fanaticism has nothing to do with Christ. Be a true Christian. Then you won’t leap to conclusions about anybody, but your love will ‘cover all things.’ Even to a person of another religion you will always act as a Christian. That is to say, you will show respect for him in a gracious manner irrespective of his religion … There must be respect for the freedom of the other person. Just as Christ stands at the door and knocks and does not force an entry, but waits for the soul to accept Him freely on its own, so we should stand in the same way in relation to every soul."
St. Porphyrios (here)
On the sweet satisfaction of virtue:
"If we would desire to rejoice continually, we have many resources for doing so. For if we take hold of virtue, there will be nothing to cause us to grieve. For virtue presents good hopes to those who possess her, making them well-pleasing to God, and approved among men; and she infuses ineffable delight (hēdonēn).
"Yes, though doing what’s right requires labor, yet this fills one’s conscience with much gladness, and lays up within such great pleasure (hēdonēn) as no speech can be able to express. . . . For nothing is so sweet as a clear conscience, and a good hope."
St. John Chrysostom, Homily 53 on St. Matthew (here).
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου