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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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« There was a small monastery... | Main | One day Abba Arsenius consulted... »
3:33PM

One of the old men named Philagrius...

…lived in Jerusalem and labored to earn himself enough to eat. And when he was standing in the marketplace trying to sell what he had made, by chance a bag fell on the ground near him, containing a thousand coins. The old man found it, and stood there thinking, “The one who lost it will soon come back.” And soon the man who had lost it came back lamenting. So Philagrius took him aside and gave him back his bag. The owner asked him to accept some of the coins, but the old man, though poor, would take nothing. Then the owner began to shout and call, “Come and see what the man of God has done!” But the old man fled away unnoticed, and left the town, so that they should not know what he had done, nor pay him honor.


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