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Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us the fruits of the Spirit.
~St. Seraphim of Sarov



In order for one to understand the Saints and Fathers of the [Orthodox] Church, it is not sufficient to merely read them. The Saints spoke and wrote after having lived the mysteries of God. They personally experienced the mysteries.

In order for one to understand them, he too must have progressed to a certain degree of initiation into the mysteries of God by personally tasting, smelling, and seeing. You can read the books of the Saints and become very well versed in them with a ‘cerebral’ knowledge without even minutely tasting that which the Saints tasted who wrote these books through their personal experience.

In order to understand the Saints essentially, not intellectually, you must have the proper experience for all that they say; you must have tasted, at least in part, of the same things as they. You must have lived in the fervent environment of Orthodoxy; you must grown in it… A Whole new world must be born in a Westerner’s heart in order for him to understand something of Orthodoxy.
~Alexandar Kalomiros, Against False Union, 1959


The mysteries of our Faith are unknown and not understandable to those who are not repenting.
~Archpriest Nicholas Deputatov, ‘Awareness of God’ in the Orthodox Word Magazine, July-August 1976

 

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Thursday
11Dec2008

A certain man travelling to Constantinople...

DateDec 11, 2008 | |

…from the East fell among robbers who stole from him everything that he had with him, mutilated his body, cut the sinews of his knees and leaving him half dead, went their ways; but by the providence of God they had not inflicted any mortal wound on him. Some wayfarers who came to that place picked him up and carried him to the city of Ancyra, for it was close to that city that this had befallen him. There they took him to the bishop who ordered him to be conveyed to the hospital and cared for there. But while his wounds were tended he was not able to walk. He therefore made this request of the bishop, ‘I was travelling to Constantinople in fulfillment of a vow making my way to our lord Daniel, who stands on the column, when I met with this accident; and now that, thanks to you, I have been healed it behooves me to fulfill my vow. I pray you, therefore, servant of God, to send me safely to Constantinople to the holy man’ The bishop, since he thought that this was a pious request, gave him money for his expenses, also a beast and two men to conduct him to the holy man Daniel. So the men took him and brought him to the holy man’s enclosure and then carried him and laid him in front of the column. The man cried aloud and told the holy man the reason for which he had come and related what had happened to him and how he had been saved by the help of God and the bishop. The holy man sent thanks to the bishop for the kindness he had shown to the man and after furnishing those who had brought him with supplies for their journey he dismissed them in peace with presents for the bishop. He handed over the man to some of the servants with orders to carry him and bring him to the enclosure daily at the hour of prayer, and to anoint him with the oil of the saints; the man’s legs hung down as if they did not belong to him. After a few days, one Friday when the Saint had said the prayers as usual and all had said ‘Amen’, the man suddenly leapt from the litter, and stood on his feet and said with a loud voice, ‘Bless me, oh servant of God’. And he quickly ran up the steps and embraced the column giving thanks the while to God.

from the Life of Daniel the Stylite, 87
Daniel the Stylite, commemorated 11 December

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