Anything done by force, without love and freedom, does not enter the eternity of God.
Two things are important during prayer. One is reaching up towards Christ; we should not examine anything else…but have all our attention on the Person of Christ. The other thing is uninterrupted mourning and profound repentance.
The purpose of Christian marriage is for people to reach unselfish love and cut off their own will, and thence to reach God.
In the monastery,... it is only obedience that gives the monk energy to pray. Anyone who is disobedient is lost, he fades away, he cannot pray and he has no life.
When someone repents, he receives grace from God. When he receives grace - the Light - he sees his sins more, until he reaches the Light and himself becomes light. In the vision of the Light he sees his createdness, corruptibility and mortality, and repentance grows. So repentance leads to theology…Repentance never ceases.
When someone with psychological problems is obedient, the problems are curable. Incurable psychological disorders are marked by lack of obedience.
Even the saints cannot argue with God when they wrestle with Him, never mind us. People wrestle with God because they do not know His will and they attribute their own thoughts, desires and speculations to God.
In the West the culture is different from that of the Orthodox East. It is a culture of reason. They pray with their rational faculty and know nothing about the prayer of the heart. For that reason, when Westerners enter the Orthodox Church many years must pass in order for prayer to descend to their heart and for them to assimilate divine grace.
The Apostle Paul spoke in tongues, but he placed greater emphasis on the charisma of love. People ask why there is no ‘charismatic’ movement in Orthodoxy and I reply: "Because the Orthodox Church has never lacked the prayer of the heart.”
When the monk experiences Christ’s humility - may God enlighten us to say it briefly - he senses an outpouring of love, but he also, as far as possible, has a sense of seeing the beauty of Christ’s face, Who is the beauty of the world.
I teach the monks not to speak about the wrongs they suffer, but to keep silent. We ought to live as those who are crucified. This is Orthodox spirituality.
Parents are to blame for 70-80 percent of their children’s problems.
Parents should bring up their children with discretion; they should not force them and should leave them free. They should buy them new clothes, and they should mix socially. They should take them to a restaurant, to a good theatre, because otherwise they will react.
From the day of the wedding, about ten years will pass before the couple achieves equilibrium.
Those in the East who practice meditation also see some sort of light, but this vision separates them from all the rest of creation with a certain pride. This light is not divine but devilish and created. By contrast, in Orthodoxy the theoria of the divine Light transmits life to man and love for the whole of creation.
Let us keep the Orthodox faith. And, since we live in difficult times, we shall receive a greater reward than others who lived in earlier ages and kept the faith.
The ladder of perfection is outlined in the Beatitudes. Man begins from a sense of sinfulness and mourning, and reaches the point of conflict with the world.
When we read a patristic text we ought to pray to that holy father that we may conceive the word in the same way as he conceived it.
The spiritual birth of a human being resonates loudly throughout the world, like an aeroplane when it breaks the sound barrier.
For a quarter of a century I wept on the Holy Mountain for my sins and for the whole world.
We live Christ’s Cross by practicing His commandments. When we are spiritually stretched, we are crucified. This happens through repentance.
Reading Holy Scripture purifies the nous.
We Orthodox live Christ in the Divine Liturgy, or rather, Christ lives within us during the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is God’s work. We say: “it is time for the Lord to act.” Apart from anything else, this means that it is the moment for God to take action. Christ celebrates the Liturgy; we live together with Christ.
Every Divine Liturgy is Theophany. The Body of Christ is revealed.
Someone can face illness when his soul is at peace.
When someone keeps Christ’s commandments he is not only obedient, but he is united with Christ and acquires the mind of Christ.
We ought not usually to talk to married people about the value of monasticism, because then they become confused and do not esteem marriage. We should teach them that marriage is a way to salvation, when one lives in accordance with the Gospel.
Christ underwent sufferings because He kept His Father’s commandments and so came into conflict with the world.The same must happen to the one who is called by Christ to live His life.
When someone keeps Christ’s commandments he is not only obedient, but he is united with Christ and acquires the mind of Christ.
When the heart has tears it can distinguish whether something is from God or from the devil. Otherwise we ought to keep God’s commandments. God’s commandments are an expression of God’s life.
Married couples must learn self-emptying. They must give way to one another.
The aim is not simply that the infant should partake of the Most Pure Mysteries, but that it should live in an atmosphere of prayer at home. The atmosphere of the home should be one of prayer. The parents ought to inspire the children with their love for Christ and the All-Holy Virgin.
..many Greek parents in England do not allow their children to go round with English children. This is a bad thing. The child has to learn how to live in a community with different people.
The couple ought to begin their life with zeal, and with prayer that God might enlighten the children that will be born so that they become His own children. As they bring up their children they ought, with discretion, to give them freedom and allow them to go on their own way….So that they may love Christ, we ought not to talk to them psychologically and theologically in stilted language, but to pray inwardly in our heart. When the parents have God’s grace within them, the children sense it.
We should pray to God to give inspiration. God enlightens everyone, especially mothers and gives them inspiration. This is the only way we can bring up children.
God glorified the All-Holy Virgin and kept her in silence. The mystery of the Theotokos is a mystery of silence. For that reason God did not enlighten people to talk about her natural life. However, the Church glorified her.
God arranges sufferings and trials for the proud man so that he might be saved. To someone who is physically strong he gives an illness to stop him indulging himself. Afflictions crush the heart, and this crushing produces prayer.
Nothing, either spiritual or material, belongs to us but to God. It becomes ours when we offer it to God. Through the prayer that we say before the meal, we offer up the material good things to God, and then they become ours, because God gives them back to us so that we can live.
Not all the saints received the same grace from God, but all filled the vessel that they offered to God.
God’s commandments are the manner of divine life. Man cannot keep the commandments of God to the full, so he needs grace. Prayer accomplishes this. Sometimes, when someone keeps God’s commandments and lives the ethos of the crucified Chrst, he senses God’s grace without praying, or he prays out of love. The aim is not to pray without ceasing (when it is done mechanically and formally); the aim is our communion with God, which is also achieved through prayer.
The Fathers did not ask for many words. They received one spiritual word, left for the desert, and lived for many years with that word. They attempted to put it into practice and they were nourished by it. We say, and we want to hear, lots of words, but we do nothing to put them into practice.
Someone who has obedience and love can adapt himself to any situation.
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