The Jesus Prayer

If you desire to acquire the gifts of the Holy Spirit, first cleanse your heart of passions and the predispositions of sin, and make it a temple and dwelling place worthy of being inhabited by the Holy Spirit.  How?  Through inner attention and the return of the mind into the heart.  Then practice sacred mental prayer in the heart, saying, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.”  When you prepare your heart, my beloved, then the all-holy, all-good, and most-manloving Spirit comes and dwells in you perceptibly, actively, manifestly.

Then, my brother, you will receive from the Holy Spirit whatever you long for.  Do you love the gift of wisdom?  You will receive it.  Do you want to partake of the gift of the Apostles?  You will acquire it.  Do you aspire after the gift of martyrdom?  You will receive it, if it is to your interest.  Do you love joy?  Do you love faith?  Do you love love?  Do you love the gifts of discernment, insight, foresight, foreknowledge, prophecy?  The Holy Spirit will give you all these things.

~ St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

Pride

Pride is a denial of God, an invention of the devil, contempt for men. It is the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of barrenness. It is a flight from God’s help, the harbinger of madness, the author of downfall. It is the cause of diabolical possession, the source of anger, the gateway of hypocrisy. It is the fortress of demons, the custodian of sins, the source of hardheartedness. It is the denial of compassion, a bitter pharisee, a cruel judge. It is the foe of God. It is the root of blasphemy.

~ St. John Climacus

Joy

‘Rejoice in the Lord,’ said St Paul (Phil. 3 : 1). And he was right to say, ‘in the Lord’. For if our joy is not in the Lord, not only do we not rejoice, but in all probability we never shall. Job, as he described the life of men, found it full of every kind of affliction (cf. Job 7 : 1-21), and so also did St Basil the Great. St Gregory of Nyssa said that birds and other animals rejoice because of their lack of awareness, while man, being endowed with intelligence, is never happy because of his grief. For, he says, we have not been found worthy even to have knowledge of the blessings we have lost. For this reason nature teaches us rather to grieve, since life is full of pain and effort, like a state of exile dominated by sin. But if a person is constantly mindful of God, he will rejoice: as the psalmist says, ‘I remembered God, and I rejoiced’ (Ps. 77 : 3. LXX). For when the intellect is gladdened by the remembrance of God, then it forgets the afflictions of this world, places its hope in Him, and is no longer troubled or anxious.  Freedom from anxiety makes it rejoice and give thanks; and the grateful offering of thanks augments the gift of grace it has received. And as the blessings increase, so does the thankfulness, and so does the pure prayer offered with tears of joy.

~ St. Peter of Damascus

To Speak of Love

To speak of love is to dare to speak of God; for, according to St John the Theologian, ‘God is love; and he who dwells in love dwells in God’ (1 John 4 : 16). And the astonishing thing is that this chief of all the virtues is a natural virtue. Thus, in the Law, it is given pride of place: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might’ (Deut. 6 : 5).

~ St. Peter of Damascus

The Cardinal Rule of the Christian Life

Indeed, the cardinal rule of the Christian life is not to put one’s trust in acts of righteousness even if one practises all of them, or to imagine that one has done anything great; and even if one participates in grace, one must not think that one has achieved anything or reached the goal. On the contrary, one should then hunger and thirst, grieve and weep even more, and be totally contrite in heart.

~ St. Makarios of Egypt

Purity

If anyone wishes to present to the Lord a pure body and a clean heart, he must persevere in freedom from anger and in chastity. All our work is useless if we lack these.

~ St. John Climacus

Spiritual Food

The mind should seek spiritual food.  This consists of reading the Divine Scriptures, the acquisition of the virtues, the fulfilling of the Lord’s commandments, sacred prayer, the spiritual and Divine thoughts contained in the books of the God-inspired Fathers, especially of those called the Wakeful, such as the Philokalia, Evergetinos, the writings of Climacos, of Symeon the New Theologian, and of others.

~ St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

What ought I to do?

6. Abba Pambo asked Abba Anthony, ‘What ought I to do? and the old man said to him, ‘Do not trust in your own righteousness, do not worry about the past, but control your tongue and your stomach.’

~ from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Paradise

Seeing God face to face is what properly and in itself makes Paradise Paradise, or rather is Paradise itself.  So, on the contrary, never seeing God is what properly and in itself makes Hell Hell.

Paradise means the soul to be as directly united with God as heated iron is united with fire, so that God is almost indistinguishable from the soul, and the soul from God; just as the fire is almost indistinguishable from the iron and the iron from the fire.

Paradise means to sit in the throne of the Deity and partake of the Divine feast; that is, to enjoy by participation and grace the happiness that God enjoys by essence.  “To him that overcometh I will grant to sit with me in my throne” (Rev. 3:21).  Hence the divine Maximos has said: “He who has been deified through grace is everything that God is, without the identity in essence.”  Hence, the same good which was able, before the appearance of time, to fill the heart of God shall also fill directly the heart of the blessed one.

~ St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite

Effects of Sin

Sin, having deprived the wretched soul of all the supernatural blessings, strips it also of the natural ones, for it takes away the keenness of the mind, the light and discrimination of reason, the tenderness and perception of heart, the peace of thoughts and of conscience, and the purity of all the powers.  It even weakens the body and defiles the senses.

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Just as keeping the commandments strengthens, improves and perfects the powers of the soul and of the body, so the transgression of the Divine commandments debases, weakens and corrupts all the powers and activities of our nature.

~ St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite