“So take courage my child and rise from your fault. Stand up. Get angry with the tempter knowing that he is one that contrived all this trickery. Don’t let him get away with it; fight him. When he brings the face to your memory take a cane and strike your thighs hard so that the carnal desire withers away. You will weep from the pain but your nous will be cleansed from that memory. Thus the filthy images disappear and the deception of the fantasy leaves. My child, you should fear this temptation greatly because it defiles the soul. This unclean demon needs beating without mercy.”
Elder Joseph
~Monastic Wisdom

“Your machine is enormous; your passengers are countless. You’re the driver of the whole world. Many, many passengers do not think about You, do not question the mystery of Your Being, but with faith they board the car and they ride and ride. And this must gladden You inexplicably. You know where You will give rest to Your passengers, where You will feed them, and whom You will take off the train and where. True, they know very little about the first and last station of Your most wondrous train but they board with faith, ride with faith and get off with faith – with faith and You who are hidden, invisible, unknown. Thousands and thousands of times I glorify You and praise You about him before You, my All seen and Almighty Creator and Driver. In You only I trust in face of all the dangers which lie before this train.”
St. Nikolai Velimirovich
~Missionary Letters #1

“If Christ had the worldly logic that many spiritual people have today He would not have left His throne Heaven to descend to earth, to suffer and be crucified for us miserable human beings. But hidden within his apparently human failure… is this salvation of us all. And what he enduredto bring about our salvation! He humbled Himself utterly, to the point of being slapped and mocked…what a terrible thing! And now we are seeking to have a type of Christianity without the crucifixion; we want to go straight to the resurrection. We’re trying to form a Christianity and a monasticism made to our measure. We don’t want to be deprived of anything. But if we are to experience the supernatural, we must live supernaturally.”
Elder Paisios
~Spiritual Struggle

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“Some people lost their body in war and some lost their soul. The former loss less. In some gain their soul. These are the true winners. There are some who went to war like wolves and came back as lambs. I know a lot of those. These are those who like you felt through some miraculous event that the invisible God is walking before them. As the glorious psalmist has said, ‘I beheld God before me; He is at my right hand so I don’t stumble.’”
St. Nikolai Velimirovich
~Missionary Letters #1

“Take an icon for example: it is made by hand out of wood and colors. It depicts the form of Christ, the Panagia or some saint. Whatever we do to this icon – even though it is something material – passes on to the prototype. That is where acts of reverence or irreverence go. Likewise, and Elder is an icon of God and in His image and place. For a disciple an Elder is even above a bishop. For other people he is nothing but for you a disciple he is everything.”
Ephraim of Arizona
~My Elder Joseph

“Human righteousness is not for spiritual people; it merely serves to restrain worldly people. A spiritual person is a fool if he relies on human righteousness which is nothing compared to divine righteousness. But even a worldly person, though he may achieve something in this life by applying human righteousness, will not have real joy and peace.”
Elder Paisios
~Spiritual Struggle

“The right approach is found in the heart which tries to humble itself and simply knows that it is suffering and that there somehow exists a higher truth which not only can help the suffering that can bring it into a totally different dimension. This passing from suffering to transcendent reality reflects the life of Christ, Who went to His suffering on the cross, endured the most horrible and shameful type of death, and didn’t totally to the consternation of His own disciples, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, sent Is Holy Spirit and begin the whole history of Is Church.”
Fr. Seraphim Rose
~God’s Revelation

“As for myself poor soul…… I’m very weak. I haven’t managed to love Christ so very fervently and for my soul too long for Him I feel that I have a very long way to go. I haven’t arrived at where I want to be; I don’t experience this love. But I’m not discouraged. I trust in the love of God. I say to Christ: I know I’m not worthy. Send me whatever Your love wishes. That’s what I desire, that’s what I want. During my life I always worshiped you.”
Elder Porphyrios
~Wounded by Love

“This old Elder, good willed and everything else, and indeed a struggler in his monastic duties remained with this delusion until he was very old… Nevertheless I was informed with great joy… That a little before the elders death he retracted all that he believed and said, foreseeing his sin, “Forget everything I told you. I am shortly leaving for the other life.” After his holy repose and the end of my anxiety a contemporary co-struggler of his solved my question saying: ‘This Elder passed the first stage of his life in obedience. Since he pleased his Elder he desired greater physical struggles. He went to the desert and performed his monastic duties with precision and frequently took communion. Well he was protected because he had sound foundations and the evil one did not have the power to finish him off despite deluding and deriding him his whole life.”
Abbot Haralambos
~Abbot Haralambos Dionysiatis