“That’s how we should think always. And that’s how we should live toward difficulties and tragedies. We should see them all as opportunities for prayer, for approaching God. That’s the secret: how the man of God will transform everything into prayer. That’s what St. Paul the Apostle means when he says I rejoice in my sufferings, in all the tribulations he encountered. This is how sanctfiication takes place. May God grant this to us. I asked for this fervently in my prayer.”
Elder Porphyrios
~Wounded by Love

“I can talk with everyone. I can spend time with them but then I want to be by myself…When someone can’t live in the desert he should try to create the conditions for the stillness wherever it is that he is living. If we’re careful to cut off our passions then will be in the desert wherever we are. And now in my final years I’d like to live on Athos with the naked ascetics but can I? The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. At night and for three hours during the day I want to be by myself – I feel I have to be totally isolated.”
Elder Paisios
~Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos

“After spring it is beautiful here… The beautiful rocks theologize like voiceless theologians as does all of nature – each creature with its own voice or its silence. You bump your hand against a little plant immediately it shouts very loudly with its natural fragrance, “Ouch! You didn’t see me but hit me!” And so on: everything has its own voice so that when the wind blows their movement creates a harmonious musical doxology to God. What more shall we say about the creeping things and winged birds. When that saint sent his disciple to tell the frogs to be quiet so they could read the Midnight Service they answered him, “Be patient until we’re done with Matins exclamation””
Elder Joseph
~Monastic Wisdom

“It is not easy to comprehend why God created worlds, first the bodiless angelic one and then the bodily one with man as its crown. If the Triune God is perfect and self-sufficient in the fullness of life, love and glory, why did He create worlds lesser than Himself? The Church and only the Church provides the answer. From an over abundance of love within Himself, God created the worlds visible and invisible through the Only Begotten to please Him. Was It for the Son’s entertainment or out of some necessity? This is not what we said. God does not need entertainment. His Triune love overcomes all merriment of entertainment and all enjoyment of amusements. Neither does the perfect one, the self-sufficient one have any necessity since He has everything within Himself.”
St Nikolai Velimirovich
~Missionary Letters #2

“Christ is revealed in that unity between His love and ourselves: the Church. On my own I am not the Church but together with you. Altogether we are the Church. All are incorporated in the Church. We are all the one and Christ is the head. one body, one Body of Christ: you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. We are all one because God is our Father and is everywhere. When we experience this we are in the Church. This is our Lord’s wish for all the members of the Church as expressed in His great high priestly prayer: that they may be one. But that’s something you can only understand through grace. We experience the joy of unity, of love, and we become one with everyone. There is nothing more magnificent!”
Elder Porphyrios
~Wounded by Love

“I was traveling in the Holy Land and the man who was driving me around asked me which road we should take. I said to him, “Are we taking a world world tour or something? Whichever is shorter.” As we drove along he said to me, “You see Elder – that’s why didn’t want to come this way because it took us by the nude beach.” To tell the truth I didn’t see anything. I just saw something like shadows moving…External stillness along with asceticism and unceasing prayer brings inner stillness to the soul and very quickly. After that external turmoil doesn’t bother you.”
Elder Paisios
~Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos

“In the last days we shall see the spirits of devils working miracles. The Holy Scriptures and Orthodox Fathers clearly tell us that the character of the last times will not be at all one of a great spiritual revival, of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but rather one of almost universal apostasy, of spiritual deception so subtle that the very elect if that were possible will be deceived, of the virtual disappearance of Christianity from the face of the earth. “When the Son of Man comes will He find faith on the earth?” It is precisely in the last times that Satan is to be loosed in order to produce the final and greatest outpouring of evil upon the earth.”
Fr. Seraphim Rose
~Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future

“Once on Monday of the Holy Spirit Father Palacios told us that he had left us rusks, tomatoes and grapes down on the dock. Geronda turned to us and said “All right – get your sacks and go down to the dock. Bring them now before the mice get them.” Thoughts started attacking me like ants: “What? You’re going to haul things up the mountain on a day like this? You’re supposed to have quiet time for reading and prayer today!” I answered back to these thoughts “Straight and narrow is the way. Obedience is above all. I came not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.” The burden of those thoughts was heavier than the burden on my back! The battle went back and forth. I said to those thoughts “As soon as we get back to Geronda I’m going to expose you! ” The moment I entered the door of his hut the thoughts completely vanished they didn’t dare stick around to face the master!”
Elder Ephraim of Arizona
~My Elder Joseph

“…I want to show how God worked many miracles on me unworthy as I am. His hand very manifestly protected me everywhere. And so in this case the hand of God led me into the hands of a holy Elder and spiritual father who was to protect me. God had sent him and this Elder saved me. It was a great miracle of God’s providence. In many things God’s providence has helped me but above all the greatest assistance I received was that I succeeded in going to the Holy Mountain at such an early age in spite of the fact that it was forbidden. I knew nothing about monastic life. But God helped me.”
Elder Porphyrios
~Wounded by Love

“What does it mean to believe in the Gospel? It means believing in the Good News brought to mankind by the heavenly Herald, by God the Son. In other words it means to believe Lord Christ and His Revelation. And Christ’s Revelation is the greatest revelation since the creation of the world. His revelation is the only one which can turn man the worm into man the God and a son of God.”
St Nikolai Velimirovich
~Missionary Letters #3